Understand how PublishDrive can help you maximize you book visibility with Sales Events.
At PublishDrive, we provide you with various promotional tools, including Amazon Advertising, Price Promotion, Store-specific featuring and Sales Events to help you maximize your book’s visibility. In this article, we will show you how sales events hosted by our stores partners can help you.
What is a Sales Event?
A sales event is a limited-time promotional opportunity offering customers discounted rates on books. For example; a Valentines Day promotion where all romance books are 50% on a store.
What are the benefits?
2. Expanded Customer Reach: Promotional events attract new customers who may be enticed by the discounted prices, broadening the book's audience and potentially leading to future sales.
3. Enhanced Brand Visibility: Participating in sales events increases visibility for the author's brand and books, as promotional materials and advertisements reach a wider audience during the event period.
How to apply?
1. Check the platform and / or our Sales Events emails: We'll keep you informed of the events and you can select which ones you want to apply for depending on which ones are appropriate for your books.
2. We will inform you if you are accepted: If your book gets accepted, you will receive a notification from us on the first day of the sale with the most important information, so you can inform your audience about the sale. We recommend informing your readers at this point via social media, newsletters etc.
Things to Keep In Mind:
1. Title Availability
Please make sure that your book is available in the host store of the sale. Only books with the "published" status can be submitted to sales events. Moreover, the status of your book in the host store of the sale needs to be "available".
You can check the availability of your book anytime you want by following these steps:
- Select the "My books" menu under "Distribution".
- Find the book you want to check. Under each and every published book, you can see a "Sales & Stores" button. By clicking on it, you can see the current status in your enabled stores.
If your title is not yet available in the host store, it will not appear in the drop-down menu. If this is the case, please feel free to contact us, and we will look into the status of your book for you.
2. Themes/Accepted Genres
Some of our sales have themes, and because of this, we can only accept books in certain genres for these promotional opportunities. Please check if the categories/keywords of your book match the categories/keywords given for the sales.
✅ Books eligible for a Sales Event will be noted with a green icon.
🔴 Books ineligible for a particular Sales Event will be noted with a red icon.
If you find that a sale has "any" under the categories/keywords, it means that it is a general sale, and all genres are accepted.
Most of the stores who host sales events do not accept public domain and erotica titles for their promotions, even for general sales. Unfortunately, we have to reject public domain and erotica submissions, and because of this, we would like to ask you to do not submit them to sales. Thank you for understanding.
3. Promotional Price
In order to participate in these sales and get accepted by their host stores, you need to offer a discounted price for the campaign period.
For example:
If the maximum price for a sale is $5.99, and your book is priced at $4.99, it does not mean that you can participate in the sale with the $4.99 pricing. You need to offer a limited time deal, let's say $3.99. You can enter any price that is lower than the maximum price, the most important thing is that the promotional price needs to be lower than the original one.
If you want to promote your book with its full price, please check out our Store-specific featuring opportunities.
We check the submissions daily, and if we find that you submitted your book without a price change, we will contact you, so you can make the necessary changes and participate in your chosen promotions.
Please note that our system handles Sales Events as if they were price promotions, meaning that the promotional price will not only be applied in the host store of the sale, but in the rest of the major stores where your book is also available (Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.)
4. Promotional Price for Apple Books
If you are considering one of Apple Books' upcoming promotions, it is good to keep in mind that in their store, they only display pretty prices (meaning that the prices end in .99). Because of this, if you enter a price with an ending that is not .99, Apple Books will automatically change it to .99.
For example:
Let's say your book is priced at $2.99, and you decide to submit it to one of Apple Books' sales with the pricing of $1.59. Since it does not end in .99, Apple Books will change it to $1.99. If this is the case, we can accept your submission, but please note that the price will be changed to a price ending in .99.
It can be an issue when, for example, your book can be purchased for $2.99, and you decide to enter $2.59 as the promotional price. In this case, just as in the above mentioned example, Apple Books will change it to a price ending in .99, so the promotional price will be $2.99. Because of this, the price of your book will not change for the campaign period.
As a result, unfortunately, we can not accept books with the original pricing of $0.99 for Apple Books sales, they can only be accepted for their free books sales (for example: Free Young Adult Sale, Free Fantasy Sale, etc.).
This only applies to Apple Books' promotional opportunities, you can enter prices that do not end in .99 for the sales hosted by other store partners.
5. Limitation Regarding Language
Most of the stores can only accept English-language titles for their sales events. However, there are some exceptions. Here are a detailed list on what languages our store partners accept for sales events:
- Apple Books only accepts English-language titles.
- Kobo only accepts English-language titles for their US and CA promotions. But, by collaborating with them, we have sales for books written in French and Spanish, too. The language/territory of the sale will always be indicated in the title and the description of the sale.
- OverDrive only accepts English-language titles.
- Baker & Taylor only accepts English-language titles.
- E-Sentral only accepts English-language titles.
- Bibliotheca only accepts English-language titles. If they host a sale for different languages, it will be indicated in the title and the description of the sale.
6. Format
For most of the sales events, we can only accept books in ebook format. If different formats can be submitted to these promotional opportunities, it will be indicated in the title and the description.
7. Accepted submissions
If your book meets all the criteria set by our store partners, it will get accepted by us. However, this does not mean that the host store of the sale will include it in their sale.
As soon as the application period is over, we collect the submitted books and send them to the stores. Their team checks the list, and they decide which books they want to feature in their promotions. Most add all of them to their sales, but unfortunately, even if your submission gets accepted by us, we can not guarantee the same for Apple Books' sale campaigns, as they have very limited space for them, and they hand pick the books they want to highlight. If your book gets picked by them, we will notify you.
Please note: regardless of Apple Books' decision, if your book gets accepted by us, the price will be changed for the campaign period. You will also be notified as soon as the promotional price is live.
To learn more about how you can submit your books to our promotional opportunities, please check out our video: