Hey everyone! So, I’m sure most of you know that discounted promotion newsletters are a big marketing tool for authors, and BookBub is the generally accepted king of promo newsletters.

And, after maybe about a year of applying for a BookBub featured deal, I finally got a $0.99 international featured deal offer for Odriel’s Heirs. 🥳 So that means I discounted Odriel’s Heirs from 2.99 to 0.99, and for a $54 fee, it was included in BookBub’s daily newsletter in the young adult category to Australia, India, Canada, and the UK.

So, I thought I’d share the results for anyone else trying for an international promo. I will say, I did not do any other additional marketing during the BookBub deal. I know that’s recommended, but honestly, March and April were pretty crazy for me, and I could barely even keep track of what day it was. As a silver lining though, we know that these sales were due only to the BookBub deal. Also, the 0.99 deal was marketed as a seven day promotion, and all my books were marked down for that period.

31 Mar: 36 amazon+16 wide
1 Apr: 18 amazon+11 wide
2 Apr: 7 amazon+7 wide
3 Apr: 4 amazon+3 wide
4 Apr: 0 amazon+3 wide
5 Apr: 1 amazon
6 Apr: 1 amazon
7 Apr: 0
8 April: 2 wide

Total ebooks sold: 109
Total royalties: $39.67
Deal cost: $54
Loss: $14.33

Although people have massively varying results with the BookBub international deals, this wasn’t terribly surprising to me.

Odriel’s Heirs did have several things going for it: it won the 2020 Florida Indie Author Project in YA, it was the 5th place finalist in the Book Blogger Novel of the Year Awards, and it had 102 Amazon reviews (and 149 on Goodreads) with an average 4.4 rating.

But I knew the cover wasn’t super strong, I didn’t stack any other promos on top of it, and I knew the US deal is typically more successful.

Still, even though it was technically a loss, I was able to get my books out to 109 more people (across. the. world. 😱), and honestly, since my main goal here is exposure, that’s a win for me. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask! In the meanwhile, I’ll still be submitting every month to try to grab that US deal. I mean… who could resist that shiny brand new cover?

Thanks for reading!