Let me be clear (as Obama is fond of saying). Bookbub is the best deal in advertising for indie books. I’ve had some amazing success with them. Good explosion for the dollar. Or, as the marketing twirps are fond of saying: positive ROI. There isn’t much out there that rivals Bookbub, all due to their slice and dice email lists. Facebook ads, Google ads, blog ads…pretty much worthless. Save your nickels and buy yourself a coffee (what is with how expensive coffee is these days? Is it because they call it fancy Italian names? Whatever, Starbucks.).
However, I’m starting to notice a numbing homogenization of the blurbs in my morning Bookbub email. I’m signed up on the Fantasy and Thriller/Mystery lists. All the book summaries, complete with exclamation marks and quotations from the Library Journal (“remarkable!”, “ground-breaking!” “nausea-inducing!”), are starting to look the same. It’s almost as if the Bookbub staff create those summaries by using a Madlibs book.
“This remarkable novel stars Sabrina, nursing a broken-heart as she tries to flee a hot-abbed investigator and finds a corpse in her bathtub and uncovers a conspiracy that reaches to the very halls of power and plunges into a whacky whirlpool of chaos, geckos, and disco dancers all bent on world destruction! Heck, this story will even rip the fabric of reality! This utterly disturbing and heart-warming tale has over eight zillion five-star reviews on Amazon!”
Yeah, whatever. Gimme an old PG Wodehouse and I’m happy. Er, plus some Brie and crackers. Any maybe my tax return. Come on, IRS! If you can track everyone so amazing and awesomely, you can cut my check and put it in the mail.