Looking to sell more titles? Take advantage of our Promotions Tool! The tool is a tab built into your Kobo Writing Life dashboard, and gives you the opportunity to submit titles directly to our merchandisers for promotional opportunities.
The tab lists all the current promotional opportunities and lets you select applicable books from your library to apply to them. Simply click on a title, input your prices for the sale, and then submit! Our merchandising team will approve or decline the title for the promotion.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
You may opt-in your Works for promotions through the KWL dashboard. For those opted-in Works, the following terms apply:
Kobo has the right to grant access to the promotion tool at our sole discretion. Kobo has the right to reject any Work.
You may choose to submit your Works for promotional consideration using the promotion tool via the KWL dashboard. The terms of each promotion vary by the type of promotion selected, and the submission guidelines and eligibility criteria for each promotion are set out in the KWL dashboard. By agreeing to submit your Work for inclusion in any given promotion, you agree to the terms of that promotion as set out in the KWL dashboard.
Kobo reserves the right to change or cancel any promotion. In such instances we will do our best to provide advance notice, as well as another equal opportunity at a different time. In submitting a Work for a promotion, you agree that Kobo has sole discretion with respect to the execution and scope of the promotion.
HOW TO GET STARTED
If you don’t see the Promotions tab in your KWL dashboard yet, simply email us at writinglife@kobo.com and we’ll enable access for you. You can also opt out of using the promotions tool at any time by emailing us, and we will remove it from your dashboard.
WHERE IT APPEARS
When activated for your account, you should see the new tab, PROMOTIONS appear. You might have to log out and then log back in to be able to see it.
HOW IT WORKS
Due to the high demand for promotional space, most of the promotions will include some sort of charge, either as a flat fee or as a percentage of margin. This helps to ensure that only authors who are serious about and understand the business of writing participate.
While we want to support as many authors as possible with promotions, we must adhere to reasonable caps and limitations to ensure that we can handle the influx of requests for consideration. Unless specified otherwise, we typically only accept one title from a single author for each sale. We receive a high number of submissions, so we try to not to overfill our sales with a single author's books.
Please do not submit to every promotion you see! Take the time to read the promotion descriptions and terms, and make sure your title fits all requirements, and the theme of the promotion. Submitting the third book in a first in series sale is not going to win you any favours with our merchandiser.
Ultimately, we will only be selecting the strongest titles, as determined by our merchandisers, for the various forthcoming promotions.
In the “dates and cost” section of the promo page for a particular promotion, you will see the dates during which the promotion will take place, as well as the terms outlining the participation cost. There are two participation cost options: An additional percentage of your royalties, or a flat fee.
Flat Fee
The flat fee option is pretty self-explanatory. We send you a link which you can follow to pay for your feature spot.
Percentage Sale by Promo Code
If you choose to submit your title to this type of sale, Kobo customers will be able to purchase your title at a discount by using a publisher-supported promo code. You as the publisher are supporting this sale, and you will be paying for this discount – but you won’t pay for it up front. During the month following the promotion you will receive an invoice for your monthly sales as usual, and those titles that were purchased during the sale will have a reduced royalty rate.
The cost of participating in these promotions is 10% in additional royalties retained by Kobo as outlined in the KWL dashboard. Additionally, the cost of the promo code will be deducted from this reduced royalty rate. For example, if your book is listed at $10, and the sale is for 30% off: ($10 x 60% royalty) – ($10 x 30% promo code) = $3.
In your royalty report, you will see this reflected as: your standard royalties (COGS payable) minus the cost of the promotion (COGS payable), to calculate your net due for each copy sold through a Percentage Sale Promo.
Please note that while the Promotions tool is in beta mode, this promotion code royalty reduction will NOT be reflected live in your dashboard. You will see the cost of the promotion deducted in your monthly sales report.
Buy More Save More Sale
There are a number of Buy More Save More sales that you might participate in. In this example, we are outlining the payment process for a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale (3 eBooks for the price of 2).
When a customer buys 3 books in this sale (let’s pretend one of these books is yours), the cheapest title is discounted by 100%. As you are supporting this sale you will be paying for this discount, but you won't pay for it up front. During the month following the promotion you will receive your monthly sales report, and those titles that were purchased during the sale will have a reduced royalty rate. The discount is divided amongst all eBooks purchased at one time, so no one eBook takes the penalty as a "free" book. In this case, because the offer is Buy 2 get 1 Free, each eBook purchased will have their royalty reduced by 33%. For each book purchased during the sale, there will also be an extra 10% participation reduction, as outlined in the “dates and cost” section during the submission process.
For further information on how payments for promotions work, please visit our help page.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
PROMOTIONS resembles the eBOOKS process. There are four possible states for your book:
- Ready - actively accepted for promotions that are active or forthcoming)
- Pending – titles submitted and not yet accepted or rejected, as well as accepted titles awaiting payment.
- Declined – titles that were declined.
Completed – titles from previous promotions.
If you scroll down on the PROMOTIONS tab, you’ll see any active promotions that are currently available.
You’ll see the name of the promotion, available time slots, cost, and description about how the promotion works.
EXAMPLE PROMO
Description – basic description of where this promotion will appear
Eligibility Rules – covers the genres a book can be in (automatically determined from your catalog), the territories applicable and the pricing
Dates and Cost – outlines when the promos will be live on site and the cost for each
Price – for particular promos, such as the monthly 30% off promos this is where we indicate that there will be an additional savings passed on to the customer
You’ll be asked to select an eligible title (by clicking on it).
Then you will be asked to select the date / Promotional Period.
Then you will have to enter/confirm the price for the duration of the promotional period. (Please note pricing is required for all currencies in the promotion and pricing will be locked and non-editable during the promo period).
When you’re ready, hit the Submit button.
Please note you can Cancel Submission if you made a mistake or want to submit a different title. You’ll receive a confirmation on your cancellation.
You will be sent an email upon acceptance – and, if there is a flat fee charge, you’ll receive a link that will send you to a landing page where you can pay for your promotion.
When you go to your PROMOTIONS tab you’ll see the status of the item in the header once you click on it.
You can always go back to look at titles where the promotional period is Completed so that you can review where the promo was and when.