Hello there Sea Changers and welcome to my post covering the top 10 book affiliate programs to read up on this year. Believe it or not, the online sale of books is an extremely lucrative niche with studies showing that over half of all book purchases in the U.K. alone are undertaken online. This means that for affiliate marketers with an interest in books of any kind, there is some money to be made as you can target books in any number of well-known evergreen niches such as hobby, health and wellbeing and love and romance.
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Keeping that in mind, as I run through them I am conscious that as this is potentially such a large niche, that the number of affiliate programs to choose from may be just as large. So how have I picked my best 10? Well… I really just wanted to give you a good cross section of what is out there so I did some searching around and checked a few out and chose them by looking at:
- What they offer
- Commission rates
- Payment terms
- Cookie duration
- Application processes
- Affiliate/Marketing materials provided
Before we start however, let’s have a look at what I mean by the term book and how it can be incorporated within an affiliate marketing website…
What do we mean by Books?
Look, silly question I know, but I just wanted to be clear on what it is that we are looking at here. Essentially, there are so many different genres that it is nearly impossible to narrow to each one – not to mention the difference between the old fashion paper based and newer electronic books. So for this post I have tried to cover a good cross section across some of the sub niches such as:
- New books
- Used books
- Specific hobby/genre books
- Electronic books
- Book accessories
And of course anything else that you may incorporate when you think of books.
What can affiliate marketers promote?
There are essentially no real barriers to what affiliate marketers can promote when it comes to making money selling books online. There are however some things to be aware of as you run your eye over affiliate program possibilities that may suit your site. These are:
- Know your audience, some purchasers are looking for specific information/titles whilst others are hoping to get their hands on a ‘great read’ at a good price. Choose your affiliate sites accordingly.
- Purchasers of children’s books will not take risks if they don’t trust you or your affiliate site. Make sure the programs you choose are reputable and have good recourse options if the purchaser is not happy.
- Those looking for instructional type materials want clear, precise information on what it is that the book will be able to help them with – and you will need to make sure you have the language right.
As I have said however, stats show that people will spend money on books online if it can make their lives easier so as long as you are solving problems, then you are on the right track. And to give you a boost, let’s have a look at 10 programs that I have found below:
1. Indigo
Indigo books is well-known in Canada for its full range of books of all genres and interests – most at heavily discounted prices. Their product catalogue is way too large to list here but they do offer books in the following categories:
- Best Selllers
- Fiction
- Non Fiction – interests, occasions etc.
- Ebooks and Audio books
- Children’s and teens
This is a great site for those in the general book niche of any type with a great range allowing for both review and comparison posts. Alternatively, if books are a part of a different niche (cooking, travel, electronics etc.) then this site also offers a large range of non-book related products including:
- Electronics
- Fashion
- Stationary
- Baby gear
- Toys
- and so much more.
Commission Rate: Up to 5%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not Stated
Application required?: Yes – Indigo’s affiliate program is managed by CJ Affiliates. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Indigo affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Data feeds, Personalised promotions and text links
2. Book Outlet
Does your site deal with the budget conscious reader? If so, then take a good look at Book Outlet. This site contains a large range of books (over 90,000) in all genres at 50% to 90% off of the recommended retail price. Its range includes:
- Biography
- Children
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Crafts & Hobbies
- Fiction
- Health & Fitness
- History & Geography
- Religion & Spirituality
- Tween
- Young Adult
As I have said, this site offers all of its books at heavily discounted prices. It is able to do this as it deals in publisher returns and excess inventory. Most books have a small mark in them but are new and unread at time of sale. The discounted price ranges of this site also make it a good one for those building their own product inventory for trade and swap sites.
Commission Rate: 10%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 45 Day
Application required?: Yes – Book Outlet’s affiliate program is managed by Awin. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Book Outlet affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Text links, banners and seasonal offers
3. thriftbooks
Thriftbooks is a massive online book store with over 13 million titles available in just about any genre or category that you can think of. There are way too many to list here but I am fairly confident that whatever sub-niche you have chosen for your site, there are books to cover it here. The added advantage of this site also is the fact that you can decide in most cases how you wish the book to be purchased – hard cover, soft cover, new, used or even very used again making it a great one for budget conscious shoppers or “where to get the cheapest books” posts.
There is also a great range of vintage and first edition books giving you a great addition to your mainstream offerings and seasonal promotions. And finally, if you are looking to build your own catalogue of products for a trade or rental site, they also offer a great range of wholesale options.
Commission Rate:
- Commission is 5% of total cart value of each transaction
- 6% Total Commission for Monthly Sales ≥ $100
- 6.5% Total Commission for Monthly Sales ≥ $400
- 7% Total Commission for Monthly Sales ≥ $1,500
- 7.5% Total Commission for Monthly Sales ≥ $4,500
- 8% Total Commission for Monthly Sales ≥ $10,000
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes – thriftbook’s affiliate program is managed by CJ Affiliates. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the thriftbook affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Text links and banners, product feed, personalized promotional offers
Note: Affiliates that reside in Arkansas, California, Kansas, New Jersey, or New York are ineligible to join this program.
4. Biblio
Biblio is a great used book site that also specialises in rare and out of print options – in fact it boasts “instant access to 65,000,000 used, rare, and out-of-print books, from over 5500 independent booksellers worldwide”. It also has some great sections covering the art of book collecting making it an attractive program for anybody in that niche. It range of collections is way too larger to list here and again, I would be surprised if you could not find something here to match your own site.
The site also contains a good range of student textbooks at discounted prices as well as a frequent readers club where members can save 10% off of all purchases.
Commission Rate: 5% commission on purchases under $500, and $25 for each purchase over $500.
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes – Biblio’s affiliate program is managed by Share-A-Sale. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Biblio affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Access to exclusive newsletters and coupons, ad banners, text links, API feeds
5. Knetbooks
We all know how expensive high school and college text books can be so if your niche centres around this type of book (or education for that matter) then I suggest you have a look into the Knetbooks program.
Knetbooks is a text book rental site that allows students to rent their books for a pre determined length of time at a fraction of the purchase cost. They have over 6 million titles in inventory making it a great site regardless of your location.
Commission Rate: 8%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 45 Days.
Application required?: Yes – Knetbook’s affiliate program is managed by either CJ Affiliates or Share-A-Sale. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Gemvara affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Text links and banners, product feeds
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6. Bookroo
Bookroo is a subscription based book club site catering for children. With a preface of encouraging children to read, it offers a variety of subscription models based on the ages and reading appetite of the children.
Prices start at $19.95 per month with further discounts for 3, 6 or 12 monthly commitments. Books are chosen based on research from parents, kids, educators, and experts making this a well trusted site for any affiliate in the children’s book or educational reading niches.
Commission Rate: 10% (on first purchase)
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes – Bookroo’s affiliate program is managed by Share-A-Sale. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Bookroo affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Text Links, banners, product feeds
7. Audible
Audible is perhaps the largest audio book site in the world with a good reputation (it is a subsidiary of Amazon) and access to millions of titles in every category imaginable.
There is a free trial offer which is a good sales leader for affiliate marketers with the ability to promote this site as a post banner for just about any book related post that you write.
Commission Rate:
- Audible Gold Digital Membership $10.00
- Audible Free Trial Digital Membership $5.00
- Audible Audiobook $0.50
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: Not stated
Application required?: Yes – Audible’s affiliate program is managed by Amazon Associates. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used and abide by Amazon Associate’s rules and regulations.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Image and Text Links
8. Christianbook
As the name suggests, Christianbook caters for all manner of books within the Christian niche including:
- Bibles
- Christian living
- Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Family
- Devotional
- Men
- Women
- Children
- Audio and large print books
If your niche is more on the Christian side than the book side of things, this site also offers a large range of DVDs, Gifts, Church and bible study supplies, toys, Christian music and much more. In fact if I am being honest, and without sounding condescending or disrespectful, if there is something Church related you are looking for for your affiliate site, I would be very surprised if you could not find it amongst the 500,000 products on offer here.
Commission Rate: 8%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 30 days
Application required?: Yes, basic personal and website information required.
Requirements:
- You must have a functional, reviewable, well-designed, English-language website.
- You must be able to use HTML or contract a service for that purpose.
- You must be able to generate a minimum of $313 in sales annually.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Ads and copy, Text Links,
9. Kobo
Another good site for those of you in either the book or electronic niches is Kobo. Again covering a massive range of titles, there are options for purchase in either eBook or Audio book as well as a good range of apps and readers to allow access to them.
If your site is aimed at avid readers, then the Kobo rewards scheme offers points for each dollar spent on their range of over 1.5 million titles. Titles are compatible with most readers also allowing for a good range of cross selling opportunities on book review, comparison or eBook benefits posts etc.
Commission Rate:
- 5% on ebooks
- 10% on devices and accessories
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 14 Days
Application required?: Yes – Kobo’s affiliate program is managed by Rakuten Marketing (owners of the site). You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Rakuten affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Text Links,
10. Put me in the Story
Put me in the story is a cool little site that allows you to personalize best-selling children’s picture books by adding your chlld’s name to the story. You are able to choose from a massive range of well-known character books including:
- Mickey Mouse
- Disney
- Marvel’s The Avengers
- Elmo and Sesame Street
- Disney Princess
- Pete The Cat
- Curious George
- Disney Baby
- National Geographic
Books can also be selected by categories such as boy and girls in age groups, birthdays as well as special occasions such as Halloween and Christmas making this a great site to promote year round as well as in these gift giving time frames. Prices are a little more expensive (as you might expect) than normal books however they can certainly be promoted on an affiliate site as a special treat type sale or banner ad on standard posts about children’s books.
Commission Rate: 10%
Payment Terms: Monthly
Cookie Duration: 45 days
Application required?: Yes – Put me in the Story’s affiliate program is managed by PepperJam. You will be required to apply for an account and then for the Put me in the Story affiliate program. You will need to enter personal and website information as well as promotional plans and platforms to be used.
Marketing material provided: Banners, Text Links, customized and exclusive promotions
Amazon associates
Alternatively, should you wish to set up your site up with a range from a few different brands or companies on the same site then you can do so via Amazon. Amazon provides access to a good range of book related products and has a fairly good affiliate program as well. So if you wish, join the Amazon Associates program, locate the relevant products/titles within Amazon itself and you can post links on your own site as per below:
Amazon’s commission rates are nowhere near as high as some of the programs listed above (4 – 7%) however some prefer this avenue due to the sheer amount of traffic and trustworthiness that comes with a company site of this size.
How to find your own affiliate programs
As stated earlier, by outlining the sites above I have really just tried to give you a good cross section of the types of programs that are out there by listing the really good ones in each ‘category’. That does not mean that you cannot find affiliate programs that better suit what it is that you are trying to do within this space – especially as I could never even begin to cover every book related requirement or sub niche in the one post. Luckily for us, there is a simple way to find these programs online.
All you need to do is enter “affiliate: niche type” into your search engine (substituting ‘niche type‘ for whatever product it is that you are choosing to sell).
There are book related affiliate programs for everything else that we have listed at the top of this page as well – you will just need to have a look around until you find one or two that suit your site. Once you have completed your searches, you can look through and find programs that:
- Relate to your niche/problems that you are solving.
- Have quality products – your brand can be severely damaged if you promote poor quality products.
- Have solid payment and customer service arrangement.
- Pay decent commissions.
- Have good testimonials covering commission payouts and quality of product.
In most cases, you will need to apply for the program before you are allowed to promote their products – don’t take this step lightly or you will be rejected. Affiliate programs will generally want to know:
- Your website name.
- Traffic levels.
- Why you want to join – (so I can make money by selling your books is unfortunately not generally a good enough answer).
- How you plan to promote their products.
Conclusion
So… There are 10 of the best book affiliate programs to read up on this year. I hope it has been helpful for you as you commence your own book/reading based affiliate marketing business and as usual, please do not hesitate to comment below if you have any questions, need some advice or have any experiences to share. Oh, and especially comment if you have any experience with these, or any other programs as well.
Do you want further assistance with any of the above or need help to build your own book/reading based website?
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Until next time
Have fun
Paul
Note: If you make a purchase from this page, there is a very good chance that I make a commission from it – these commissions do not increase your sale price. This may include sales made via Wealthy Affiliate.
