The book promotion landscape is vast, confusing and opaque. Worse, almost no service providers provide any metrics to inform an Indie author whether the provider’s service will produce books, or simply transfer promotional dollars from the author’s pocket to the service providers (in most cases, it’s the latter). Given that sad truth, I’m pleased to see that MyBookCave continues to innovate and impress (more on which below). One of their new services – free to authors (!) as well as readers – is a group promotion involving books by multiple authors (11 in the current case, including one of mine).
In this service, readers can ask to have as many of the included books delivered to them for free, and the authors and MyBookCave together promote the heck out of the list. When the dust settles, lots of readers have lots of free books, the participating authors have lots more readers, and MyBookCave has added lots more readers on its subscription list. Good for all concerned, wouldn’t you say? If you’d like to request some of those books right now, here’s the link. And (ahem) don’t miss that fascinating book in the second row called The Turing Test.So, what makes MyBookCave a good catch for an author? Here are some examples:
- Ease of use. You input all of the usual data about your book and upload your cover just once. After that, you have an easy to understand author dashboard where all you have to do is click on the over of the book you want to promote and then fill out the variable data (price or free and date). Press the button, and you’re all done, except for paying the invoice when it arrives in your email.
- On the way up. Most of the services I’ve used over the last couple years have been losing market share, some rapidly. In contrast, MyBookCave’s visibility is rising.
This is a chart from Alexa.com, showing MBC’s rank in relation to all other websites. Currently, MBC comes in at 87,013 in the US and 330,812 globally – that’s up 92,252 in the last three months alone. For comparison, perennial favorite EReaderNewsToday comes in at Alexa.com at 96,250 in the US, and 402,265 globally. - MBC is transparent. Of course, what really matters to an author is how large and high quality the service provider’s subscriber list is in the author’s genre. Most services don’t share that information, but MBC does. It currently says it has over 32,250 unique subscribers, and has another 47,319 social media contacts. On it’s price sheet, it shows you exactly how many of those subscribers are in your chosen genre (25,24 in mine, which is thrillers).
- Reasonable prices. Not all services with high fees deliver commensurate with their prices. MBC’s prices and the results they can deliver are aligned. In my genre, inclusion in the daily newsletter costs $10 if the book is discounted to free, and $15 if it’s reduced to $0.99. For comparison, EReaderNewsToday boasts over 185,000 subscribers, but does not disclose the numbers by genre. ENT, which has prices that are low in comparison to its competitors with equal reach, charges $40 and $45 for thrillers at the same discount points.
- MBC is innovating. In the last few months, it’s launched the program noted above, as well as a new free ebook list. In each case, it’s made it easy for authors to climb on board. Inclusion in the free list was initially free for authors, and then $5 as the list grew; the prices will continue to rise as the list expands.
Is MyBookCave in the top rank? Not yet. It’s definitely got a way to go before it will deliver the same results as ENT, RobinReads, Free Kindle Books and Tips (FKBT) and Free/BargainBooksy. But it’s definitely on the right path, and fairly priced for where it is today. If you’re looking to add a service to your existing promotional campaign, or want to try out advertising for the first time without spending a lot of money, I would recommend them.
In the meantime, here’s the link to that book giveaway again. Why don’t you get yourself a nice beach read for free while the supply lasts?
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