Obseravtions on Book Marketing in 2014

Warning: Math Ahead

For indie publishers, the dominant marketing power belonged to Kindle Select in 2012 and Bookbub in 2013. What will prove to be the marketing powerhouse of 2014?

I’ve read a few blog posts about the new Kindle Countdown Deals, and so far, I’m not convinced this will be it. Given that one must remove a book from all other sales channels and in return only get a 7-day sale (plus the other benefits of KDP Select, which have proven to be far less of an inducement over the past year), authors must consider the loss of revenue and visibility at the other sales venues. Is giving up 90 days of sales at all other venues offset by the profit from 7 days of sales through the Countdown Deal? So far, I haven’t seen a lot of hard numbers that prove its worth. I may experiment with it so that I can have some firsthand experience.

Bookbub still works for my titles, paying for itself long before the 24-hour period of the promo ends.

What’s new for 2014 in the Bookbub realm? For the first time, my audiobook sales also soared during and after their promotion of Charlotte Collins. The audiobook version’s price was not reduced, but the visibility of the ebook apparently generated interest in the Audible title. Sales of the audiobook soared to 6 times that of the previous month thanks to Bookbub.

One other observation from my recent $.99 sale/Bookbub promotion: Charlotte Collins‘s sales began to rise and its rank began to improve significantly after the price drop but before the promotion began. This leads me to wonder if amazon’s algorithm may be a little more friendly toward $.99 sales than it was in the past (perhaps to bolster to the Countdown Deal program).  I’ll experiment with a non-Countdown Deal sale too.

What are your experiences with Bookbub? And are your $.99 sales generating better results than in 2013?