Less Than 36 Hours...and Counting!
What an exciting few months! Since our campaign launched on April 30, we’ve seen some major developments and hit some big milestones!
Republic Campaign
With less than 36 hours remaining, we have almost 300 (299!) supporters who have invested over $100,000! Our stretch goal in these final hours is $150,000 (“Make no little plans!”) and we'd love your help getting there!
Customer Acquisition and Growth
More than 3,600 registered users have joined the platform since the start of the campaign and we’re gaining momentum every day. So far in August alone, more than 1,200 new organic users have registered on Book+Main Bites.
During the campaign, we hit the 1M Bite views milestone! Since launching the campaign, we’ve had over 133k Bite views and more than 13k affiliate clickthroughs, a site-wide average of 10%. Industry standards are closer to 5%—so we know that Bites Sell Books!
Revenue
With our strong Bite views and clickthrough rate, our affiliate revenue continues to grow. In addition to that, we recently released advertising rates for our now bi-monthly newsletter—we’ve gone from one newsletter per month to two—and we’re sold out on inventory through October. We will continue to sell at these rates through the end of the year and then increase our 2020 rates based upon user growth.
We also rolled out Bitecamp to give authors the best tools to make the most of their accounts and over 220 authors joined us to learn more. We also announced that author paid subscriptions will be rolling out soon. In support of that, we offered a $1k Perk here on Republic for a Lifetime Pro Author account and ELEVEN authors and publishers have invested at that level or above! That not only shows their commitment and belief in Book+Main, but it gives them the added ownership of wanting us to succeed long-term! In addition to our Lifetime authors, we also welcomed dozens of additional authors, readers and industry professionals as investors through this campaign.
Growth Marketing Partnerships
In June, we launched a partnership with Pure Romance, a $250 million company with 30,000 active Consultants all over the world. Those Consultants, located in the United States, South Africa, Canada, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, and Australia, all inspire women to enhance their intimate lives, take charge of their sexual health, and take a leap and start a life-changing career. Every other month, we select a romance author to write an exclusive Bite featuring Pure Romance products. Those Bites are shared on Book+Main Bites as well as on Pure Romance’s blog and in both their newsletter and ours. They also provide gift baskets of those products to our authors to give away to readers. Beyond being a fun, new way to explore romance with our readers, it offers us additional exposure to new markets and user types.
In addition to Pure Romance, our growth has inspired additional partnerships with other romance and book-related platforms that will soon be rolling out! And, we’ve had a number of NEW publishers come onto the platform and encourage all of their authors to join in as well. Publisher interest has been so great that we’re moving into development next month on a Publisher Dashboard with additional functionality so publishers have a direct connection in supporting their authors.
Product
In addition to rolling out Bitecamp, we’ve also given our authors full access to their stats, both social-related (views, likes, shares, etc.) as well as sales-related (Bite-to-book clicks and retail clickthroughs.) Now, authors are empowered to have a complete understanding of what’s working and what can be improved upon. It also gives them a true sense of their ROI. As we mentioned above, our conversion rate is 2x industry standards on a “successful” paid ad on other platforms.
Industry Talk
New York Times Bestselling Author Colleen Hoover shared the following post on her Facebook page with over 500k followers:
“In the eight years since I've been in the book world, I've heard many people say they wished a site like Book+Main existed. It is a space that was created BY readers, FOR readers and it's ALL romance.
I've met the women behind Book+Main several times and I believe in them and what they're doing. They're trying to build all of the things we all say we want—book clubs that are built for romance readers (we are a UNIQUE group), a dream TBR, a place that is ALL books (no drama) and a place to call our own. They already have almost 50,000 readers on there, including more than 3,500 romance authors.
Here's what's so great: in the mood for a second chance, angsty novel with a strong woman? You can search those terms (or 300+ others) and get Bites—excerpts from books chosen by the authors—to jump in and see if you connect with the book. Like it and want more? Read more Bites or buy the book from Amazon, Kobo, etc. You can follow your favorite authors (I'm on there, but I'm not the best at posting, lol. Forgot my password, but I’m back in today!) and you can follow your friends and see what they share and love. It is hands down the best way to find books online. Want to move a book off your TBR? Search the book title and find Bites (if the author has them on there) so you can immediately know if one of the thousands of books you have on your kindle should be moved up.
Definitely join as a reader (https://bookandmainbites.com/ — it's 100% free!), but if you want to do more, check out the attached post!!”
—Colleen Hoover, #1 NYT Bestselling Author
Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels and five novellas. Hoover's novels fall into the New Adult and young adult categories. Hoover published her first novel, Slammed, in January 2012. Since then, all of her full-length novels have become New York Times Best Sellers.
Key Earned Media
We were featured on various news outlets throughout the campaign. Catch up on all of them here:
A feature on Republic's Superhero blog. Check it out here.
An interview with our CEO’s Alma Mater, Boston University, which you can check out here.
An interview with Scott Kitun of Technori on WGN Radio for their Startup Showcase. Click here to listen.
A feature on Chicago Inno. Check out the article here.
Our CMO, Melissa Saneholtz, was interviewed on Author Services website KateTilton.com. Check it out here.
THANK YOU!
We want to thank each and every one of you for your support. Whether you invested, shared this campaign with your friends or took the time to view our deal page, it means so much to us. We have big plans for Book+Main and each investment gets us closer to realizing our goals. A big, big thank you to everyone that we've worked with at Republic as well. We truly appreciate all of your support and efforts along the way.
At this critical juncture, we encourage those who haven’t invested to join our campaign. To those that have invested, we couldn’t have done this without you! If you want to increase your investment, now is the time to do so! Thanks so much!