How I Showed 22,777 Interested Readers My Book for Under $2.00

Jul 15, 2024

July 2nd I launched my newest book Simple Online Business Model.

My goal was NOT to make a big deal about it and do a super launch, because frankly I’m busy running a company (IA Path), raising a family, homeschooling kids, and living on a sailboat. So I set out on an experiment to see if I could chart a course to an easier way to do a book launch for all us busy dadpreneurs (and ladies) who just can’t do or refuse to do what most author gurus say you MUST DO to launch a best-selling book.

And yes (mischievous smile) it worked. it’s working!

The Simple Online Business Model has sustained its #1 spot in an Amazon Category (Business Aspects of Publishing Books) for 13 days and earned the #1 Best Seller tag after 11 straight days. (for those curious how long it took to get the badge)

I decided appropriately to call this concept the LAZY Book Launch Model™ (Do I sense a future book?) and I’ll break it down more in future editions of the newsletter, but here is the gist of what I used to reach best-seller status the LAZY way.

L - Leverage an Email List (I had around 300ish email subscribers on my new business/author centered list)
A - Amazon Page
Z - Zero in With Targeted Ads
Y - Year Long Launch

Now today’s edition isn’t all about this new model I’m testing and exploring, but about a happy accident that happened.

I accidentally showed 22,777 interested my readers for under $2.00. (Sorry my number was a a few hundred off on my teaser yesterday)

While the LAZY Book Launch™ is well, low effort, it is not the least expensive way to go. It obviously involves in paying for ads. For me spending $20-$50 a day on ads is easier for a period of time than it is for me to gives hours of my day doing podcast interviews and all the other crazy launch strategies I’ve seen and even tried in the past. That is a decision you’ll have to make, do you have time, or some money to give your to book launch?

One of those is required to reach best-seller status unless you just have a rabid email list which takes… time.

OK, enough with my soapbox and onto my happy accident. (Crumples up the rest of the speech into a ball and tosses it into the garbage)

Before you dismiss this as “I can’t do that” many people spend thousands of dollars creating their book… you can spend a few hundred dollars on ads to help your book reach best-seller status... I promise I’m done preaching.

How I Showed 22,376 Interested Readers My Book for Under $2.00

So as a part of my LAZY Book Launch strategy, I Zero in With Targeted ads on my ideal readers.

My favorite way to do this is with BookBub ads.

What is Bookbub Ads?

For those that don’t know Bookbub is the #1 email discounted ebook email/site for readers. With millions of subscribers, Bookbub has a MASSIVE and I mean, MASSIVE audience of voracious readers. They allow us authors to target these readers through email promos called Featured Deals and ads.

Every day Bookbub emails these readers based on their genre and author preference.

The top part of the email is Bookbub Featured Deals are hand selected and is extremely hard to get. If selected you the author must pay $400ish dollars for the pleasure of giving your book away or at an extreme discount, but if you get selected you are likely to get hundreds if not thousands of downloads in a single day.

I got selected years ago for giving away my book, God is Like a Geyser, and I got 12,000 downloads in a single day. This is a huge part of why I have 357 reviews on that book. I had a ton of readers grab it when Bookbub pushed it.

Now, getting a Bookbub featured deal is super tough.

From what I’ve experienced, you typically need at least 60+ reviews (above 4 star average) and they may accept mini books, but they certainly like if the book is more than 100 pages. (I don’t know for certain, but my gut instinct after playing this game for 5+ years)

Now here is the cool part, beneath the “Featured Deals” is a section where you can advertise to these voracious, deal seeking readers.

That’s an ad, and in the first image I shared “The Full Extent” is an ad. So for a small fee you can show up in someones email and be presented to potentially millions of readers.

Why I Like Bookbub Ads

I like this infinitely better than Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok or even Amazon ads.

Why?

I’m not competing against cat videos or people selling laptops or other high priced items (on Amazon), and the targeting is SO GOOD and easy to get started.

How BookBub Ad Bidding Works

OK I don’t want this to turn into a full-blown Bookbub tutorial (that’s for a later date) but to understand my happy accident, you must understand the way you can buy ads at the Bookbub ad auction.

CPC (Cost per Click)
CPM (Cost Per Mille/1000 Impressions)

So you can say, “I’ll pay you $13.00 if you show my ad to 1000 people.” That is the CPM model.

Or you can say, “I’ll spend up to $2.00 for anyone that clicks my ad.'“ That is the pay per click or CPC model.

Targeting Readers With Bookbub Ads

Now all that is cool enough, but as I mentioned the Bookbub targeting is amazing.

You can target by author(s), by categories, or by both.

How to Create a Billboard to Show Your Book to Thousands of Readers for FREE (or at least really cheap)

OK, so the magic came in when I was testing a bunch of different things.

One of the things I tested was just having two broad categories selected for my book.

“Advice and How-To & “Business”

I put no authors in and ran this ad.

I ran that ad for 2 days with a $5.00 a day budget and only 1 person clicked.

FAILURE, right?

WRONG.

I accidentally created a billboard of my book that 22,777 readers saw and I had to pay $1.55 for the pleasure.

Just think about how billboards and impression advertising works, that many people opened their email and a good chunk of them at least glanced and saw my cover.

That’s making an impression.

They will see my ad again and next time they might click and I pay for the pleasure and I gladly will do so.

But at least for now I’m getting tons of great exposure for little cost.

Bookbub kept showing my ad to people to try and spend my $5. So because no one clicked they kept showing my ad over and over again trying desperately to grab that $5.

That is how you can create a billboard ad to get a ton of exposure at little cost. Worst case scenario is 3-5 people click and possibly buy your book… oh darn, I don’t see a lose scenario here!

Word of Caution About BookBub Ads

You can lose your SHORTS in a hurry.

I’ve spent $2000 in one month and didn’t even realize I had ads running until it was too late. Yeah don’t be like me, that was a bad month in the Stanley household. Trust me I deserved the tongue lashings.

You can also spin your wheels and not make any progress and get REALLY frustrated, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

I only recommend going to Bookbub with money you can afford to lose knowing you won’t make a profit.

I am fully aware I’m losing much of my money and it won’t return a “profit” on the surface.

I’m paying $1 or more per click to sell a book for $0.99 that I make $0.35 off of. Oh and it takes 3 clicks to get a purchase… WHAT!?!?!?

Some times I’m paying $3.00 to get a book sale and only making $0.35?

Yeah doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on the surface, but that is a discussion for another day.

For all those who already understand sales funnels, building a business etc. you probably have an idea about what I’m doing.

But this is a REALLY ~~EASY~~ LAZY WAY to get your book to best-seller status for a few hundred dollars.

If you’d like to get a full breakdown of my launch including numbers etc. let me know in the comments.

Mini Book Paid Content

Just a friendly heads up, I do plan on rolling out Mini Book Newsletter paid content very soon.

I have plans for several things,

Video Tutorials
In Depth Breakdowns and Articles
ChatGPT Prompts for Speeding Up the Book Creation Process
Full Courses Mini Book Topics (Launches, Publishing, Ads, Promotion, Formatting, Cover Creation, etc.)

Just didn’t want to throw you for a loop when you see new content hitting that may be behind the Substack Paywall.

I want to give you guys everything and the only way I can is if I can spend the time to do it.

If you found this article helpful or enlightening share with others. The more this thing grows the more content I can create and the more experiments I can run.