If you prefer the quick ascent rather than the long slog, then BookBub might be the tool for you.
Bookbub summarises itself as follows:
BookBub is a free service that helps you discover books you'll love through unbeatable deals, handpicked recommendations, and updates from your favorite authors. BookBub doesn't actually sell books. We simply introduce you to books you'll love that are available on retailers like Amazon's Kindle store, Barnes & Noble's Nook store, Apple Books, and others.
Gemini enumerates four points regarding the author-centric view of the service (featured deals) :
Submit a Deal: Apply for a "Featured Deal," offering your book for free or at a steep discount (e.g., $0.99).
Meet Quality Standards: Your book needs a professional cover, strong reviews (often 4.0+), and the first book in a series does well.
Pay a Fee: If selected (only 10-20% of submissions), you pay a fee based on your book's price, genre, and target countries.
Get Exposure: BookBub sends your deal to millions of relevant readers, generating huge downloads/sales and boosting your author platform.
Kindlepreneur has this to say:
After seeing what BookBub can do for readers, this has got to be awesome for the authors behind their recommendations, right?
And that's absolutely true. BookBub offers a second-to-none premium book promotion service for those interested. As a matter of fact, USA Today best-selling author and creator of The Self-Publishing Formula Mark Dawson has this to say about BookBub:
“BookBub is the gold standard when it comes to finding new readers, and they provide some of the best author resources in the business…”
And when he says it's the gold standard, I wholeheartedly agree. Let's review the ways that BookBub goes above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to handling your book promotion–both pre-order and new release.
BookBub Mastery by Nick Thacker shows authors how to how to get a Featured Deal…
...If you have a plan. In BookBub Mastery, you'll learn what BookBub really wants, and you'll learn how to give it to them. As a marketing platform it can legitimately change the lives of authors, so it's worth putting your best digital foot forward. Take control of your book marketing and launch your author career, using the world's best-ever book-marketing promotional platform. It's all here in BookBub Mastery — get started today!
For a rather more skeptical take on BookBub by Australian author Peter Ralph, checkout BookBub Rules in ebook format.