Why authors do giveaways…

of their books.

Seems counterintuitive, right? Why are you giving something you should be making money on, away for free??

You write a book ( a product) that you hope people read ( and pay for),and you spend more time than you’d like marketing the book just so people know about it. And the more people who know about it, the chance that you will make a sale of that book, rises.

Makes sense in a commercial, market economy, no?

Then why do authors give away their books for free on things like Goodreads giveaways, or the book schmivoways on tiktok, or at the facebook parties that were once all the rage when an author came out with a new book?

I can’t speak for every author, I don’t have that kind of conceit ( LOL) but I can tell you why I do Goodreads giveAways and tiktok ones, too.

It’s to gain new readers.

That’s the name of the game in book publishing right now. You’re going to say but I thought the goal was book sales so you make money off all your hard work.

Yup, that’s true. But in order to make a book sale, you need – wait for it – readers!

Finding new readers when you are tyring to make a name for yourself as a legit author is hard. You could spend thousands of dollars on FB ads, or ‘Zon ads, or Bookbub deals. But most of us don’t have that kind of marketing budget.

My first year as an author I had zero dollars to spend on marketing. And it showed. I think my first book during its first release sold something like 30 copies. In an entire year! And that was with a traditional publisher.

But as I gained some new readers, who, through word of mouth- bless them -gained me even more readers, I started to develop a following. But the number was small, loyal though theY were, and I needed to find ways to get more new readers who would turn into one-click readers. Ways that wouldn’t break my non-existent marketing budget.

I did my first Goodreads giveaway in May of 2015. 346 people requested the book – the first in the MacQuire women series and, my first book!

Did that giveaway garner me some sales? Yeah, a few. People who didn’t win bought the book just because they had seen it listed in a giveaway. I got a few fan latters because of that too, so my empirical data is truthful.

So…I kept doing the giveaways. The one that garnered me the most entrants, and which subsequently sold a lot of books for me on the back end, was this one:

2249 people requested it. That’s quite a jump from 346!

And now, I’ve got my newest giveaway going on over on goodreads for Mix and Match

The giveaway started on 8/15 and today ( 8/16) already has 614 entrants. The giveaway is set to run until 8.30.

How many of those people truly want to read the book and aren’t just entering because they want to win something? I can’t give you an exact count, but the WANT TO READ stats on the book are good so that tells me readers are interested. And since most of my “fans” already have read the book, this also tells me these are new readers – the gold medal of book sales.

So, that’s my reason for doing giveaways, why I give the book away instead of making a legit sale and getting some coin back on my investment. What I’m really getting for the ROI( return on investment) is new readers-to-my work who will – please Jesus – become lifelong readers of mine.

Want to enter the Goodreads giveaway? Here’s the link: GRG