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Overview of BookBub’s Marketing Tools

BookBub provides authors, publishers, and publicists with a suite of marketing tools designed to help them achieve their book marketing goals, whether they’re aiming to drive preorders, launch a new release, promote backlist books, or build an author’s platform and visibility. Each of our products offers a different way to promote titles to our audience of millions of readers.

Our daily Featured Deal emails alert readers to free and discounted ebooks matching their genre interests, with links to purchase the deals on their ebook retailers of choice. These limited-time deals are submitted by authors and publishers and curated by our expert editorial team specifically for our highly-engaged audiences of book-buyers in each category. Our partners often use Featured Deals to drive revenue and exposure for backlist books, boost a book up a bestseller list, get readers hooked on the first book in a series, or generate awareness for an author brand in the lead-up to a new book launch.

Submission Requirements: There are minimum requirements each deal must meet in order to be considered by our editorial team. However, due to limited space in our Featured Deal emails, only 10-20% of eligible deals are selected for features. Learn more about which books are eligible here, and read about how the editorial selection process works here.

Cost: It’s free to submit a deal for consideration, but we charge a flat fee for each feature based on your book’s deal price, selected category, and selected regions. View our current Featured Deal prices here.

Available regions: Featured Deals are sent to our members in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. Partners can choose which regions they’d like to include in their promotion when they submit.

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BookBub Ads

BookBub Ads is a self-serve auction ad platform designed exclusively for authors and marketers to promote books to readers. It’s our most flexible promotional tool, allowing advertisers complete customization of their campaign budgets, targeting, timing, and design. The BookBub Ads platform gives every book marketer access to our audience of book-buyers — and unlike other ad platforms, you know you’re reaching active readers when you run campaigns! Ads appear in dedicated spaces in BookBub and Chirp emails as well as on BookBub.com.

Requirements: There are no minimum requirements and there’s no editorial review process, which means any partner can run an ad campaign for any book at any time! View our advertising policies here.

Cost: Because BookBub Ads are served through an auction, the actual cost of running ads depends on the details of each particular campaign and the other advertisers competing in the auction at any given time. Each advertiser gets to set a budget and bid for their campaigns, which determine how much they will spend in total and the rate they are willing to pay to win ad impressions. Learn more about the cost of BookBub Ads here.

Available regions: BookBub Ads campaigns can reach BookBub members in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, as well as Chirp members in the US.

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Chirp Audiobook Deals

Chirp is an audiobook retailer powered by BookBub that highlights unbeatable discounts on audiobooks. Chirp offers listeners access to a full catalog of audiobooks that they can purchase á la carte with no subscription fees, but focuses especially on surfacing amazing, limited-time audiobook deals in members’ favorite genres. Deals are submitted by authors and publishers and curated by the same editorial team behind BookBub’s Featured Deals for ebooks. For our partners, Chirp audiobook deals provide a way to drive a significant spike in audio sales, find new fans, and market digital audiobooks directly to consumers.

Submission Requirements: Only audiobooks that are for sale on Chirp are eligible to be submitted. You can add audiobooks to Chirp via our distribution partners Findaway and Author’s Republic. If your audiobook isn’t currently available on Chirp, reach out to partners@chirpbooks.com for more information on how to list your book.

Cost: There is no upfront cost to run a Chirp Audiobook Deal. If your book is selected as a Chirp featured deal, we will charge an additional 10% royalty fee on that title during your discount period on top of Chirp’s standard royalty rate. Learn more about Chirp featured deal fees here.

Available regions: Chirp is only available to audiobook listeners based in the US or CA at this time.

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New Releases For Less

Our weekly New Releases for Less emails feature a curated collection of low-priced new releases submitted by our partners. Our team of editors hand-selects the titles to send to millions of readers interested in each book’s genre, providing an excellent way for authors and publishers with competitively-priced releases to achieve significant scale for their launch campaigns in the critical weeks after an ebook release. By highlighting the great prices of these releases, we give our members a compelling reason to try a new book from an author they may not have heard of before.

Submission Requirements: Brand-new, full-length ebooks with upcoming release dates are eligible to be submitted for New Releases For Less features. Ebooks must be priced around $6 or less on the date of the email feature. You can submit books starting 6 months before the release date, up until release day. Read our complete submission guidelines here.

Cost: It’s free to submit new releases for consideration, but we charge a flat fee for each feature based on your book’s selected category. View our current prices here.

Available regions: New Releases For Less are currently sent to US members only.

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Preorder Alerts

Send a Preorder Alert to an author’s dedicated BookBub fan base to drive early sales and visibility for upcoming releases. Readers on BookBub can follow their favorite authors, and Preorder Alerts let you email these followers when an author has a book available for preorder. Reaching this audience of loyal fans — the readers most likely to be excited about new books! — is a great way to boost pre-release awareness and ensure your launch week is as successful as possible.

Requirements: Preorder Alerts can be sent for authors with over 1,000 followers. You can send an alert on any day pre-release, but we need at least 7 days advance notice and the scheduling window is limited to the upcoming year. You can send up to two alerts per title.

Cost: We charge $0.02 per subscribed follower, so an author with 1,000 subscribed followers would pay $20 to send a Preorder Alert to those readers. 

Available regions: Preorder Alerts can sent to members in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia. Partners can choose which regions they’d like to include in their promotion when they submit.

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New Release Alerts

Whenever an author releases a new book, we automatically send a dedicated email alert to their BookBub followers. BookBub readers are very loyal to their favorite authors — 84% of them decide to purchase books because they’re by an author they like! These alerts ensure each author’s fans never miss a new book, and drive critical launch week sales for our partners.

Requirements: In order to qualify for an alert, a newly-published book must be added to an author’s profile before, on, or up to seven days after its release date. Re-releases and newly-created box sets of previously published works do not qualify for New Release Alerts. Read our complete guidelines for which books are eligible for New Release Alerts here.

Cost: Free for all authors! 

Available regions: New Release Alerts are currently sent to US members only.

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Author Profiles

Whether you’ve already written 20 books or you’ve just published your first, you should claim your Author Profile on BookBub! Claiming your profile and keeping your book information up-to-date is the first step to growing a following and increasing your visibility on BookBub. The more followers an author has on BookBub, the more effective our marketing tools will be for their books. 

Requirements: Any author with an ebook published on one of our supported retailers (Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, or Kobo) can create an Author Profile and list their books on BookBub.com. We will verify each author’s identity before approving their profile. 

Not an author? Learn how to help the authors you work with claim their profiles here.

Cost: It’s free for any eligible author to claim their profile.

Available regions: BookBub members in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and can follow their favorite authors and will receive email alerts when an author they follow runs a Featured Deal in their region. Currently, we list only the US editions of books on Author Profiles, and only US members will receive Preorder Alerts and New Release Alerts.

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Recommendations

Authors can engage with their fans on BookBub by sharing books they love! Recommending books can help authors build connections with current readers and increase their exposure to new readers on BookBub. We share Recommendations in a few different ways throughout our platform to help our members discover new books and boost the visibility of the books we’re featuring. For example, we email our users anytime a book recommended by someone they follow has a live deal, either in a Featured Deal email or The Short List. Readers can like or comment on recommendations, purchase the book, or save it to their wishlists.

Requirements: Authors must claim their Author Profiles before they can recommend books to their followers. Claim your profile now (or learn how to help the authors you work with claim theirs here!).

Cost: It’s free for any author to share book recommendations with their followers!

Available regions: Recommendations are currently available to authors and members in the US only. If you are an author based outside of the US, we encourage you to update your country to the US in order to have access to all of our reader-facing features.

Learn more:

Updated on May 9, 2024
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