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There are lots of book promotion sites sending out details of free or discounted books to readers on their mailing list. BookBub is the most recognizable and sought after, and Mark Dawson calls them the “gold standard when it comes to finding new readers”. But, it’s not easy for new readers without reviews to secure a BookBub deal and it’s pricey to book a slot. For example, here’s the BookBub prices for nonfiction slots: Business $270, General Nonfiction $470, Advice and How To $560, and Memoir and Biography $740.

I went in search of an alternative that’s cheaper and easier for a newbie author to cut their teeth on, and found a candidate that is ideal for nonfiction authors who are new to book promotion activities. 

Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy are owned and managed by Writtenword Media, and in this article we’re going to focus on Bargain Booksy and delve into:

• Bargain Booksy Nonfiction Genres
• The Emotional Resistance to Reducing your Book Price
• Bargain Booksy Pricing Strategy
• Amazon Countdown Deals
• Amazon Regional Pricing
• Amazon Reviews
• Bargain Booksy Promo Frequency

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Bargain Booksy Nonfiction Genres

It seems like many book promotion sites focus on promoting fiction books, and nonfiction books are an afterthought. Search through the available category list and you’re likely to find one catch-all Nonfiction category that  lumps all sub-genres together.

Bargain Booksy is one of the best choices for nonfiction authors because they have multiple nonfiction categories.

• Travel: Travel guides and memoirs.
• Self Help & How-To: All books telling readers how to get things done belong here.
• General Non Fiction: All nonfiction not falling into the above categories, including but not limited to: Biographies, Memoirs, History, and Business books.
• Cookbooks and Nutrition: All books containing recipes and dietary advice.
• Religion/ Spirituality: For all Fiction and Non Fiction works where the focus or central moral is religious or spiritual in nature.

These are still pretty broad genres, but this segmentation means that when you enter your book for a Bargain Booksy promotion you’ve got a greater chance of reaching your target audience. (I especially love that they have a dedicated Travel section).

Depending on the topic of your book, you could submit your book to a couple of relevant categories.  For example, if you’ve written a book: How to Travel with Kids across Europe, you could submit your book to the Travel and the How-To genre to increase the impact of your promotion.

Click here to view a full list of Bargain Booksy Genres, their list size and author pricing.

The cost to run a Bargain Booksy Promotion is between $20-30, depending on the category.

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Emotional Resistance to Reducing your Book Price

One of the most challenging aspects of scheduling a book promotion is setting your promotional price. If you’ve spent nine months researching and writing your book, and invested money in a proofreading and cover design, it can be emotionally challenging to give it away for free. But when it comes to author marketing you have to speculate to accumulate, especially if you have more than one book in your series.

Bargain Booksy only promotes books with a discounted list price—so no giving your book away for free. It’s also cheap to host a Bargain Booksy promotion—so the financial risk is low.

This risk is more than balanced out by the potential of selling books, getting page reads, reaching the best seller lists in your Amazon niche, and encouraging readers to invest in one of your other books.

If you’ve written a series, or multiple books in a related niche, you only need one of those books to hook your reader, and this leads them down the path to discover your other books. If you’re an author in it for the long-haul, you should play and plan for the long game, not settle for a quick sales boost that doesn’t lead anywhere.

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Bargain Booksy Pricing Strategy

Requirements: Your book needs to be priced between .99c and $5 during your Bargain Booksy promotion.

You have flexibility in your pricing strategy, but authors see the biggest increase in sales when books are priced at .99c. Something to bear in mind is that many of the readers on the Bargain Booksy list are part of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program so you’re likely to see an increase in page reads as a result of your promotion.

Written Word Media wrote an article how to price your book for maximum results, and my key takeaway from this article is the following author strategy:

Bargain Booksy noted that $3.99 is a viable list price for nonfiction, but only if you have reviews. If not, you should list your book at .99c. Readers are less likely to take a chance on a higher priced book without the social proof of reviews, especially if the other books in the Bargain Booksy promotion are all priced a .99c.

Amazon Royalty Rates Explained

In order to grasp how this works, we need to look at the rules around Amazon royalty rates.

• Books needs to be priced between $2.99 and $9.99 to earn the 70% royalty rate. Books outside this range only earn 35%.
• Authors enrolled in KDP can discount their books below $2.99 and still earn the 70% royalty rate in the U.K. and U.S., if they’re enrolled in a countdown deal. All other territories would need pricing adjusted manually and these would earn 35% royalties.
• Authors not enrolled in KDP would need to price their books above $2.99 in order to earn 70% royalties.

Amazon Royalty Scenarios

Let’s look at a couple of royalty scenarios, based on an Amazon file delivery charge of .19c per book, and the following Amazon calculation:

• List Price minus File Delivery = Gross Revenue
• % of Gross Revenue = Your Net Royalty

For Books priced at .99c:

• (.99c – .19c = .80c) 70% of .80c = Net Royalty of .56c*
• (.99c – .19c = .80c) 35% of .80c = Net Royalty of .28c

*only achievable for KDP Select Authors using a countdown deal for U.S. and U.K.

For Books priced at $3.99:

• ($3.99 – .19c = $3.80) 70% of $3.80 = Net Royalty of $2.66

Comparing potential book sales earning 70% royalty, there’s a five to one ratio.

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Amazon Countdown Deals

If you’re enrolled in KDP Select you can schedule your price reduction using a countdown deal for the U.S. and U.K., but for other territories you’ll need to adjust your price manually.

• You will continue to earn a 70% royalty in the U.S. and U.K. on the discounted price, even if your book is priced below $2.99.
• For the territories where you adjust your price below $2.99, you will only earn a 35% royalty.

Here are the primary requirements you need to meet in order to schedule a countdown deal:

• PRICE: Your ebook list price is unchanged for 30 days before or 14 days after your Kindle Countdown Deal runs.
• PRICE: Minimum discount is $1.00 USD on Amazon.com (£1.00 on Amazon.co.uk).
• SCHEDULE: our ebook has been enrolled in KDP Select for at least 30 days.
• SCHEDULE: Maximum duration of a Kindle Countdown Deal is 7 days. The minimum duration is 1 hour.
• SCHEDULE: The latest end time for your Kindle Countdown Deals promotion is 14 days before your KDP Select period ends.
• SCHEDULE: No free promotion has been run for title (during a KDP Select term, you can run either a free promotion or a Kindle Countdown Deal)
• SCHEDULE: Kindle Countdown Deals must be scheduled 24 hours before your desired start date, as far in advance as you want. For example, to begin a promotion on January 10, you can schedule it any time before January 8.

There are a few other requirements, but these are the ones related to scheduling and list price adjustments. Visit KDP’s Help page to read the full details about scheduling your Countdown Deal.

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If you’re not enrolled in KDP Select you can manually change your book to a promotional price.

• Once you manually adjust your price below $2.99, you will only earn a 35% royalty.
• Your list price needs to be above $2.99 to earn 70% royalty.

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Amazon Regional Pricing

Amazon has regional pricing in place, so if your book is going to be on promotion across all global territories the price will need to be adjusted at each one.

Bargain Booksy Price Reduction Requirements:

• Your price reduction needs to starts by 5am Eastern Standard Time (EST) or earlier on the day of your promotion.
• Bargain Booksy Promotions last for a 24-hours period.
• Your book will need to be at the discounted price until 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) on the day of your promotion.

You will need to reduce your Amazon pricing at least 24 hours before your promo starts to ensure that all Amazon territories have time to adjust your pricing, but to be on the safe side (due to time differences and volume of requests being managed by Amazon) I’d recommend 48 hours before your promo.

The Bargain Booksy promotional activity is a one-day event, but because you can only host one countdown deal during your 90-day KDP Select enrollment it’s best to optimize the event with supplemental activity.

A countdown deal can last for 7 days, and you can use all or some of this allocation to support your Bargain Booksy event. I would recommend a minimum of 3-days for your event, and an optimal level of 5-days.

1. Confirm Countdown Deal Started and any of your manually pricing adjustments have been completed by Amazon
2. Reward your mailing list by promoting to them early, and giving them the longest opportunity to buy your book.
3. Promote to your social media followers ahead of your event.
4. Bargain Booksy Event Day
5. Bonus Day (Another opportunity to promote to your followers, and and gives any Bargain Booksy readers who are late looking at their emails, a chance to buy at the discounted price.

By allowing for promotional activity to your mailing list and social media followers ahead of the Bargain Booksy event, you’ll encourage a trickle of early promotional sales to support your one-day spike, and this is the type of sales activity that Amazon will take notice of, and could end up helping your promote your book by including you in one of their email blasts.

No matter how many days your schedule your promotional pricing event for, you need to check the Amazon has reduced your list price (or your Countdown Deal has started), so that you have enough time to follow up with Amazon, or contact Bargain Booksy to reschedule your promotion.

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Do you need Amazon Reviews to be Accepted by Bargain Booksy?

No! The best thing about Bargain Booksy for newbie authors is that Amazon reviews or a star rating isn’t necessary.

Many of the other sites have a minimum requirement star rating or number of reviews, so until you acquire reviews you won’t be able to submit your book to them, especially in sought-after niches. But no matter where you are in your author journey, Bargain Booksy is the best bet for nonfiction authors with few reviews.

But it’s worth mentioning that the more reviews you have, the better your book will perform. Readers will see reviews as social proof of the book’s quality. A review or star rating may make the difference between a reader overlooking your book or clicking the buy button.

If you don’t have any reviews, make sure your cover and book description shine and that they’re both optimized to appeal to readers in your niche.

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Bargain Booksy Promo Frequency

Even though you can submit your book for a promotion once a month, they recommend using a 90-day cycle because this allows more readers to join their lists between your promotions, which should equate to better results.

This also aligns with Amazon’s KDP Select enrollment timeline where you can only host one countdown or free book deal within any 90-day period.

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Overwhelmed?

This is just a fraction of the information and activities related to planning and hosting a discounted book event.

Is it any wonder that indie authors get overwhelmed?

Amazon only lets their KDP Select Authors host one Countdown Deal or Free Book Promotion within a 90-day period, and Bargain Booksy recommends waiting 90-days between promotions too. So in order to avoid getting anxious about all the tasks you need to complete to host your first discounted book event, the key is to:

• Know what your goals are
• Leave yourself enough time to plan
• Measure your results so you can tweak and repeat your activity every 90 days.

Stay tuned as I work my way through the other articles in this series, and let you know the results of my Bargain Booksy event.

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I’m publishing a series of articles to provide a step-by-step approach to promote your nonfiction book on Bargain Booksy. Look out for this series on social media, or better still, sign up to my email list and I’ll let you know when it’s published (and also when my books are part of a Bargain Booksy promotion so that you can buy them at a discounted price).

Here’s the article series:

1. How to Optimize your Book on Amazon
2. How to Schedule your Promotion on Bargain Booksy
3. How to Submit your Amazon Price Reductions
4. How to Plan your Book Promo Publicity
5. How to Evaluate your Promotion’s Success

To view all Bargain Booksy articles on one page, click this link. Are you planning a #BargainBooksy promotion for your nonfiction book? Here's a one-stop resource that provides a step-by-step approach from beginning to end. #IndieAuthor #travelwriter Click To Tweet

Joel Friedlander’s Carnival of the Indies

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This article appears as a Featured Post in the November 2020 Carnival of Indies compiled by The Book Designer Joel Friedlander. Make sure to visit the carnival to read all the other content Joel featured this month. There’s such a broad scope of tips and advice shared each month, you’re bound to find an article that will enlighten your indie author journey.