The Ultimate List of Places to Promote Your Book

So far I haven’t done a whole lot of advertising for my books. This is mostly because I think an author’s time is better spent writing until they’ve got several books out in a series. I’m about to publish the fourth novel in my Driftmetal series, and I’m still not sure I’ll do much promotion until the fifth (and final) book in that series comes out. But for now, I’ve compiled a list of websites that will promote your book to their subscriber lists, most for a nominal fee. I had intended to use it for my own personal notes, but then I thought hey, why not make it into a blog post?

I have not used all of the services below (not even close to all of them), so I can’t speak to their effectiveness. But I thought it might be an interesting exercise to tally them up and get an average “reach per dollar” here. Even if we can’t gauge effectiveness, we can at least gauge value. When I advertise, I want my dollars used in the most efficient and powerful way possible, and that means reaching more readers per buck. It also means reaching the type of reader who is most likely to read my freebie, like it, and go on to buy the others.

It’s worth noting that most of these sites/services accept ebooks in every genre, but some of them don’t. Nor do all of them divide their emails by genre. Obviously, one email to 100,000 subscribers containing books of every genre will probably not be as effective as an email to 10,000 people who read your genre. Not all of these sites make their subscriber numbers public, either. Since I write science fiction and fantasy, I’m focusing on those that would potentially accept my books, were I to use them.

Some sites also have specific requirements (ie., number of reviews, average rating, etc.) which are listed below. Whenever possible, I assembled the figures that would apply to free book promotions. That’s the only sort of advertising I envision myself doing.

One final caveat is that I calculated the SPD (subscribers per dollar) amounts based only on the size of email lists. I didn’t include Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts. It’s been a long-used credo in marketing that people don’t go to social media to buy stuff. That doesn’t mean they won’t, of course, but people use social media primarily to connect and be entertained. Direct e-mail marketing (within a list that someone signed up for voluntarily) is typically a much stronger sales method than facebook posts or tweets, so those are the numbers I keyed in on.

Full Disclaimer: I have been paid exactly $0 by any of these sites to say what I say about them below. None of the links provided are affiliate links, nor have they in any way shaped my opinion of the websites listed.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

Ereader News Today
Requirements: Available on Amazon, Free or on sale, Minimum 125 pages, 90-day period between promotions, No minimum review/rating requirement
Reach/Cost (Fantasy): 150,000 (email), 475,000 (facebook)/$20
Reach/Cost (Sci-Fi): 150,000 (email), 475,000 (facebook)/$20
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 7,500
Notes: I have used these guys before, but never by themselves – both times, it was in tandem with another promotion I was running, so I can’t quantify how well I did. There was a definite spike in my downloads/sales though.

Digital Book Today
Requirements: None
Reach/Cost: 14,000 (email), 32,000 (facebook)/$20
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 700
Notes: Not sure if I will ever use these guys. Their website is super cluttered and hard to navigate. They have no fewer than thirteen (yes, thirteen!) different promotion options, including banner ads, etc. They make you wade through a separate page with a wall of text for each option. This is a confusing way to do business and was enough to make me click that little X on my browser window as soon as I’d gathered the information I needed for this list. On the plus side, their permafree book promotions apparently last a full four weeks. Not sure how effective that’s going to be by the end of week four, though…

Ebooks Habit
Requirements: Minimum 5 reviews, No erotica or graphic sex
Reach/Cost: ? (email), 3,000 (facebook), 395,000 (twitter)/$10
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): unknown
Notes: Nice clean, straightforward site and sign-up process. The fact that they publish their Twitter numbers but not their email numbers irks me a bit.

Free Discounted Books
Requirements: None
Reach/Cost: 4,400 (email), 3,000 (facebook), 48,500 (twitter)/$5 (temporarily free) or $10 (permafree)
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 440
Notes: One of the smaller sites, but seems to know what they’re doing and lists their exact subscriber numbers across every network. I like the transparency.

Free Booksy
Requirements: 30-day period between promotions, preference for well-written, well-formatted books with professional covers, reserve the right to refuse for any reason
Reach/Cost (Fantasy): 79,900 (email)/$100
Reach/Cost (Sci-Fi): 51,900 (email)/$70
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar):  799 (Fantasy), 519 (SF)
Notes: They have a sister website, Bargain Booksy, for promoting your non-free books

Kindle Book Review
Requirements: 10 Amazon reviews, 3.5-star rating, no erotica, reserve the right to refuse based on cover design
Reach/Cost: 8,000 (email), 7,600 (facebook), 75,200 (twitter)/$40
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 200
Notes: You can buy various packages that include different means of promotion (a posting on their website, a series of tweets, etc.) A little daunting, but these vary based on the price of the book you want to promote. The number above are for the package that includes an email, the top spot on their daily blog post, two tweets, and a facebook post.

Book Barbarian
Requirements: Sci-fi/Fantasy only, 10 Amazon reviews, 3.5-star rating, stand-alone or first-in-series only, Free or discounted by 50% or more, limited-time offer, professional-quality
Reach/Cost: 8,000 (email), 6,000 (facebook), 200 (twitter)/$8
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 1,000
Notes: These guys, I like. Not just because they chose my book and promoted it for free the first time (thanks, BB!), but because this is a niche list for sci-fi and fantasy readers. There’s no audience more targeted for my books than this one! They also have all-inclusive pricing at $8, which is hard to beat for that kind of focus.

The Fussy Librarian
Requirements: 10 Amazon reviews + 4.0 rating on Amazon OR 10 B&N reviews + 4.0 rating / 20 B&N reviews + 3.5 rating, $5.99 or less
Reach/Cost (Fantasy): 32,100 (email), 18,900 (facebook), 8,900 (twitter)/$10
Reach/Cost (Sci-Fi): 109,500 (email), 18,900 (facebook), 8,900 (twitter)/$16
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 3,210 (Fantasy), 6,800 (Sci-Fi)
Notes: They’re fussy! Good books only, which is a valuable service to their subscribers. They are also, from what I can tell, price-agnostic (advertising with them costs you the same, regardless of your book’s price).

Booksends
Requirements: 5 reviews with a “high overall average”, under $3 and at least 50% off, 30-day period between promotions, if it’s been free w/i the past 90-days you must submit it as free
Reach/Cost (Fantasy): 26,000 (email), 2,600 (facebook), 1,500 (twitter)/$50
Reach/Cost (Sci-Fi): 24,000 (email), 2,600 (facebook), 1,500 (twitter)/$50
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar):  520 (Fantasy), 480 (Sci-Fi)
Notes: Facebook posts cost an extra $10

BookBub
Requirements: Free or at least 50% off, must not have been discounted for more than 14 of the last 90 days unless it’s free
Reach/Cost (Fantasy): 1,490,000 (email)/$250
Reach/Cost (Sci-Fi): 1,420,000 (email)/$215
SPD (Subscribers Per Dollar): 5,960 (Fantasy), 6,600 (Sci-Fi)
Notes: The grand mac-daddy of book promotion. I hear it’s super-competitive. But I mean… look at those numbers! Not that these are the best values on the list, but just for the sheer throngs of people you can reach in a single promotion.

 

Had experiences with any of these? Know of any sites I forgot or left off the list? Any information I got wrong during the tedious process of collecting it? Let me know in the comments. I’d like this to be a ‘living document’ that can be updated with new sites as they come along, so any input is appreciated. Thanks for reading!

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