BookBub

About BookBub

BookBub operates as a book discovery service tailored for avid readers, while simultaneously providing a potent marketing channel for authors and publishers. Founded in January 2012 by Josh Schanker and Nicholas Ciarelli, the company emerged to solve the dual challenges of discovery in a crowded digital book market. Readers struggled to find books aligned with their interests, and authors found it difficult to capture the attention of new audiences. Schanker, a serial entrepreneur with an MBA from MIT, had previously built and sold an email marketing firm and a social networking site. Ciarelli, a digital media entrepreneur, founded an Apple news site called Think Secret and was an early team member at The Daily Beast. Their combined experience in startups, email marketing, and digital media laid the groundwork for BookBub's model.

The core of BookBub's service is a free daily email newsletter that alerts its millions of subscribers to free and deeply discounted ebooks. Users personalize their preferences by genre, and BookBub's editorial team curates the deals, selecting only 10-20% of the hundreds of daily submissions from publishers and authors. This curation is based on factors like critical acclaim, price, and reader reviews. BookBub itself does not sell books; instead, it directs readers to major retailers like Amazon, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble to make their purchases.

Revenue is generated from the authors and publishers who pay a fee to have their discounted books featured. The cost of a "Featured Deal" varies based on the book's genre and price point. This creates a marketing platform for content creators to gain exposure, boost sales, climb bestseller lists, and attract new fans who might then purchase other full-priced books. Beyond featured deals, BookBub offers a self-serve, auction-based advertising platform, "BookBub Ads," where advertisers can run pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) campaigns to target specific reader demographics within BookBub's emails and on its website. In 2019, the company expanded its offerings by launching Chirp, an audiobook retailer that operates on a similar model of offering discounted, limited-time deals without a subscription, allowing users to purchase audiobooks à la carte.