Several months back, I had my first experience in using Book Bub to promote one of my novels. Now, if you are familiar with the behemoth of a book promotion site, it’s not easy to get onto Book Bub. Their site says that only 20% of books offered to the site are chosen for promotion. That’s one of the reasons their promotions cost so much, ranging from $200 to $700. So, yes, it’s an investment on the author’s part to get in. And they curate their site in a very selective way so their massive readership knows exactly what they will be getting when they see a free or discounted Book Bub ad. So when my book was finally chosen for a free promotion, did it work?

Unequivocally, yes!

Several very clear-cut results came from my ad on Book Bub. First, they said how many downloads I could expect in my genre, and the numbers backed it up exactly. Very accurate.

Second, as time drifted on, the number of reviews on my book on Amazon nearly doubled with more then 20+ new reviews coming out of this promotion.

Third, and something I would not have predicted at all, the promoted novel saw a huge spike in the number of pages read on this KDP Select title. Prior to the promotion, pages read had flat-lined and basically non-existent. Suddenly, I was seeing thousands of pages read every day, and the residual effect of this did not just last for a week or so. I saw regular, daily page reads for about five months. This is the best result possible: knowing the readers are actually reading the book. This, of course, has led to other sales from other books.

So my conclusion is simple. Though Book Bub is expensive and certainly a commitment for the typical indie author, their promotional tools deliver. I’ve used many other websites for promotion but no other one, in my experience, can come close to matching Book Bub’s results.

I will most definitely keep trying to use them. That’s my experience. What’s yours?