Dr. Sol Adoni

Books - Music - Films - Videos - Consults

Bookbub get 3.8M VC Funding

Is Bookbub a SCAM?

It took us a while to figure out Bookbub

Concensus of some smart geeks ITS FAKE, proxy farms mostly.

Yes they got traffic says Alexa, 20K Global and 5K USA but it’s not certified.

And, if you know where to look to you can buy an UNCERTIFIED 2K USA Alexa for a minor amount of money each month, the hackers that do it have server farms with alexa tool bars and direct send the info the tool bars need for Alexa and don’t even bother sending the traffic to their clients, so their servers don’t have to get overwhelmed with fake 2K Alexa traffic.

Alexa is an Amazon company so Morons run it, yet if you CERTIFY your Alexa it can be pretty accurate.

Now we all know the reviews on Amazon are FAKE and most people wanting a nice alexa can BUY IT cheaply.

Now a certified Alexa rank, or Quantcast, those are more reliable as to traffic, me I just read logs. You want to know if a site has real traffic show me the logs.

Now Bookbub has the appearance of being very real, since they reject lots of authors, and they even reject famous authors with real followings. The books they do accept used to always end up #1 on Amazon in the FREE section.

However, that is not the case now IF YOU LOOK INSIDE BOOKBUB, you will see how little power they now have, since Amazon cut off the payments to sites pushing FREE KINDLE DOWNLOADS and not long ago a Bookbub Free eBook Promot virtually guaranteed #1 or Top 10 on the main Free List, now it looks like Bookbub has stopped making every and maybe any Freebooks high on Amazon, many of Free eBooks on Bookbub have MINOR position in the FREE area of Amazon outside of minor genres which are easy to pop.

In the old days (not that old really) Amazon mixed Free and Paid sales together so a Free eBook popped the big charts on Amazon, now they keep Free stuff in a FREE section and most authors now don’t notice as much pop from having a #1 Free title on Amazon.

When we saw a relatively new company claiming to have email lists over 100K in many genres we questioned it, we know what it takes to get 100K emails as we did in the 1990’s from 1eBooks, a major eBook portal Adoni lost control of through theft in 2005 that Adoni recently got control of again and has relaunched, so the old email lists have put that major ebook site back onto a fast track to a nice Alexa, well under 100K as I write this and the 1eBooks crew at Adoni are getting the traffic CERTIFIED at Alexa.

So Bookbub is the big deal, a VC coughed up a paltry 3.8M to help new authors.

Ok, a 20K Alexa that’s not verified and they can get 25K downloads for authors OVER AND OVER, as if anything they put on an email list gets instant downloads.

Really, so 100K emails gets 25% response, NO WAY.

20K Alexa is not enough traffic to move 25K free downloads either.

That’s a lot of RESPONSE and I would say over 1M in traffic or opened emails would be needed to move 25K of anything even a Free eBook and 1eBooks had MILLIONS of eBooks download over almost 10 years of operation.

Now if you pick unsavvy authors and they see a book with no following hit #1 or top 10 on Amazon for 100 or so bucks, good deal. But now the Free eBooks being promoted on Bookbub are not even in the top 100 anymore. Many not even in the top 1,000.

Now in the old days (not that long ago) any #1 Free author got major exposure on Amazon, but the switch to having FREE on a FREE page has made the Free Deal at Amazon for Authors not have any major pop.

So, if I was that VC that put up 3.8M to some smiling boys in Mass., I would be looking at logs and know how to read them and the Alexa would be CERTIFIED.

Then a knowledgeable old hack/geek like me couldn’t point a finger and says IS THIS REAL?

It’s Amazon (Alexa) and many Alexa Ranks are FAKE so why not certify them.

Remember Amazon has a ton of FAKE REVIEWS. Facebook you can buy 1K fan likes for a few bucks. FAKE is how you describe Faebook Likes.

Oh, Twitter Followers you can buy them too for a few bucks per 1,000.

So if a proxy farm is really how Bookbub pops any author to the top of the Amazon FREE LISTS, it may be why the refuse to CERTIFY that nice 5K Alexa ranking.

I know the traffic to 1ebooks is real, the site was huge years ago and it has a huge email list and the Adoni Network has leaned on promoting it now with a ton of real links on famous content sites with followings.

So in the age of FAKE Alexas, Fake Twitter Followers and Fake Facebook Likes, has anyone created a FAKE AMAZON DOWNLOADING FARM?

Easy enough, fake Amazon accounts on PC’s with a free Kindle App, you don’t need a kindle to download Free Kindle eBooks.

So a smart geek(s) could set up servers on a proxy farm and if they have the accounts setup, move 5K, 25K or even 250K ebooks easily through a farm.

Did Bookbub do that in the past when Amazon was PAYING sites to send them FREE EBOOK USERS?

Now that Amazon doesn’t pay sites to push Free eBooks, has Bookbub stopped it’s proxy farm IF it had one?

All I know is Amazon stopped paying sites like Bookbub to push free ebooks and now Bookbub free ebooks don’t rank high on Amazon.

So authors still think a Bookbub listing for a free eBook will translate into top 10 on the main Free eBook list, IT DOES NOT.

Just look at the newest eBooks on Bookbub that are FREE, they have minor ranking, it used to be a top 10 guaranteed.

How are the .99 cent deals on Bookbub doing?

Not that great either, none are showing major sales that I checked.

Bottomline

Bookbub pretty Alexa but UNCERTIFIED