What are BookBub’s discounting requirements?
We promise our readers the best deals available, which means we will only consider deeply discounted, limited-time deals. The following are the complete pricing guidelines we use to determine if a book is eligible for a BookBub Featured Deal:
- We consider the “full price” of your book to be its predominant recent price.
- Your book must be discounted to at least 50% off that predominant recent price.
- Your book cannot have been discounted to the submitted deal price for more than a total of 14 days in the recent past. This rule does not apply to free deals, however — we’re happy to feature permafree books!
- Your book cannot have been offered for a better price than the submitted deal price in the recent past.
You can view the rest of our minimum requirements here.
Can I submit a box set for a Featured Deal?
Yes! We can promote single-author box sets and multi-author anthologies of novellas or short stories. We do not currently feature multi-author box sets. Our complete guidelines for box sets and anthologies are as follows:
If a collection contains at least one full-length book, it is considered a box set.
- All books included in the box set must have the same authorship. Collections of co-written books are eligible for Featured Deals if both authors are listed for every included title.
- The box set’s total page count must be longer than the number of books in the set times our individual book page requirement.
- At least one book in the box set must meet our timing requirements: it must not have been promoted by BookBub in the last six months, and it must be by an author who has not promoted a book with us in the past 30 days.
- After a box set has been featured, our policy about promoting the same book only once every six months applies to both the box set as a whole and each individual title within the set.
If a collection contains only novellas or short stories (less than 150 pages), it is considered an anthology.
- Anthologies may contain works by a single author or multiple authors.
- Anthologies must have flat, 2-dimensional covers (not box set style images or multiple cover images).
- The total page count of the collection must meet our minimum page count requirements for individual books (150 for fiction, 100 for non-fiction)
- Anthologies must contain standalone, complete works.
Can I submit a new release for a Featured Deal?
Currently, we rarely feature new releases in our Featured Deal emails. Our editors will consider any submission that meets our minimum requirements, but we’ve found that books that have had some time to build up their platform and reader reviews perform best and, therefore, make for the most successful promotions for our partners.
However, we also have a number of other tools dedicated to promoting new releases! Learn how BookBub can help you launch new books.
When should I discount my book?
You don’t need to discount your book prior to submitting it for consideration. If your book is selected for a Featured Deal, we’d recommend setting up your discount to start a few days before your feature. We understand that price matching can be unpredictable, so we encourage you to allow enough time for the price to go down.
What price should I discount my book to?
We’ve seen a significant decrease in sales for Featured Deals between $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. Ultimately, the price you choose for your deal should depend on your marketing goals. Are you trying to hit a bestseller list? Market a series? Drive sales and revenue? You can learn the best way to accomplish each of these goals here.
When should I run my price promotion?
We haven’t seen a noticeable difference in performance between different days of the week, so your book is likely to perform similarly regardless of when it runs with BookBub! You can read more about this here.
We also haven’t seen significant differences in performance for books that run with us on a holiday, although it’s of course important to keep seasonality and relevant current events in mind when you discount your book.
Why wasn’t my book selected?
Due to limited space in the daily email and the high volume of submissions we receive, we’re only able to select about 10-15% of the books that get submitted for BookBub Featured Deals in the US. Unfortunately, this means that we aren’t able to promote every great book we see. Our editors choose the books they believe will most appeal to our readers’ current tastes, so there’s a chance your book just wasn’t the best fit for one of our categories right now. However, we’d welcome you to resubmit after four weeks! We also recommend checking out our submission tips to make sure your submission is as competitive as possible.
If your book wasn’t selected for a discounted feature in the US, we’d encourage you to consider submitting for a free or international-only feature. We usually receive fewer submissions for free deals and international deals, so the selection process tends to be less competitive.
You can learn more about how BookBub’s selection process works here.