Unlock the Power of BookBub’s Free Tools
BookBub.com is best known for their Featured Deals. The ones that have skyrocketed more than one writing career and aided their fair share of bestseller campaigns.
But aside from the (admittedly pricey) Featured Deals, Bookbub offers other beneficial opportunities for book promotion. Some of them are even free!
Before we start:
Make sure you’ve done the following…
Claim your Author Profile: Before anything else, make sure you’ve claimed your author profile. If you log in to your Partner Dashboard, you’ll see a link that says “Manage Your Author Profile”. You can claim your Author Profile there, or click here.
Add your books: BookBub may pull most or all of them in for you. You’ll want to check all the links, though! Often, only one or two links pull in. (You’ll see why the links are important soon.) 
Add a link in conspicuous places for people to follow you on BookBub: Definitely make sure you have a link on your website. Also, consider it on your Facebook page, newsletter, and anywhere else readers interact with you. BookBub provides several different graphics here. Download the one you like, then upload it to your website and link the image to your BB author profile.
Now Let’s Move On to the Good Stuff
FREE New Release Announcements: BookBub will send an email to those people who follow you on BB. The email has all the BB branding, and announces ONLY your ebook. This is a great way to make sure your readers hear about your new books, especially if they’re not on your email list or if your email to them was caught in a spam filter. 
There’s no cost for this service, but you do need to make sure a few things are in place for it to happen and be effective:
- Your book must meet minimum page counts listed here.
- Your book must be added before, during, or at least seven days after the ebook release.
- The print book cannot be released more than 30 days before the ebook.
- The email that goes out will only list the links that are added to your book in your BookBub profile, so make sure all your links are included!
FREE Deal Alert Emails: When you have a BookBub Featured Deal, BB sends a SEPARATE email to your BB Followers making sure they know about the deal. That’s great extra visibility for your book!
Low-Cost Preorder Alerts: These aren’t free, but they’re only two cents per follower. Once you have at least 1,000 BB Followers, you can schedule a Preorder Alert to be sent to those subscribers. The email looks much like the New Release Alert, and is great extra visibility. (The Preorder Alert is in addition to the free New Release Alert.) Again, make sure you’ve checked that all the book links are included on BookBub, as that is what they’ll send in the email.
I scheduled a Preorder Alert last month to be sent to 1,006. My cost was $20.12, and I saw about 50 additional preorder sales that day.
One observation about Preorder Alerts. I’ve heard mixed feedback from publishers who’ve used Preorder Alerts, some who were disappointed with the response. I think the price point of the preorder might have something to do with how effective the alert seems to be. There are, of course, other considerations (like how many of the BB Followers receiving the alert are in the target audience for the book, etc.).
There’s More.
We haven’t talked about BookBub’s Cost-per-Impression ads, which are a great way to reach non-Amazon readers, but that’s a conversation for another post.
I’ll also mention that BookBub continues to add new features to the author profiles, such as the ability to list your favorite books and/or post fun reviews.
I see the potential for this site to be similar to a Goodreads with a twist. Definitely something to keep an eye on!
The Ambitious Author 