Once you’ve set up your BookBub author profile, you can use BookBub’s advertising platform. Go to https://partners.bookbub.com/ and from the My Promotions tab, select BookBub Ads.
Select Create an Ad.
Choose the type of readers you want to reach (ebook or audiobook).
Choose your book.
For the ad creative, I highly recommend you DON’T use the ‘build new creative’ option. It’s better to use a different tool (Photoshop, Illustrator, Inkscape, Canva, Book Brush, etc.) to create the ad and then upload it. The dimensions are 300×250 px. For some good examples, check out this post from BookBub: 20 Top BookBub Ad Designs Readers Want to Click.
Next up, add the links you want to use. You can only promote English-language titles (tan triste 😢) and supported regions include the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and India. While you can enter a custom landing page, retailer product pages are recommended, unless the reader can buy the book from the landing page. Ultimately, the fewer clicks a potential buyer has to make, the better. Most US eBook purchases are going to be on Amazon.
For audience targeting, you’ll want to define your audience well. This can be done through categories and similar authors. Look at the dial and make sure the arrow is in the green (Defined). By itself, category targeting is usually too broad. For my book on Bible prophecy, I used Mark Hitchcock to define the audience and I didn’t even need to use categories. Thanks Mark! 😂
Schedule the ad and set your budget. You’ll never pay more than your budget. The pacing of the ad can be more aggressive (fulfill as quickly as possible) or less aggressive (spread across date range).
Finally, the bid type can either be CPM or CPC. Basically, CPM means you pay for readers who see your ad and CPC means you pay for readers who click on your ad. It seems more efficient to pay for clicks, unless your ad is good. After all, if your ad is really good, CPM makes more sense because you’ll get more clicks with a lower number of impressions. This is why it’s important to test your ad. For testing purposes, use a low budget campaign, with high CPM bids and a ‘fulfill as quickly as possible’ approach. That will yield some quick insights into how effective your ad is. Test your ad, refine it and then unleash it on the world. 👊