I Paid Hundreds to Promote My New Book. The Results Will Surprise You…

BookBub vs. KDP Ads vs. Book Promotion Sites (detailed case study)

For 2023, I’ve been taking on 30-day passive income challenges for 11 straight months. Today I’m sharing a case study about my second to last challenge: paid marketing to promote my new book.

My September challenge was writing my new book “Ready, Money Mindset, GO!”

In October, I committed to 30 days of promoting it with free, organic strategies. I covered 20+ ways I was promoting it in my last article.

In November, I paid to promote the book in 3 ways.

I’ll cover each of these 3 paid strategies from lowest spend to highest spend. Stick around because #3 is super exciting. In the end, I’ll also share how the book has sold since it launched.

Note: You can “watch” this article on YouTube here if you’d rather:

Paid marketing tactic #1: Bargain Booksy

Bargain Booksy is a paid book marketing website and it’s one of hundreds of sites you can pay to promote your book on.

Honestly, the book promotion website world is pretty overwhelming. It was difficult to figure out which site would be best to promote my book on for my December 1st launch.

I went digging through all the corners of the internet (okay, mostly Reddit) and I documented all the recommended sites. Eventually, I found a trend and one site stood out to me that seemed well-liked and (crucially) affordable: Bargain Booksy.

I spent $35 to promote my new book on book launch day. They emailed their list and promoted my book on their website.

Overall, it was a good experience, easy to set up, and they executed the promotion exactly as they said they would. No complaints, especially because it was only $35.

That said, it can be extremely difficult to gauge the success of a promotion with any of these promotional sites — especially if you were trying a dozen or more strategies at the same time as I was.

However, I recommend Bargain Booksy because it’s cost-effective. But do your own research! See what sites show up over and over again and go from there. Your genre and price point might influence your decision as well.

In the past, I had a ton of success when I was running a free book promotion in combination with a handful of these sites. No, you don’t earn money from free book sales but I had nearly 600 free book downloads during one promo period.

The best part? Inside my books I promote my YouTube channels, finance courses, and other books throughout. Free promotion and promo sites are a good way to get people exposed to your other work and offers.

Paid book marketing tactic #2: Amazon KDP Ads

This is a complicated subject to be sure but I’ll do my best to simplify.

I watched dozens of YouTube videos and listened to a handful of podcast episodes to learn all about running Amazon ads optimally. That might have been a mistake.

It was information overload! Nobody seems to know exactly how to run successful paid ads but I will share the strategy I attempted.

The first thing to do is to identify your optimal search keywords to target. There are free and paid tools out there to help you do this.

In the past, I ran ads for my previous 3 books so I spent an afternoon going through all the historical performance data by keyword and I found the top 100 keywords that were the most effective.

Then I started a new ad group for all of my books (including my new book) using just these 100 or so winning keywords.

For each keyword, you enter a bid amount from 10 cents to $3.00 or more. For the most part, I entered the lowest price in that range for each term, especially because I only make $3 to $4 per book sale.

For example, if I bid $2.00 per click and that earned me two clicks (so $4 spent), I’d have to convert one of those 2 clicks to break even. Most of my entered bids were from 25 cents to $1.00

Then you set a daily budget — I did $10 per book per day. You can also choose to pay more if you want your book to show up on top of search results.

There’s a lot more to it but that’s the gist. Here are screenshots of the results below. Click them and scan if it makes sense to you. Spoiler: I was losing money.

Nonetheless, I learned this ads dashboard underreports sales. It looks like I’m operating at a loss — which means I’m losing money which is bad. However, I heard from several sources that book sales are higher than this.

It’s really hard to gauge if running ads was successful for me or not. Sadly, when I compare sales with the KDP dashboards, I still think I could be losing money…

On the other hand, there’s something to be said about exposure in general. You only pay if people click on your sponsored ad so I paid hundreds for ads but hundreds of thousands of people saw my book. Perhaps, exposure alone could lead to future buyers.

Wishful thinking I know…

I do recommend running ads for your book or product through Amazon for launch but again — DO YOUR RESEARCH. And only spend money you’re willing to lose, as if you’re gambling. Monitor your ads closes and tweak as necessary.

Personally, I’m less concerned about making money since my book promotes all my other products. I’m happy to spend, even if I’m losing money.

Plus, it’s an education book so I’m thrilled it can reach and help more people. It helps that I work in marketing so I actually enjoy this stuff. #NerdAlert!

Paid book marketing tactic #3: Bookbub

I’m super excited to share this one!

If you didn’t know, BookBub is THE site all authors want to get their books promoted on. BookBub is where all the die-hard book lovers go to find hand-picked, highly recommended books for less.

In short, getting a BookBub deal feature is the closest thing to a “big break” for indie authors. Some authors sell thousands of copies of books during a deal that costs just a few hundred bucks.

I’ve applied half a dozen times in the past to get a BookBub deal but I’ve been rejected every time within a day or two.

This time was no different.

However, this time around I also applied to be featured as a “New Release for Less”.

10 days went by and I heard nothing.

Then, one night I was relaxing on the couch with my wife and new baby when I got this amazing email from BookBub letting me know my book had been selected by the editors!

I was ecstatic! I accepted the deal immediately and paid the $300 fee associated with it.

My book was releasing on December 1st and my deal would run on December 5th. This was perfect because that gave my book a few days to gather positive reviews so people would be convinced it was worth their money and time when they saw the promotion in their inbox.

Everything went to plan. I had a dozen 5-star reviews by the time BookBub emailed their list of thousands of “how to” and “self-help” book lovers on December 5th.

I saw a spike in sales as you can see on this chart:

However, it wasn’t as big of a spike as I was hoping for. I probably sold around 30 copies of my book from the promo.

Again, I make around $4 per book so that’s roughly $120 in revenue. Since I spent $300 for the feature, I’m once again operating at a loss.

But I don’t care. My book was featured on freaking Bookbub and that was an extreme thrill!

From research, I knew to keep my expectations low about the “new release for less” feature because it wasn’t going to their full list as a real featured deal.

Plus, my book category isn’t fantasy, sci-fi, or romance.

Although, I should definitely write a steamy financial romance next where a couple joins finances and invests in sexy stocks…

But I digress.

Either way, I’m staying positive. Tens of thousands were exposed to my book and I hope this put me solidly on the BookBub radar. Perhaps it could improve my chances of landing a featured deal with the site in the future.

Wishful thinking I know…

Results and Final Thoughts

In the end, my book did get the coveted #1 new release badge which is an awesome accomplishment.

Not to mention, it nearly hit #1 in my category “wealth management” which is always a goal of mine.

It was #2 behind the book that inspired my book: “The Psychology of Money” (one of the most popular personal finance books). I’m perfectly happy with that!

In total, I sold close to 100 copies of my new book in the first 3 weeks since launch. That’s not a ton but it’s not terrible and it’s a little better than my previous 2 books.

I didn’t spend any money to make my book so these 3 marketing tactics were the only money I spent in total. The truth is, most of my books end up breaking even at the end of the day and I expected the same for this one.

As you can probably tell by now, it’s extremely hard to make any real money as a nobody indie author. There are a gazillion books and it’s near impossible to break through the noise.

HOWEVER, don’t write a book hoping to sell a million copies. Write a book for personal satisfaction. Write a book because you have a story to tell or people to help. Write a book to find your voice, build your brand, and possibly sell other products and services you offer.

A book is like your business card. It gives you authority. And again, it’s incredibly satisfying. I might even say addictive as well. There’s nothing like the build-up to pub day or reading the first reviews!

Every time I look at my small stack of paper and ink, I feel unbelievably proud. I’m especially proud of my latest book because it was dedicated to my new baby Wesly. I wrote this for him. I wrote it to inspire him in the future.

If it happens to inspire somebody else, that’s a bonus.

If you take nothing else away remember this: Write your book for the love of it. Write it for the right reasons. And never measure your success in dollars.

But here are my results in dollars for the curious…

I spent around $700 in total to market my book. I’ll probably earn around $500 of that back in the first couple of months and over time I’ll break even. I could even profit if I learn more about optimizing ads or land a BookBub featured deal.

It won’t be a huge money-maker but I love it and the early feedback was very positive. In fact, here’s one review that’s the perfect review in my eyes. It’s exactly the message I was trying to deliver with my book:

I also love this sentence another reviewer said:

“I would be surprised if someone read this book and didn’t walk away fired up to be their best (financial) self.”

I wanted to make a difference with this book. Mission accomplished.

This book is my favorite book I’ve written. I know I’ve become a better writer. And who knows, maybe all my books so far are auditions for a book deal. That would be a dream so I could actually reach a wide audience.

Wishful thinking… but how cool would that be?!

What a fun ride this whole year has been. I’m in the middle of my final passive income challenge of the year which is TikTok. Find me if you’re on TikTok (@frankie_calkins_author).

I hope this was more encouraging than discouraging. Fire away with questions or comments.

I’ll see you on the next one, a recap of my 12th and FINAL 30-day passive income challenge. Then, a summary of all 12 challenges with full results!

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Frankie Calkins (M. Ed) is a Digital Marketing Director by day. On nights and weekends, he’s an author, YouTuber, and course creator. He lives in the Seattle, Washington area. Contact: [email protected]

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