Comparing Two BookBub Featured Deals

As many of you know, I’m a scientist, and scientists like to experiment. Even with non-sciencey things.

My latest book-related experiment was a BookBub featured deal. Now that I have had two for different books at different stages of their literary lives, I can compare and contrast the results.

My first featured deal was in April, for The Moon’s Eye. It’s book 1 in The Relics of War, which was completely released at the time of the featured deal. My deal was for international readers (AU/UK/CA) with a price point of $0.99 in all territories. I wrote a little about the results of that particular BookBub experience here: BookBub and my Recent Featured Deal

I was happy with the results of that first featured deal, and was pleased to see (even a few months later) sales trickle in for books 2 and 3 in that series.

My more recent featured deal was for Exile. It is book 1 in The Caein Legacy, but was the only book published from that series at the time of the deal. Book 2 was (and still is) on preorder. This deal was also for international readers, and also had a price point of $0.99 in all territories. Both books are distributed wide.

The only different between the two deals is one series was complete and fully published, while this one only had book 1 available. This gave me the opportunity to compare the two, and I discovered a few surprising things.

I sold 342 copies of The Moon’s Eye during the deal in April, with about 5% of buyers picking up the entire trilogy all at once. The sales in that month were enough to pay for the deal ($196 to participate,) which was my only goal.

I went into the featured deal for Exile unsure of what to expect; the rest of the series isn’t available yet, there aren’t any related stories published yet, and it only released in May. It’s new. And because it was new, it had very few ratings on Amazon (6) or Goodreads (8). But people bought it.

I sold 410 copies of Exile in August, and what surprised me even more is that I started to get ratings and reviews within 2 days of the deal. I didn’t see that with The Moon’s Eye, and I continue to see a few each week. I’ve also gotten a number of preorders for the second book, Guardian, across all platforms, and currently it’s my most preordered book ever. Not that I had a high bar to reach, but it’s definitely progress. There were a few paperback and hardcover orders during the featured deal period too.

So what was different about Exile that drew people more strongly than The Moon’s Eye? I think it might have something to do with the cover artwork, which is still one of my favorites from Jamie Noble’s work. And maybe people are intrigued by a half dragon main character. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that this deal was more successful than my first, and I didn’t do anything differently from a marketing standpoint. Maybe my readers like dragons. Maybe a single point of view (rather than 6, as seen in the trilogy) is more appealing. Or maybe I just got lucky.

The only way to know for sure is to continue to apply for deals on both books and see what happens from there.

And because I’m a scientist, I sometimes like numbers and charts. So here’s a breakdown of a few things:

This graph shows my total sales for each month between April and August 2023, and includes all my titles, not just the books featured in the deals:

This one breaks down my lifetime sales by retailer since Hunted release in October 2020:

And this one shows total sales per title over their lifetime. I’m still learning the marketing thing, and some books definitely get more attention than others.

For context:

• Hunted was published in October 2020. It’s urban fantasy, and I still struggle to market that book. It’s a weird one, potentially controversial, and gets very dark in the last third.
• The Moon’s Eye was published in January 2022. I marketed it like crazy the month it released, but spent a lot more on ads than I gained in sales.
• The Talisman of Delucha was published in July 2022. I did minimal marketing (as is pretty evident by this chart.)
• War of the Nameless published in December 2022. Again, minimal marketing (and even less than Talisman, as I ran into some issues with Facebook ads and gave up on them entirely out of frustration.)
• The Ballad of Alchemy and Steel was published in April 2022 and is a supplement to the Relics of War trilogy. I didn’t market that book at all, nor did I run ads for it, since it’s also available free when people sign up to my newsletter. Every time I get a sale of The Ballad, it makes my day. I love that little story so much.
• Exile was published in late May 2023… And it might just be on track to overtake The Moon’s Eye in terms of sales within its first year. We’ll see what happens.