Goodreads Giveaway

I did a giveaway about ten days ago for my second novel, Dog Day Wedding. I did not do it for sales/readers/reviews. I just did it to get my name out there--for some exposure. I would recommend world-wide, though. If the winner is in the US, it's cheap. I like them to get the book right away so I splurge on the $5.25 priority mail so they get it in two days. Obviously you don't have to do that. Total cost for the contest for the paperback plus shipping: $10.00. I did have a winner one time that was in the Philippines and it was $18.00 just to ship the book. LOL. Still, I felt it was worth it and I was excited to ship my book over there.


You really don't have to do more than one paperback for the giveaway and do not make the contest long. Many people think the longer you make the contest the more entrants. But most of the time, that is not the case. I did a 3-day giveaway and got over 1500 people to enter. About half of them added my book to their to-be-read shelf. If you are doing it for a ton of sales, you probably will be disappointed.

In my experience with Goodreads, it can get you reviews, but the percentages can and will vary. I did three. One was a US giveaway of ten copies, and maybe half or so reviewed it. The second time I did another ten copies and expanded it to the world, which was more expensive due to the postage fees to ship overseas, and as I recall not nearly so successful in generating reviews (can't say how much or how little that might have been affected by the fact that a good number of those winners lived outside the US). Goodreads claims an average review rate of around 60%, but even if true not every giveaway will earn that kind of return. Last time I did one copy, just for exposure's sake. Other than getting on some more folk's To Read'lists, I didn't notice anything special from that one.

I've been tempted to do what someone has been doing with one book, but I can't decide how I feel about the tactic. The book is a perennial on the giveaway list, always appearing at the tail end of a given day's giveaways, having been entered a day or two prior to that day's cutoff. Nonfiction. I do remember reading a mention of it in the book section of Entertainment Weekly as one of a selection of up and coming books, but no idea whether the frequent giveaways may have had anything to do with that or not.

And while a giveaway may get you on a lot of To Read lists, I've noticed that some of those folks have thousands of books on their lists, so whether or not they'll ever get around to ours seems problematic at best.

My experience with doing a Goodreads Giveaway:

Back in January when I was first starting on this journey, I read here somewhere that doing a GR Giveaway was a good way to get reviews. So without know much, I signed up for one. When they asked me how long I wanted the giveaway to last, I didn't know--so I looked at other giveaways and guessed that the average was a couple of months so I chose 1/6 to 3/6.

That was a very lucky decision. BUT NOT FOR GETTING SALES AS IT TURNS OUT.

I've learned that doing this sort of giveaway is great for EXPOSURE only and drawing it out for as long as you can makes for more exposure in my opinion. I know others have other strategies for this--like do short giveaways so you get on the ending soon page quickly--and I respect those strategies, but I'm just sharing what's worked for me.

I am currently on the first page of most requested books:

http://bit.ly/1LZpuTf

And I've been on page one and two for a while now, and this has really boosted my daily "add to shelves" stats which are running at an average of 20+ per day:

http://bit.ly/1DEU42x

Again, THESE NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING...it's just great exposure for your book.

I doubt that it will even amount to any reviews in the end.

But it's fun to watch, so there's that.

The only caveat I'd offer about doing a Goodreads giveaway is to avoid having your giveaway conclude on the last day of the month or the first day of the month. I regularly scroll through the listings (just clicked on one because my wife is interested in it) on their last days, and there are typically a plethora of books being given away on those two days (recently I must have gone through around fifteen pages for books whose giveaways were for the month's last day). The fifteenth of the month is a busy day too, coming in the middle and all. I suspect that when people or publishers are arranging these things, it just feels natural to pick one of those three days.

I have one in the pipe for the first book in my series, arranged to conclude around the time the next book goes live (it's on preorder right now). The giveaway's not live yet, but should be soon. I've tried to tweak a couple of things in the description, so if anything meaningful comes of said tweaking, I'll make mention of it, either here or in a separate thread.

You're welcome, Emily.

I should also add that sometimes things get a bit screwed up as regards a Goodreads giveaway and the author may be unable to prevent it. Mine (along with a number of others) was submitted on February 26, but wasn't listed until March 1, along with those submissions entered on Feb 27. Feb 28 and March 1. Usually these books collect a significant number of their total entries (and consequently their views) on the first and last days of the giveaway, but because there was a bulk authorization of several days worth of books, my own (along with a number of others) wasn't visible under the 'Recently Listed' tab until around the ninth page; this because the books submitted on March 1 were listed first (and there were quite a lot of these), which meant minimal visibility and a corresponding reduction in potential entries for us February 26 folks on that first listing day.

Usually it only takes a couple of days to process these submissions, so there must have been some sort of hiccup on their end this time. The only way I can see to minimize this potential problem might be to create one's giveaway around the end of the first or third week of the month, as well as ending it around that time, since the large volume of submissions being processed around the end of the month might have had something to do with this happening.

I just did my last GR Giveaway and reading this thread ... I get a rush of "Oh my God, I'm so glad I don't have to do one of those ever again!"

I did them because it was the only way to gain fast exposure on GR but the value of this exposure is virtually meaningless when there is no discussion of the books, or sell-through or even reviews. People who enter the giveaway automatically get the title added to their TBR list unless the uncheck the little box that says it will be added.

There is no attempt on GR's part to match readers with appropriate giveaways or even readers who regularly review with giveaways. Of my latest 3 winners, only one seems likely to read the book. The cost of mailing from Canada ran to $64 plus the cost of the books for a total of $85. The winners are unlikely to promote through word of mouth since two of them have no books on their "shelves" and one says he's interested in web comics. I hope he has the sense to give my book to his mom.

When I realized that for $85 I could buy ads, run promotions or sign up with a book reviewing service to reach readers who actually would read the book, I decided very quickly that I'd never do a GR giveaway again. It feels great to have that monkey off my back.

(I love GR but as a reader. The reviews people post on popular titles are incredibly witty and astute.)