Google Play Books Now Offers Promo Codes

23.10.2020 Nate Hoffelder 3 Comments

Google just gave us another reason to set up an author/publisher account in their bookstore: Promo Codes.

The ad network giant sent out an email via the Google Play Books Partner Center yesterday which touted a new (?) promo code feature.

Dear Partner,

We’re launching a new marketing tool for publishers: promo code campaigns. Promo code campaigns can be used to offer select customers a free or discounted book without lowering your book’s list price in the store.

With promo codes, you can:

• Offer discounts to customers in 75+ countries
• Distribute free books to generate buzz or reviews
• Create deals to integrate with marketing campaigns or event promotions

With promo code campaigns, you have three different discount options:

• Free allows customers to redeem the book at no cost
• Percentage off (ebooks only) allows customers to receive a percentage discount off the book’s list price.
• Fixed price promotion allows customers to purchase the book for a lower fixed price.

After creating a promo code campaign, you can share the promotion with your customers via a code and hyperlink (URL) to the Play Store, where they can redeem the code. You can create up to 5,000 codes per campaign and up to 3 promo code campaigns per month.

You can read more about it in the Play Books help pages.

I don’t know about you, but after Google announced the launch of a 70% royalty offer last week,  I was expecting them to launch new tools and services you could use to promote sales in Play Books.

This is a good development, although I do not know if it will have much impact. Based on the response from authors last week, Play Books' share of the ebook market is negligible. Consumers don’t want to shop there, and releasing promo codes isn’t going to change that.