If you are an avid reader and have not yet explored BookBub.com, consider this your lucky day. Not only is the service free—it's an incredible way to find new books recommended by your favorite authors and amazing deals on e-books within your preferred genres. Whether you are in a book club and looking for great suggestions or simply organizing your "shut in for the Winter" reading list, you're sure to find exactly what you need through one of BookBub.com's many reader resources.
What Is BookBub?
Think of BookBub as your own personal shopper who knows your reading taste well and has an eye for great deals. While the service doesn't actually sell books, it provides curated lists and handpicked recommendations based on your personal profile and the genre selections you choose. It then provides links to purchase the e-books from any number of e-book retailers available.
Signing up is as simple as creating a BookBub profile. After submitting your email address, the website guides you through a genre selection page that asks you to check off your preferred genre (fiction and non-fiction are included). Following this selection, you're guided to a page that lists both new and bestselling authors within those genres. You can then follow specific authors to receive curated news and e-book purchase links focused on the author(s) of your choice.
For a trial run, I selected the category "Psychological Thriller" and was shown the following page of authors in that genre:
Note that you can choose as many genres and authors as you like on these selection pages, but I limited it to one genre to get a feel for how BookBub is set up.
Finally, since BookBub doesn't sell the e-books on their site, you'll need to choose with e-book retailer you typically use to download e-books. The selection I was given included Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple Books, Google Play and Kobo. Once you make a selection, when BookBub shows you deals, it will limit the selections to the retailer(s) you choose. This is especially useful if you have a subscription or discount package with a specific e-book retailer.
Your personal BookBub page
Once you choose your preferred genre(s), author(s), and e-book retailer(s), you're taken to a personal BookBub page that immediately shows great e-book deals available for books within your chosen categories and retailers. It's really that simple. In addition to your personal recommendation page, BookBub also gives you the option to receive weekly email updates showing the currently available deals within your chosen genre(s). Many of the options I was shown were available for a few dollars or less! You really can't beat that, especially if you read a lot and prefer to own your own digital copies of your favorite books.
Deals
In the menu at the top of the screen on the BookBub website, you'll find tabs that make the site easy to navigate. One of my personal favorite tabs is "Deals," in which a single click will take you to a page showing recent deals on e-books in the genre(s) of your choosing—many of which are free! That's right, you read that correctly. Through the BookBub "Deals" tab, you will be able to find e-books within your favorite genre(s) to download and read absolutely free. The other deals on the page included many titles that were 99 cents or a few dollars, at most. It's like having a library at your fingertips, except you get to keep the books you download.
How are these deals selected?
Since BookBub offers deals showing books within specific categories, I was interested to learn how these deals are chosen. After digging a bit into the site, I found the following information:
Publishers and authors submit hundreds of book deals every day for consideration. BookBub's editorial team reviews each of these submissions in detail to determine the best ones, taking into account a number of factors, including the book's critical acclaim, price point, reader reviews, author background, and cover design. The editorial team evaluates the subject matter of a book based on historical reader reaction for that genre. Only 10-20% of submissions are selected to be featured on BookBub.
Real-time updates from your favorite authors
Another great perk to the website is the real-time updates from the favorite authors you choose when you set up your account. If the author(s) you choose has a new release or a pre-order available, BookBub will alert you by email and on your personal recommendation page. The individual author pages also show all of the books that have been previously published by that author, along with links to download the digital copies of them.
You can also see other BookBub members who follow your favorite author, along with any recommendations given by those members. In this sense, BookBub is a social hub allowing avid readers to find fellow like-minded bookworms who can offer suggestions for their next great read.
Recommendations
In addition to the great deals, BookBub alerts you to recommendations from your favorite authors, BookBub editors, and your friends and family (if they are registered on the site, as well). For more well-known authors, such as Gillian Flynn, the site does note that some of these recommendations have not come directly from the author (unless the author has claimed his or her BookBub page). Rather, the information was collected from a data partner. I did notice, however, that many of the author pages contained recommendations that came directly from the author.
The BookBub blog
With multiple new posts per week, the BookBub blog is a well-rounded resource for book lovers interested in knowing the latest and greatest reads on the market. From exclusive excerpts to "best of" lists, the blog contains hundreds of curated lists and reading suggestions sure to keep you (or any book club you're a part of) busy delving into great stories.
One of the best features of the blog that I noticed is that each "best of" list or book suggested includes handy options to note whether you want to add the book to your wish list, you want to read it, you're currently reading it, or you're not interested, along with a link to purchase the book on one of the e-book platforms mentioned previously. This allows you to curate your personal selections even further, as well as recommend the book to others (if it's one you've already read). If you've invited friends or family to join BookBub, this is a great way to know the perfect gift to purchase for birthday or holiday celebrations, since they can add books to their "wish list" directly from the blog posts they read.
Here is a sampling of some of the most recent blog articles available on the site. Most of these are from December (to give you an idea of the frequency of blog posts on the BookBub website):
- The Most Heartbreaking Books Coming in 2019
- 23 of the Best Books for Second Graders
- The Most Anticipated Books of 2019
- 16 Books Recommended by BookBub Employees This Year
- 25 of the Best Debut Novels of 2018
- 7 Things To Know About "Mary Poppins Returns"
- 7 Royal Historical Books Recommended by Jennifer Robson
- The New York Public Library's Most Checked-Out Books of 2018
- 24 of the Best Romance Books of the Year
- 30 Gifts for Every Book Lover in Your Life
- 31 Bookish Gift Ideas for Book Lovers
- The Best Classic Novels of All Time, According to BookBub Readers
- Forbes Announces the Highest-Paid Authors of the Year
- 6 Books I Read in Under 48 Hours This Year
- 19 of the Best Psychological Thrillers of 2018
- BookBub Editors Share Their Favorite Books of the Year
- 34 of This Year's Highest Rated Books on BookBub
- Read an Exclusive Excerpt of Lisa Jewell's "Watching You"
- The Best Historical Fiction Books of 2018
- Reese Witherspoon to Adapt "Where the Crawdads Sing"
My general impression
As an avid reader, I was especially excited to discover BookBub.com and the many reader resources it offered through a user-friendly website. The blog contained several useful articles and curated lists that will keep me busy with new reading material for a while. I was especially interested to find new authors within my favorite genre, and have access to multiple e-books that I could download for only a few dollars (and many for free). I also plan to recommend it as a marketing tool to several indie authors I know who are looking for ways to build their audience. I will be using the site often and recommending it to others who I know are voracious readers, as well.
