My Latest BookBub Featured Deal

In early September, another of my books was accepted for a BookBub Featured Deal. This was my fourth deal, but the first time I landed a US one.

I was surprised I got a US deal, and even more so that it was for book 1 of my first series, The Moon’s Eye. The last two deals I had were for Exile (it seems they like to pick that book when I’m submitting more often for some reason. The reason is dragons. I’m sure of it.)

I was excited to have a US deal, but equally terrified. The US deals are more than double the price of international ones, and I had no idea if I’d make my money back. The international deals have always paid for themselves, but the US market seems to be a little different. It felt risky, but it was also impossible to pass up the opportunity. The biggest obstacle I’ve faced as an indie author is getting my work seen, and a BookBub deal in the US would help significantly. Or so I hoped.

I accepted the deal, paid the fee, set up my price changes, and hoped for the best. The deal was for $0.99, but I left books 2 and 3 in the series at full price ($5.99.)

It went live on September 21, and remained on the BookBub website through the 23^rd.

I intentionally waited two weeks to write this post in order to gather some additional data before posting my stats. While I had a few outright full series buys the day of the deal, I’ve started to see some read-through now too.

What I find interesting is that I’m still getting a few sales of book 1, which I think are probably related to the deal, even though it’s no longer on sale. I didn’t see that with the international-only deals I’ve had in the past (or at least, any sales occurred late enough afterwards that I didn’t think it was directly related to the deal.)

The following captures the total sales for each book on each retailer between September 21 and October 5 (two weeks total.)

While my sales haven’t quite paid for this particular Featured Deal yet, I don’t think it will be long before they do. As I said above, the numbers and graph are only looking at the 2 weeks directly following the deal, and I’ve since had some more book 2 and 3 sales that are not reflected here.

So, is a US Featured Deal worth it? In my opinion, yes.