So you've been rejected. Story of an author's life, am I right? Here are some of the most common reasons we decline titles for promotions.
Top Reasons For Rejection
1) Book Cover. The cover is the first thing a customer sees, so it is the first thing that the merchandiser considers when selecting books for promotions. If your cover is not very professional, or maybe just isn't up to standard with the other books being included in the sale, it is less likely to be selected. You may be thinking that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover, you should judge it by the content, but just remember that less people are going to click through to the content if they're not intrigued by the cover.
2) No Promo Price Offered. Come on guys! They are called "promotions", so if a discounted price is requested, you'll be rejected if you submit your book at it's regular price (even if the regular price is below the sale maximum price).
3) Your Title Was Included in a Recent Sale. We try to mix up the titles that are included in each sale, so that Kobo readers aren't seeing the same titles on promotion all of the time. For this reason, sometimes titles will be rejected if they were just included in a similar sale.
4) Optimized Pricing. If your promo price is not an optimal price, then it is unlikely that it will be selected for a sale. We consider optimal pricing, prices that end in X.X9, preferably X.99.
5) Categorization Mistake. If your book is not categorized correctly, then we will not include it in a promotion. Please double check that you've entered the correct genres/categories in your metadata before submitting your titles to promotions.
6) Not a New Release. We are always looking to promote recently released books so that we can offer Kobo readers fresh deals. It's kind of like the "Your Title Was Included in a Recent Sale" reason, in the sense that we don't want to be including the same group of books in every single sale.
7) Too Racy. This one is pretty self explanatory. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to promote racy/otherwise explicit books.
8) Competition. We receive a high number of submissions for each promotion we run, so competition is fierce! Make sure you're not making any of the above mentioned mistakes so that you aren't ruled out early.