One of the big changes in book marketing over the last few years has been the introduction of book deal email lists, advertising free and cheap ebooks. Many were developed as a way of earning money from the Amazon affiliate scheme. This pays a commission of between 3% and 8% (I think) if anyone clicks through from the website to Amazon and makes a purchase.
Amazon soon caught onto this.
They introduced more rules about affiliate marketing, like the fact affiliates are not supposed to email affiliate links, and that a certain percentage of purchases have to be of paid purchases (not free ebooks) in order to earn affiliate commissions. (Yes, I’m also an Amazon affiliate. I don’t earn enough from the scheme to pay for the hosting on this blog, let alone turn it into a profitable business! But click here if you’d like to visit my Amazon shop and contribute a few cents to my book-buying habit.)
Bookbub is the biggest in the business.
They have the biggest email list, and Bookbub subscribers can choose which genres they want to receive emails about. They have 810,000 people on their US Christian fiction list. It advertises just two books most days—free, or heavily reduced (usually to 99 cents or $1.99). Authors and publishers pay hundreds of dollars for a spot in one of these daily newsletters, and most make their money back.
Other book deal email lists include BargainBooksy, eReader News Today, FreeBooksy, My Book Cave, and Riffle. I subscribe to all of them, and occasionally buy from them.
Occasionally. Why not more often?
Sometimes it’s because I’ve already read the book. Sometimes it’s because I already own the book. Sometimes it’s because I’m just not interested (Christian fiction is a wide genre, and there are some sub-genres I’m not interested in). Mostly I don’t buy because I already have too many books on my to-read and to-review pile, and I’m trying to get that number down. So I’ll buy maybe one book a month as a result of seeing it advertised in one of the emails, although I’m more likely to download or buy a free or 99 cent book than a more expensive book.
