Kevin Tumlinson

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Authors Marketing Books with Carlyn Robertson from BookBub // EP208

Kevin Tumlinson

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Authors Marketing Books wtih Carlyn Roberts from BookBub // EP208 Kevin Tumlinson // Wordslinger Podcast

Carlyn Robertson is responsible for partner education on BookBub’s Partners Team. She’s an expert on BookBub’s promotional tools and ensures that authors, publishers, and book marketers know how to use those tools to accomplish their marketing goals.

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book, authors, readers, ads, audiobook, deals, people, platform, hear, feature, email, genre, promoting, audience, kevin, retailer, price, find, ebooks, fantastic

SPEAKERS

Wordslinger Announcer, Carlyn Robertson, BookBub, Kevin Tumlinson

Kevin Tumlinson  00:00

Hey slingers, we're talking authors marketing their books through BookBub. So stick around

Kevin Tumlinson  01:02

Well, hey there stranger. This is Kevin Thompson the word slinger and you have probably been wondering where the heck I've been for more than two months now, and I can't blame you. So, you may have heard there was a little little crisis come down the way, some sort of worldwide pandemic. Yeah, I hope everybody's okay. I, I, I know this is a scary time for everybody. You hear this all the time. So I don't want to harp on the pandemic stuff on. I don't want this to become an episode about that at all, because I feel like we get enough of that enough coverage of that everywhere else literally everywhere else. So other than just saying that that's one of the reasons why I have been delayed in producing the show. I don't really want to go into any more about it. But there was a series of events. I'm just going to break it down for you and then we're going to get to the really ugly important stuff, which is my interview with Carlin Robinson Robertson, from BookBub, which I'm sure everybody wants to hear, I figure if you're going to come back come back strong. So the succession of things that happened last time we talked, I was going to attend the San Francisco writers conference in February, which I did. Between that and some other conferences and a couple of other things that were happening. I did say I was going to take a little bit of time off from the show, so that I could handle all that. Well, I went to the conference and went very well. And I got sick. In some of you may know where this is going. So I came home. And basically, I can't I have not yet been able to get tested to verify this. But we strongly believe that I came down with the COVID-19 virus. If not, it was an incredibly aggressive flu. So I'm willing to accept that that may have been it. And until I can get tested, there's no way to prove otherwise. But we, my wife and I both ended up coming down with it, it hit me harder than her, which tends to make a little bit sense considering some what we do know about the virus that it you know, I have a congenital heart defect, which I found out a lot more about over the course of this break, by the way, which is another reason things got delayed, but basically, I got sick for nearly a month, starting in February and into March. Then in March workload really amped up with draft digital with some video walkthroughs that I had to do for edit produce about 20 plus videos for the re launch of the draft digital website. If you haven't been there in a while. Go check it out there. We've got a whole new path now for going direct to print. So you don't have to actually publish a an E book to go to print now. So If you're in the DVD print beta, that's, that's gonna be big for you. And you can get into the beta. And we are we have relaunched it and are now onboarding people regularly again. So check that out. It's a, it's an incredible I love DVD print. Just gonna tell you. So, and I'll talk about that another time. But okay, so that happened. But in March, we were also having to pack and get ready to move. Now, I'd been delayed a month on that. That was part of why I was taking a break from the show, because I knew we were going to have to pack up our apartment to get ready to move into the camper full time, which was supposed to happen. We were out of the apartment officially on April 6. So I had a very short window of time at that point, to pack everything up. I just did not have time to produce anything more than those videos and even those videos. Were kind of a burden actually. That guy Done. And then then came April. And, you know, it was upon us before we knew it. And we had to really push. But in the meantime in there, the pandemic broke out and a lot of things became restricted. And so we actually had to pack and move your packing the stuff we knew we'd have to do ourselves, but we actually had to move everything with no help because of social isolation. And we did, and that included taking furniture down to my mother in about 50 miles south of us. My brother was there and she was there and we made them all stand back, you know, keep away from us the whole time. We had to wipe everything down. We had to you know, there was a lot of precautions that we took because she's she's in her mid late 60s and my brother has had poor health. So we were kind of trying to keep them from exposure as much as we possibly could, just in case and, you know, we had to move all that stuff. You know that 50 miles there, unload it move, drive back at another load of things that we're going to my wife's brother and you know, so that's the way that first weekend went, like it was just a succession of the two of us by ourselves moving quite a bit of stuff. We have far too much stuff. We crammed one full large storage unit, just crammed it full. And then we had to rent a smaller storage unit for the things that we knew we would need to be able to access once we start getting on the road again. So there's all that and we are not in the camper yet. We've been getting it ready, but we basically are bunking down with her parents. While we wait out the apocalypse, basically, so, so I'm only now at a point where I can start working on the show again. I've been doing a lot of other things in the meantime, easier things really. Less production time on my shoulders like we we started doing a daily DVD spotlight and if you haven't tuned into that, you can catch it on the drafter digital page on Facebook and then on YouTube, our channel on YouTube. We're doing one a day right now every weekday at noon Central, and they do get recorded and left on the YouTube channel so you can pop over there and find it make sure you subscribe. We finally broke 1000 subscribers on that and I am doing something to up my subscriber count on my personal YouTube channel, which is if you search for Kevin Tumlinson, you should find it. It's youtube.com slash c Kevin Tumlinson i think is how they do that. But I have started something I call the Kevin show. And it's really, it's unscripted and no real plan or plot for the thing. It does have, I think, a fairly high production value I've actually went went to the trouble of producing the thing. But it's meant to just be a fun little, you know, 30 minutes with me, sometimes there's a guest. Last week I did a I did a whole Google stuff with a live audience. This week, which you will have already happened by the time you hear this, but it's happening the day I'm recording this, I'm actually chatting with Michael bunker. It's not about anything. It's not about our books, per se, not about marketing, not about anything to do with the author community. It's somewhat reader facing at times, but it is actually just a chance to do distract yourself from everything that's going on in the world for 30 minutes, once a week. So, the Kevin show and you can, you can check that out on my YouTube channel. Search for Kevin Tumlinson on YouTube. You'll find me I'm sure. And then I believe I have a link to that. On the on my website. I believe I've been retooling things. So I'm a little uncertain as to what I went ahead and did and what I didn't. So I go over to Kevin Tumlinson calm. You can also find it through word slinger podcast calm, so who, so that's where I've been folks, I'm sorry. I've neglected all of you. But I had very good reasons. I'm glad to be back. I'm in good health. I've had multiple checkups now. And multiple blood works taken had a little scare because we finally after all these years since 2010, and we have not known for sure what it was that caused the bradycardia that that forced me to have to get pacemaker. But now we know and it got a little scary briefly. I had some issues with my blood work that I've now changed my lifestyle and rectified, thankfully. So it's all good. So, but you didn't come here to hear all that you came here. I'm hoping you. You came here with the full knowledge that I'm talking with Carlin Robertson from BookBub. And we are going to jump right into that interview now because we're already like 10 minutes in. But I hope you enjoy this. And I hope you're staying happy, healthy and safe out there. And I'll see you on the other side. Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in, sticking around through what I'm sure was a brilliantly posed intro to the episode. And I probably already mentioned who Today's guest is, but just in case, I'm talking to Carlin Robinson, she is among other things. Oh look at that. I popped right out of the your bio Carlin Carlin is responsible for partner education on BookBub partners taint partners team she's in. Ah, I'm just gonna wreck this whole intro Carlin. Sorry. He's an expert on BookBub promotional tools and ensures that authors publishers and book marketers know how to use those tools to accomplish their marketing goals. And that is precisely why I know everybody is going to be really excited to hear from you, Carla. So welcome to the word slinger podcast.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  11:26

Thank you so much for having me here. Super excited about it.

Kevin Tumlinson  11:29

Maybe not so much after the eloquent intro you got so it may be I already have one of those services. There's a services like D script now where I can go back and correct all the flubs I made and just type it out. Maybe I'll do that. Anyway, so yeah, thanks for being on and we've been I've been chasing you for a while. Had your mom on, which I don't think anybody realized it was your mom. And if if if no one does, that means they didn't listen through to the end of the episode, but we're not going to tell them who she was. Eyes and just make them go back and listen,

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  12:02

I'm gonna have to go back and listen to that I didn't catch what you chatted about at the end.

Kevin Tumlinson  12:07

Yeah, it was a good. That was a really good interview actually. And I like everything. She's She's doing it, I got her book and I've been kind of reading through it. It's sort of one of those things where it's like if I, if for some reason my author and podcasting career just flops, I may go back to ghost writing. Everyone, there's a clue. You go go find that episode. So you, you work with BookBub. And that is a name that I think most of my audience is going to be pretty familiar with. But just in case, why don't you give us a rundown of what BookBub is and what you guys do?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  12:41

Sure, absolutely. So BookBub is a marketing platform for authors, publishers, anyone else who is trying to promote a book, and we are also a discovery site for readers. So we've got an audience of over 15 million readers right now signed up, who are based across the US, UK, Canada, you India and Australia. And they come to BookBub to find new books to read and to discover new authors to love. So the main product that we have for authors and publishers and sort of the thing that we're really known for is that daily email that we send out with discounted books in different genres. So readers let us know if they like to read thrillers and then every day they would get an email with a discounted thriller with links out to their retailer of choice. So book clubs, not selling any books ourselves, but we direct readers to get those deals wherever they're available. So we started with that, that feature deals email, and that's kind of the thing. That's what they think about, but we had expanded to a ton of other discovery tools over the last couple years. So we now have a complete ads platform that's designed exclusively for authors and book marketers to promote books to our audience, and those appear in dedicated spots in the emails and on our website. We've got readers can hear when an author they follow releases a new book, we have a weekly email that hi Lights, featured new releases and every genre as well. And authors can recommend books on the website, too. So it's a great way to interact with your readers offer some personal recommendations of books that you've loved. So a ton of different tools now different ways for authors to be interacting with our audience of readers and get their books in front of those readers to drive more sales and find more fans.

Kevin Tumlinson  14:22

And I mean, I have to add that over the years, it's it's become pretty well known that a BookBub feature deal can make or break an author's career. So you guys hold a lot of sway in the in the author community.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  14:37

Maybe not Brady? usually don't think of it as Oh, you made that sound very dire.

Kevin Tumlinson  14:41

Yeah, I didn't mean if I didn't mean for that sounds like it doesn't break an author's career, but it can break you into the career a lot. A lot of

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  14:48

incredible stories. Yeah, the sales that people get from the feature deals and how that trickles over into sales of their other books. A lot of authors are getting full priced books after they send out that discounted ones. Yeah, we continue to be super excited about how incredibly useful that tool has been for so many authors.

Kevin Tumlinson  15:06

So that said, we want to jump right into this and just let's just get this elephant out of the room as quickly as possible. How the heck does someone get a guaranteed BookBub feature deal every single time they apply for?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  15:20

There are no such things as guaranteed not for any author. Yeah, so to get a feature deal, you submit a book to our editorial team. We get an average of 300 submissions every day across all of our categories. So it's really competitive to get selected to get a deal in that email because we've got only a limited number of spots in each category every day. And we limit that schedule just to make sure that every time we do send out a book that it's going to get enough response from readers that we've kept it limited because we test everything. Every time we make a change to that email, we always make sure it's not going to impact the experience for our readers or the experience for the authors public. Shares who are promoting their books. So we do keep a limited number of books in the email every day, which means that we have to be particularly choosy about which books we feature. So our editors, it's a team of real people who are reviewing every single submission. And every time it comes in, they're reviewing it fresh. And what they look for is signals that a particular book is going to be a good fit for our audience. So they're looking at everything that a reader would use to assess whether or not they want to purchase a book on a retailer. So reader reviews, not just the total number of reviews, but what our readers actually saying about that book. And we know that not every book is going to be the right cup of tea for every reader. So if someone gives a one star review and just says, Oh, I hated it, that might not matter to our editors as much as one star reviews that say, they were typos on every page, that would be a big red flag for us. But they're also looking for if a reader mentioned something that we know from past deals that we've run our readers in a particular genre I really love that can also be something that would make us think that a book would be a good fit if we identify something in it that readers who reviewed it really enjoy that we know is something that will resonate with our audience as well. Of course, they're looking at the book description, the plot, what is the book actually about really makes a big difference. In each of our genres, we basically have figured out just from what our readers have clicked on and purchased in the past, what particular tropes they like, what kinds of sub genres they like, within a larger genre, like thrillers or contemporary romance, there are particular things that our unique audience of readers really respond well to and other things that they're not as interested in. So we always want to make sure that we're delivering the book, delivering them the books that they want to purchase, and maybe not showing the ones that we think aren't going to be as much of a hit with our particular group of readers that we've got getting an email every day.

Kevin Tumlinson  17:48

Now is that is that data that you've gathered? Is that proprietary, like you don't share that with anybody? Or is that something that you guys share with authors to help them fine tune?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  17:59

Yeah, that's a good question. So if an author ran a feature deal with us and wrote in and asked for some data on that we can share some of the data in terms of how readers responded to that particular deal. But in terms of the overall data that we have on clicks on all of those deals, that's we keep that to ourselves. And the editor, the editors are sifting through all of that data and using it to inform their decisions about the books that we're featuring. Yeah,

Kevin Tumlinson  18:24

yeah. See, that would be the really super useful bits. But the you know, getting some information is better than no information, I can appreciate that. See, and I did not know that. I didn't know you that we could ask you for something or even attempted it.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  18:37

I would say anything that you're wondering about always ask us we've got a really wonderful team, that emails partners at BookBub comm Any questions? We love to hear them, there might be some things that we can't answer or can't help you out with, but we're always going to do our best and we're all really nice, I promise.

Kevin Tumlinson  18:50

See, I broke my rule. My rule is always fast, no matter what just asked, and I didn't ask you guys so now I have to hang my head and shame. Now, the feature deals are cool. And it is those are powerful tools. But there it's hardly the only marketing tool you guys have in your toolbox for authors. So what are some of the other things that part of the part we're considered partners? Or how do we?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  19:16

Yeah, yeah. That sums up authors, publishers, publicists, we work with a whole lot of different people. So yeah,

Kevin Tumlinson  19:21

you know, I can almost hear the conversations about what to call that group. I can hear it after working in a drafter digital for the past, like four years. I know exactly what that conversation was. Because we've we still go back and forth on what to call people, our, our, I guess, our customer base. So. So what, what are some of the other things that you guys offer partners?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  19:43

Yeah, I think one of the other fantastic tools that we have is the BookBub ads platform. So that's a display ad platform auction based similar to Facebook ads, a ms ads, Google AdWords, if you're familiar with any of those platforms, and that one's fantastic. Because the feature deals are obviously highly competitive and selected, and the ads platform is available for anyone to use at any time for any of their books, so it's extremely flexible, it's got a ton of fantastic customizable targeting options. So you can limit your audience based not only on the genres that our readers sign up for, but also their author interests, you can say that you only want to reach readers who are a fan of your books. And that would include your followers that would include readers who have clicked on your books on our website. And we have a couple other signals that we use for how readers have interacted with an author to add them to that targetable ad audience. But that's an incredible way to get a really narrow audience of readers that are highly likely to be interested in a particular book. And we offer a lot more authors available to target than a platform like Facebook, which is limited only to people with a large enough following. We encourage any author in our system that has a following. You can find them in there and and target them. And the budget for those ads is entirely up To the advertisers. So you there's a couple different ways that you can set how much you want to spend and at what rate. But it's a fantastic option for anyone, regardless of your marketing budget to try to get a couple more readers eyes on your books. And you know that anytime that ad shows up, it's going to be in front of a BookBub reader who is either opened an email through mass or visited our website, so you know that they're they're browsing books, looking for books. So it's a great way to get your book in front of them.

Kevin Tumlinson  21:25

Yeah. So what are some best practices for targeting authors on that on that platform?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  21:32

Yeah, that's a really good question. And probably one of the most important questions in terms of how to get those ads to work for you. Yeah, I'm

Kevin Tumlinson  21:40

gonna blow a lot of money really fast. I'm just gonna put that out there for people. This is

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  21:45

the number one tip not from targeting. As always start with low budget, start with $10. Start with $20. And if you're happy with the results, then you can add more but definitely start small. Make sure it's working for you. Yeah. In terms of targeting tips, I think choosing similar authors is definitely the best way to go. I think it can be really tempting to come in and pick an entire category, a whole genre of readers because you're going to reach a really big audience. But consistently, we always see that ads targeting by author interests to get higher click through rates than ads targeting my categories. Right. And in terms of how to pick authors, the one thing I always hear advertisers say is they're surprised by who works. So start with your also bots on retailers is a really good place to get some initial ideas, maybe dig into the also bots of your also bots to go down a level. Keep an eye out for authors that we're featuring in your books genre on BookBub. That's someone who is likely to have audience because they'll have readers who clicked on those deals. Those are a few of the methods I've heard that advertisers use to identify people to try targeting. And then the best way to figure out actually what works is to run some tests. So again, $10, target one author, see how the click through rate work, see what the costs are. If you're happy with it, no great adds more budget to that app. If not swap out the author target, try someone new, always play around and see what's going to actually deliver the results for you rather than making assumptions, you know, tossing in a whole category or a really big author name, and then spending a ton of money and not getting the results that you were looking for.

Kevin Tumlinson  23:14

Right? Their initial instinct is always to target you know, Dan Brown and you know, Stephen King in the big names, but that's not always the best option for getting eyeballs on your on your ad. So

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  23:26

definitely, yeah, getting eyeballs, but not always going to be a good option for getting clicks.

Kevin Tumlinson  23:31

Exactly. Right. Yeah. So I mean, there there are so many ways to approach this. I mean, I can think of three people right off top my head, and I'm going to name names Ernest Dempsey, David Cochran, and Nick factor. All three have completely different methods for maybe not completely different, but different enough methods for utilizing that system and they all work for that author, but they don't necessarily work. They won't necessarily work for me or some other author. So you have to fine tune in based on what your goals are.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  24:04

Yeah. And we have a lot of tips on our blog. So that's insight stuff. BookBub.com is the URL for that. We do tips just from data that we've seen, we'll do case studies of other authors who are willing to share data about their campaigns, which I think is one of the most fantastic ways to get a sense for what's working for other advertisers. So yeah, so we put out a bunch of resources. And then yeah, a lot of authors have been really generous with their own ad strategies and what's worked. So, definitely a lot of ways to go about it a lot of different ways to approach the platform. So it's definitely a matter of figuring out what's gonna work best for you and for your books.

Kevin Tumlinson  24:40

Now, do you guys have I don't recall and you can, if you don't have this considered a feature request? Do you have a way to build to use the ads to build your following on BookBub?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  24:53

You can do that. Yeah, I've only seen a very small handful of people try it, but what you would want to do is link back to your profile on BookBub.

Kevin Tumlinson  25:04

Okay, yeah, cuz you can put in any pretty much any link you want. Yeah.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  25:09

Technically, technically, it's supposed to be the ads are promoting books. But if you're trying to promote people to go back to your own profile on BookBub, we're usually going to let that go.

Kevin Tumlinson  25:16

Yeah, yeah. Well, what about like a book page or something? somewhere? Like, yeah, I could do that. Okay. Yeah. Like on your on your author website? you could you could still use that link.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  25:26

Yeah, absolutely. You could send people to your website.

Kevin Tumlinson  25:28

And of course, you can send people to books to read calm.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  25:31

But I see a lot of ads doing that. So one thing to be mindful of in terms of the click through links is that we don't let you direct a link to or direct an ad somewhere where you're going to be collecting email addresses from our users. But if it's an a page on an author website, and you've got that email collection, sort of low priority on the bottom of the page, that's going to be fine. Right? But if the main call to action once a reader clicks through on that AD AD, that's right.

Kevin Tumlinson  25:57

That is a that's good to be where Yeah, So because I am a big fan of platform building, and I consider the following BookBub as part of your platform, and anytime you can grow that, that's a good strategy, in my view. So, yeah, that's good to know. Good. I'm, I'm, hopefully I'm gonna try that out. And I'm gonna let people know how that goes. How it works for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz my theory is if I can grow that platform big enough, then I can target myself on ads more often. And it cost me theoretically less money. Who knows? Yeah, cuz.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  26:36

I mean, if you tell your whole podcast audience that you're growing your audience to target with ads, maybe they'll kill them. Yeah, yeah. So the following. So email all of your followers for free every time you release a new book. So that's just a free way to let another audience of readers know every time you have a release, and then a couple other things to do. So if you run a feature deal, we'll in addition to sending it out to everyone and The genre will actually also email your followers in case any of them aren't following that genre to let them know that you have a deal. So okay, a few benefits to having that big audience. Oh, that

Kevin Tumlinson  27:07

sounds like a that sounds like a pretty good strategy, actually. So what about I mean, do you guys ever do anything to promote followers for authors on those on your platform? Do you ever push them? Yeah,

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  27:18

we're trying out some exciting stuff. Actually, we have a reader facing blog. So if you're on BookBub comm, we've got blog articles with lots of different lists of books, sometimes a deep dive or an interview with an author. So we're starting to play around a little bit more with that space to see how we can get even more attention to the authors that want to work with us. And even more interaction from readers using the platform. So feel free.

Kevin Tumlinson  27:44

Time for that, by the way. I volunteer as tribute, Kim. Yeah, I'll let

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  27:50

her I'm not on that team. But I'll let them I'll let them know. They don't know. I've got a very excited volunteer.

27:56

I would love to

Kevin Tumlinson  27:58

Yeah, no, that's that's great. Cool. Okay, so. So we've covered featured deals, which I think is probably going to be the thing most people or get most the most worked up over. I don't want people to overlook your ad platform now, because I actually, after using it in comparison with Facebook and Google ads and Amazon ads, I feel like it get the most traction from BookBub ads. So I think, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a lot less, it's a lot more set it and forget it actually, for me, like, I don't have to worry about it as much and I know that it's targeted. The only thing that I'm not I'm sort of under utilizing right now as it is. I'm only promoting my thriller. So I start I start branching out and promoting some of the other genres. We'll see. We'll see. All right, because I don't want to confuse people. So what are you in terms of like you've because I know you've talked to some of the some of the guys I mentioned and some other folks who are using platform's I mean, in terms of sort of success stories, what do you, you know, can you share anything you've learned? Yeah, I'd share specific details if you if you're not allowed to, or whatever. But like, are you seeing strategies out there from some of these folks that might be something we can pass on to people?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  29:17

Yeah, I think one of the best strategies that I've seen is thinking about the ad as sort of the first step in a longer process of getting new readers. So what we see a lot of people doing is promoting the first book in a series or another book that they think is going to lead readers on to purchase more books by that author. Obviously, a lot of readers come to BookBub because of the deals, but a lot of them are using deals as a way to discover new authors, it's much easier to take a chance on someone new for you know, free, of course, 99 cents, yeah. And to pay full price for a book if you're not sure you're going to like that author. But what we find is once readers do get that first book that they'll buy a bunch of authors books at full price. So if you have a first book in a sense And you're willing to put it down to free your 99 cents, free ads, the not just a feature deals, but the BookBub ads get tons and tons of clicks, I've seen some completely ridiculous click through rates for free books, and 99 cents 199 299, those low prices are really effective at capturing reader's attention. So as a way to bring new readers to your author brand, starting with a book that you think is going to be really appealing, putting that low price in the ad and then making sure that once they buy book one, they're going to go on to book two, Book Three, etc. and remembering that the profit that you make off of one reader who bought Book One who then buys the rest of the books in the series changes the economics of that original ad for book one. Yeah, so thinking of it a little bit more holistically than just a single book. So that's one strategy I see working really well. And then for new releases, is kind of the other main way that I see authors promoting their books through the book, but that's platform. And in that case, it's usually much more about in a limited At a time investing a lot making sure that a lot of readers see. See that book cover, see the new book, see that it's new boats, you go back to your existing fans, and then again to try to capture new readers who maybe haven't heard of your books before?

Kevin Tumlinson  31:13

Yeah. So you brought up prices? And that there's two questions I have related that I think the first one I'm going to ask, though is, is there a, is there a sort of golden zone price that we that authors should aim for?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  31:29

That's really hard to answer, because

31:33

everyone really varies by

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  31:35

genre, right? varies by genre. I mean, we see people also promoting full price books with that platform and still getting clicks and driving sales from that and in that case, you can afford to pay a little bit more per click or per impression if you know you're making more money off of each sale. But the the way that you would set up the campaign would be completely different for a book that's priced somewhere between free and 399. And something it was priced higher than Yeah. So just keeping in mind that the price of your book actually is a huge factor in how you would set up your campaign and you might make different choices.

Kevin Tumlinson  32:08

And the other question I, the related question is, there is an idea out there that when you are attracting people based on price, you're basically programming that readership to come come to you for cheap books. So do you see anything? You know, any danger in that? Or is there any way to mitigate that through through the system? Because you're Yeah, you said that, you know, a lot of them are buying through at full price. And I think I agree with that. But I do know that there are some folks who kind of complained that they're only getting readers who are looking for bargain books. Mm hmm.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  32:42

Yeah. And that fear, but we have definitely found that that's not the case. So worse, I mean, we're selling tons of full price books to book by members through the weekly featured new release, which highlights new releases by genre through the new release alerts and pre order alerts to an author's individual fan base. Those are driving time The full price sales ads platform is getting some of them. And then we continue to hear from authors who run feature deals that they see an increase in sales across their entire catalogue after that deal of readers who started with a discount and then went on to purchase their other books at higher prices. So, you know, there's always going to be, I think, a subset of readers who are really just interested in that low price. But we do see that a lot of our reader base is interested and just getting the books that that they're excited about that they love. And they don't really care about the price for that, as long as they know that it's an author that they love. They're going to be willing to invest and pay more for those. But that's what I'm hoping for.

Kevin Tumlinson  33:35

I'm looking for readers looking for authors. That's what I really want. Yeah, we're looking for cheap books. I'm fine with two but I want to read you're looking for me. So yeah, I want to get to this and I meant to get to it a little earlier. But we've still got some time I want to talk about your new audio book retailer, which is shirtless. Yeah, tell me all about chirp.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  33:56

excited that we are to it's exciting. It's very new for us. So yeah, so we are now powering a retailer that sells all the cart audiobooks, so there's no subscription for members. But it's very similar to the feature deals, we send out emails to members with discounted audiobooks in the genres that they have signed up for biggest differences instead of sending you to other retailers, like we do for BookBub on chirp, you purchase the books directly from chirp, and we've got a mobile app on iOS and Android that you can download to listen to your books on the go. We've got a Web Player on the website, so a few different ways to listen. And yeah, it's it's I mean, it's a really exciting addition, we think, to the audiobook world, our book club members who've been asking us for years when we were going to offer audiobooks and deals on audiobooks. It's something that they've we've always known they were interested in. So we were really excited to have the opportunity to get to offer that both to our BookBub members who wanted to get more audiobooks, and then to authors and publishers to give them away to start promoting their audiobooks. In a way that really hasn't been available before, to have that deals model and that deals focus on audiobooks, so we're really excited about it.

Kevin Tumlinson  35:08

Yeah, it sounds very cool. I am, I was very pleased to hear when you guys announced it and you can go direct. Or you can also go in through find a way voices, right?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  35:18

You actually have to go through find, go find Okay, yeah. So find a way voices is the sole distributor to chart right now. That's fine.

Kevin Tumlinson  35:24

That means people can get there through DDD vicariously, so yeah, good with that. I'm good with that. Yeah, that's fantastic. And you can't go wrong partnering with find a way I've discovered.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  35:36

We found the same thing. They're a great team.

Kevin Tumlinson  35:38

Yeah. That's, that's great. And are you guys looking? Are you going to expand on that in over the next couple years? You got any plans for it?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  35:47

Yeah, so we actually just opened up submissions for those chirp deals. So again, similar to feature deals, you can actually go right through your BookBub dashboard. You're going to be working with the same team here at BookBub. On the author side, you know cercla Different two readers, of course. And it's a whole separate retailer. But we're keeping everything with BookBub for for the authors. So if you go back to your partner dashboard now, you'll see that there is a section for trip audiobook deals. And it'll give you some information about how that works. And it's a submission form. So you can submit your audiobook deals to our editorial team. We've got some dedicated editors now that are working just on those chirp deals. And we make it super easy for you. If your book is selected, we actually will coordinate that discount with find a way so there's nothing that you have to do to discount, which hopefully takes away some of the stress that we know authors have experienced with feature deals coordinating across retailers. So that's a fantastic way if you want to get that your audiobook titles featured in the daily chirp emails, that submission form is now open to everyone.

Kevin Tumlinson  36:46

Excellent. All right, that's good. That's very cool. I like when things are made easy.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  36:53

And then there's one other thing actually that we have in the works is and this is still in beta, so not yet widely available, but we are Adding audiobook targeting to the BookBub ads platform. So coming soon, you'll be able to target church members and get your ads to appear in those trip emails. And you're also collecting audiobook retailer preferences from our BookBub members. So you could also run an ad campaign and say I want this to reach people who are BookBub members who also use audible to purchase their audio, Apple or audiobooks. I was gonna ask

Kevin Tumlinson  37:23

if that was, if that was part of the whole deal right now. But so it's not there yet. It's in beta.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  37:28

Yes, but if anyone is interested in getting access to that beta, we're still definitely working out a few kinks. But if you email us again, partners at BookBub comm we'd be happy to see if we can get you early access to that. So definitely let us know if anyone wants to try that out.

Kevin Tumlinson  37:42

That's fantastic. That's gonna be big, I think people will Lowery love BookBub for promoting their ebooks. So I'm sure there's been lots of people clamoring for audio book promotion to

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  37:56

Yeah, there aren't a lot of promotion tools out there. So there's Alright, excited to see what the ads that are getting those two chart members and yeah, two members on BookBub that were able to drive audiobook sales through that.

Kevin Tumlinson  38:07

So is there any, anything in there for sort of bundling audio and ebook or is that not on the table right now?

38:16

I when when you say bundling, what

Kevin Tumlinson  38:18

do you mean? So if I buy the audio book, could I get a discount on the book? Or some things are some are similar, or vice versa? Good

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  38:26

question. Not on the horizon. So we, I mean, we're still directing BookBub members to purchase the books from other places, so we don't have control ourselves over the prices of the ebooks. We have seen some authors try to coordinate if they're running a feature deal on an E book, they'll also try to get the deal on the turf audiobook at the same time, just to make sure that that deal price is available across different formats. Right, but because we don't have control over the ebook prices, that's not something that I think we'll be able to do.

Kevin Tumlinson  38:57

I have some thoughts on this. Okay. I'll cover them later. off air when they can benefit me more. Okay, man, that is fantastic. I think there's so much I feel like because every time you and I run into each other a conference, I, you know, I feel like there's 1000 things we could talk about. And I know that this audience would love all of it. So we'll just have to get you back on the show at some point. So is there anything you want to throw in? Before we wrap things up? You want to tell people where they can find all this stuff?

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  39:33

Yeah, so I mentioned this a couple times, but I really mean it. please email us with any questions. We are so happy to help you figure out how to use all of our tools when to use which ones who have any questions about how to get your ads campaigns working. So partners@BookBub.com is that email address to reach a member of our team, and then again, our blog insight stuff. BookBub.com has tons of information on both tips on how to use our tools and then marketing tips in general from from other authors and other members of the publishing industry. So that's a really fantastic resource if you want to learn more about what BookBub does and how we work.

Kevin Tumlinson  40:12

Excellent. And I can't imagine that anyone listening to this show doesn't know what BookBub is and doesn't know how it works. But surprised there's always that one or two, one or two people floating around always. Okay, excellent. Well, I I can't thank you enough for for coming on. I really appreciate you. It's been, you know, I know you're busy. You got all those partner emails to answer.

Carlyn Robertson, BookBub  40:36

I'm happy to be helpful for everyone.

Kevin Tumlinson  40:40

I bet it will be and we're going to send everybody over to you is as quick as we can. So that I think is going to wrap us up, everybody. Thank you, again, Carlin for being on the show. And right now, you're probably hearing the groovy previews. If you ain't dancing place. It will if you stick around I'll give you some words of wisdom on the other side. And we'll see you there. Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Carlin Robertson from BookBub. We I love BookBub actually, and I love the way they're kind of developing this, this promotional platform that authors can can access the feature deal is always the big thing. And so that's what everybody always talks about what everybody is always interested in. But the the fact that you can now do these ads and run an entire ad campaigns and there are a lot fewer limitations on it than I ever imagined. You can do quite a bit with it. So being able to send people to your own page. I mean, heck, that's amazing right there. You could run a sale without ever actually having to price your books down, frankly, anywhere, but your website, so that's pretty cool. Um, so that's, that's been a that was an amazing interview, and we're glad we got that one. got a whole bunch more lined up in the near future but these are, these are it's gonna get interesting things go by so hopefully get back on track with a another with the weekly show again, I think I think we can handle that. I hope you're enjoying the show. If you are, make sure you do a few things. So go and subscribe or actually rate and like this show wherever you're listening to your podcast. Make sure you're following it, subscribe to the show. Make sure you pop over. I know I have a word a YouTube channel for the word slinger podcast. But to be frank, I'm kind of thinking that's not really reaching an audience. So you let me know if you think that's something you want to see continued and I can work out how to best do that. But in the meantime, make sure you subscribe to me on youtube. Kevin Tumlinson that's the username account name. Just pop on over to YouTube and search for that. I believe it is youtube.com slash c slash Kevin Tumlinson is it slash senior slash you try, try both. Just search my name, you'll find me look for my official channel there. And be sure you're checking out all the stuff that I'm into man. If you go to Kevin Tumlinson calm, my little menu of options up top is getting bigger and bigger with all the new things I do. So go check that out. And, you know, check out the new stuff I've built. Author, email is up there indie author, blueprint. We're developing a lot of stuff. So and you can also find your apps digital there. You can find the word slinger podcast there, you find basically everything I'm into, with very few exceptions. But beyond that, I'm so glad you tuned in with me this week. Thank you so much for being a listener supporter of the show. We're going to get through all this stuff together. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens inside. I'm very hopeful By the way, I feel like we're, I think we are on the verge of a new Renaissance, a brand new Renaissance. So it's where I you know, it's I think it's all going to be astoundingly worth the trouble when we're on the other side. So that's what I'm holding on to you can let me know what you think. You can follow me by the way on Twitter at Kevin Tumlinson. Find me on Facebook. There are various ways to follow me on Facebook. If you go search for Kevin Thompson, find my personal page, my author page, you can find the word slinger podcast there along with several other things that I'm doing. And don't forget to check out drafted digital and everything we're doing there. We're gonna be announcing some pretty cool stuff over the next year, despite everything is going on. Hold on. Sorry about that clear my throat here. Despite everything is going on in the world. ebooks are doing really well. So I I'm pretty encouraged. By this, we're going to see, we're going to see how things shift and change. So, that's it. God bless you take care, stay happy and healthy and safe. And I will see you all next time.

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