FOR AUTHORS
What Should Authors Post on Social Media Between Releases?
What should authors post between releases? A balanced mix of story, process and reader posts, series reminders, countdowns and a weekly plan.
How BookBub Ads differ from a Featured Deal, and how to target comp authors, design creative, set bids and judge results.
BookBub Ads are self-serve adverts in BookBub’s emails and on its website, shown to readers of authors and categories you pick. Unlike a Featured Deal, nobody vets them. You pick the audience, image, bid and budget. Start small and target comparable authors with modest followings. Test one change at a time and judge by sales and read-through.
BookBub is an email service for readers, where members choose which authors and categories they want to hear about. That makes it a natural place to advertise, and BookBub Ads are especially handy if you write a series and want new readers to start at book one.
This guide is for self-published and hybrid authors in the UK who want to know whether BookBub Ads are worth a test, and how to set them up sensibly. We’ve checked everything below against BookBub’s own partner pages.
A Featured Deal is an editorial slot. You submit a discounted or free ebook and BookBub’s editors decide whether to feature it. If they do, you pay a flat fee. What it costs depends on the deal price and category, and on which regions you choose. Ads work another way entirely. BookBub describes them as a self-serve auction where the budget and bids are yours to set. So are targeting and timing, and the design too. There are no minimum requirements and no editorial review.
Think of a Featured Deal as a big event you can’t count on. Ads are a tap you can turn up or down whenever you like. Plenty of authors use both as part of wider book advertising, taking a Featured Deal when they’re lucky enough to be picked and running ads through the weeks and months in between. Our guide to Amazon Ads for authors covers the other main ad platform.
BookBub gives you five ways to refine your audience: reading format, retailer, region, author interest and category interest. For most fiction, author targeting is the sharpest tool you have. A comp author is just a writer whose readers would also enjoy your book. The best ones aren’t always the obvious names.
BookBub’s analysis found that author targets with 25,000 or fewer targetable readers had nearly double the average click-through rate of bigger audiences. Going after the biggest name in crime or romance feels safe. It’s also where the competition is fiercest.
If you combine author and category targeting, remember that BookBub applies AND logic. Readers have to be interested in at least one of your chosen authors and at least one of your chosen categories. That shrinks the audience, which can help a cross-genre author but may starve a campaign of impressions.
You design the image yourself, so this is where a strong cover and clear branding pay for themselves. BookBub’s advice on lifting click-through rates is sensible and consistent:
Check the current image specification in the ad form before you commission anything, since formats can change. And if your cover isn’t doing its job, no ad will save it. Take a look at our book cover design service.
Your ad competes in an auction for placements at the bottom of BookBub’s emails. BookBub’s bidding guide explains that each reader sees the live campaign with the highest bid, and the winner pays the second-highest bidder’s rate. So you usually pay less than your maximum.
You can bid per thousand impressions (CPM) or per click (CPC). CPM is generally better for testing. CPC auctions factor in click-through rate, which can muddy the comparison between two versions of an ad. CPC gives you more control over cost but may reach fewer readers. BookBub suggests starting with a small total budget while you learn, and working out your break-even bid from three numbers: revenue per sale, click-through rate and conversion rate.
Do things in the right order. Fix click-through rate first by working on the audience and the image. Only then start refining for sales.
Both can use them, but the set-up differs. BookBub matches ads to members by the retailer and region in your click-through link, so a Kobo UK link reaches BookBub members who buy from Kobo in the UK. If your link goes to a page that doesn’t name a retailer, such as your own website, you pick the retailers and regions yourself.
Wide authors have the most room to manoeuvre. You can run separate campaigns for Apple, Kobo, Google or Amazon readers, and BookBub notes that readers outside Amazon US, including in the UK, can deliver higher click-through rates than the heavily contested US Amazon audience.
Kindle Unlimited authors will usually link to Amazon. Ads still work, but you’re in the busiest auction of all, so tight author targeting counts for even more. BookBub also runs a separate promotion called New in Kindle Unlimited for recently enrolled books, which has nothing to do with ads.
Bear in mind that KDP Select requires digital exclusivity. Decide between KU and wide on the merits of your books. The ad platform shouldn’t sway it.
Click-through rate tells you whether the audience and image fit. It can’t tell you whether those clicks turned into readers. Track sales of the advertised book against your usual baseline, and for a series starter, watch what happens to books two and three afterwards. BookBub’s own bidding guidance suggests building series read-through into your revenue-per-sale estimate for a first-in-series book.
Test in pairs. Run two versions of one campaign on a low budget, changing only the audience or one element of the creative. Compare click-through rates once the budgets are spent. Keep the winner and test again.
Limelight started out as the team behind our founder, USA Today bestselling author Jack Cartwright. We run ads for authors through our advertising for authors service, including BookBub Ads alongside Amazon and Meta campaigns. We can take on the audience research and ad images. We’ll handle testing and reporting too, so you can keep writing. We agree a clear brief, scope and fee with you before any work begins. For the wider picture, see how we market self-published authors.
Neither is better. They do different jobs. A Featured Deal is picked by editors, so you can’t guarantee one, and it’s a single big push. Ads are there whenever you want them and you can scale them up gradually. Many authors treat ads as the reliable option and a Featured Deal as a bonus.
Stop thinking of marketing as a cost. The moment you do, you cut yourself off from a critical arm of your business and turn it into a negative. Not marketing is the lost opportunity, because readers who never see your book can’t buy it. Set a small test budget you’re comfortable with, and only raise it if sales follow.
CPM is the simpler choice for early testing, because you’re paying for exposure and can compare two ads fairly. CPC suits you once you know your click-through rate and want tighter control over cost. Either way, start with a small budget and look at the results before you scale.
Yes. BookBub Ads can promote a book at any price, and you don’t need to discount it. A discount or a free first book can lift click-through rates, but a strong series starter at full price is a perfectly legitimate test.
No, but a list helps you hold on to readers who arrive through ads. Put a sign-up link in the back matter of every book, so a reader who clicks an ad and finishes the story has an easy way to stay in touch.
What should authors post between releases? A balanced mix of story, process and reader posts, series reminders, countdowns and a weekly plan.
Learn how to give every book in a series a consistent look, with colour per book, clear numbering, box set covers and refreshes that help read-through.
Why indie authors sell ebooks, paperbacks and audiobooks from their own site, how delivery works, and what to check on VAT and KDP Select first.
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A closer look at the work behind each part of your plan.
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