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Goodreads Introduces Kindle Ebook Giveaways Beta Program (U.S. market)
Posted by Greg on May 3, 2016
Last year, Goodreads helped authors and publishers give away more than 300,000 print books in our popular Giveaways program! Thanks to this success, authors and publishers have been clamoring for the option to run ebook giveaways with Goodreads. Today, we have the news you’ve been waiting for! The beta launch of our new Kindle ebook giveaways program is now underway.
Here’s how it works: The author or publisher of a book – whoever controls the digital distribution rights to the book – can now offer up to 100 copies of the Kindle ebook in a giveaway. The author or publisher chooses how long the giveaway will run, and Goodreads does the rest. At the end of the giveaway, Goodreads randomly chooses winners and automatically sends the Kindle ebooks to their preferred devices and Cloud accounts. Winners receive real Kindle ebooks, complete with all the great features and security that Amazon’s Kindle platform provides.
Kindle ebook giveaways will initially be open to Goodreads members in the U.S. During this beta period, Goodreads is working with several publishers to host Kindle ebook giveaways, but once out of beta, the program will be open to any author or publisher - whoever owns the digital distribution rights for the book - who sells their ebooks on Amazon.
The cost of listing a Kindle book giveaway is $119, which allows you to offer up to 100 Kindle ebooks. Listing a print book giveaway will continue to be free. Why the difference? Both types of giveaways give authors and publishers a powerful way to market their books, reach lots of new readers, and drive buzz. With a Kindle ebook giveaway, we give you the opportunity to offer a large number of free books, reaching even more readers. We also save you on both costs and hassle. No more printing books, hauling them down to the post office, filling out address labels, and paying to ship them off to winners (which can cost hundreds of dollars for a 100-copy giveaway). No more delays in getting your books in winners’ hands. The readers who win your Kindle ebook giveaway will get their Kindle ebook instantly and will be able to start reading right away, which means you can get readers talking about your title faster than ever.
Authors and publishers have come to count on Goodreads print giveaways as a key part of their marketing plans. They are a powerful way to raise awareness of an upcoming book or reignite interest in a previously published book, and they generate the kind of engagement that makes readers take note. Giveaways are especially useful before a book is published, building the buzz and word-of-mouth excitement – through pre-release reviews and friends seeing their friends adding the book to their want to read shelves – that help successfully launch books.
Why should I run a Goodreads Giveaway?
The primary benefit of running a giveaway on Goodreads is generating excitement for your book. Many giveaway winners review the books they win, meaning that you can build word-of-mouth buzz early in your book’s life. The ability to offer up to 100 copies of a book will greatly increase your chances of receiving a good number of reviews.
Additionally, when a reader enters your giveaway, a post appears in all of their Goodreads friends’ and followers’ newsfeeds, which in turn, creates more entries, more people adding your book to their Want To Read shelves, and more awareness. That’s something you won’t get anywhere else.
Giving away 100 books or more is the technique that large publishers have been using for years with great success on Goodreads. For example, Riverhead Books has said that Goodreads played a major role in helping The Girl on the Train break out to early success. To help drive early reviews, they gave away 100 copies on Goodreads (case study). In total, they printed more than 4,000 advanced copies of the debut novel, as they knew that getting the book into a lot of readers’ hands was a key way to help make it a breakout hit.
Will I still be able to run print book giveaways?
If you love our print book giveaway program, don’t worry; it’s not going anywhere. Print book giveaways will remain free to list (though you are responsible for the costs of printing and shipping the books to the winners).
I’m an author and I want to run a Kindle book giveaway. What do I do?
For this initial beta, we are working exclusively with select publishing partners, but you’ll be able to list a Kindle ebook giveaway soon. We will open up Kindle ebook giveaways to all publishers and KDP authors with an ebook in the Amazon store in the near future. Stay tuned for more!
When will Kindle ebook giveaways be available outside the U.S.?
We’re starting off with the program in the U.S. Our goal is to make sure that we offer all of our features in other markets, but we do not have any timing on this.
My book isn’t published yet. Can I offer ebook ARCs?
You can run a giveaway for a book that has not yet been published yet. The only requirement is that the ARC must be in a Kindle ebook format and loaded into the Kindle store before you list your giveaway.
How are these giveaways different from Amazon Giveaways?
The two programs are completely separate. With Amazon Giveaways, you purchase each copy of whatever book you want to give away. With Kindle Ebook Giveaways, you pay a flat listing fee to give away up to 100 copies of your book. Additionally, Kindle Ebook Giveaways are available for pre-publication titles, while Amazon Giveaways are not.
Next: Six Lovely Lessons Learned at the Romantic Times Convention
You might also like: Five Tips for Running a Giveaway on Goodreads
Goodreads Authors can subscribe to the Monthly Author Newsletter by editing their account settings.
Comments Showing 51-100 of 323 (323 new)
message 51:
by
Debbie
(new)
May 09, 2016 11:36AM
I think $119 and a 100 free books is too much and too many. Not hip on the price.
flag
The charge might be more reasonable if Amazon guaranteed a review would result - a high percentage of most giveaways don't lead to anything at all. I can't see many people signing up for those free books, though.
Claire wrote: "...hope you also include formats other than Kindle--actually, it's really important you include other formats!! ..."I think that would require retailers like nook and kobo to allow goodreads to access their cloud and get up to 100 ebooks for an acceptable price -- unless you're talking about letting authors just freely send files that may or may not work, may or may not be safe, may or may not have DRM that works with winner's devices/apps or that allows goodreads rather than author send directly to winner, ...
Amazon owns goodreads so can, with author/publisher permission, offer up the kindle editions. Not sure other retailers would be willing to enter into such a relationship with goodreads (much less for the price).
The cost is outrageous, just Amazon with their grabby hands trying to make more money. I can do a free book promo via BookBub for between $100 and $300 and I will get 40,000 downloads. I'll take that over a measly 100 winners. This is not a solution for anything, in my opinion.
I agree--$119 is way too high. I don't understand why a printed book can be given away free, but ebooks are charged!! Amazon's giveaway isn't free, but at least you get to choose how many you want to giveaway, be it 1 or 20 and so on--what you can afford to pay out. But one thing I don't like about the Amazon giveaway is that your books can be shared by those that win them. That's why I haven't done that yet.I was so looking forward to Goodreads to start a program like this, but to charge ebook authors and not printed is not fair at all!!
Fabulous news! I spend more than that in FB ads per month.
I was happy until I saw the price tag. At this price point, you've taken indie authors completely out of the equation. Very disappointing.
I'm really disappointed as well about being charged to giveaway books. There are other avenues authors can use to giveaway ebooks which don't cost any money. It just feels like everyone is looking to take their piece of the pie, and as an indie author I'm paying more to others to try to market my books than I'm bringing in. Goodreads, charging $119.00 is a bad idea.
It sounds like it will be good for established indie authors already selling well, and small press publishers, but not that helpful to new or struggling authors. The price is prohibitive to limited budgets, and not cost effective if you aren't looking to do a mass giveaway.
Jim wrote: "Will these count as sales on my Amazon dashboard? Will I be able to give away books that are in KDP select, or is that a violation of exclusivity terms? Do I have to purchase the books in addition ..."Thank you Jim for asking all those questions that I was too tired to think of :-) good job.
Maggie wrote: "$119? Surely you jest!"His name is not Shirley.
$119? For 100 EBOOKS? Is this a joke? Because otherwise I would think you were trying scam desperate writers. Well, I'm not that desperate. I guess this wouldn't have been possible if Amazon had not purchased Goodreads, but even $19 would be too much. Perhaps they could be convinced to do it for free if the ebook is enrolled in KDP Select.
James, not to insult you, but...You remind me of the monkey in the Indian monkey trap. The hole in the coconut is just big enough for the monkey to get his hand inside and grab the rice, but not big enough to withdraw his hand and the rice.
He must learn to value his freedom over the rice. But he's a monkey, so he can't, and is caught and turned into monkey soup.
It's about building an audience to give you reviews, referrals and to buy your next book.
Let go of the rice, buddy.
Jim wrote: "Will these count as sales on my Amazon dashboard? Will I be able to give away books that are in KDP select, or is that a violation of exclusivity terms? Do I have to purchase the books in addition ..."
I was excited until I saw the price and conditions. $119! And why 100 copies? I would only want to be able to give away an occasional one or two copies at a time, like with print books. Based on this, I won't be participating. I'll simple run my own giveaways - much cheaper. No way can I afford the fee or to give away that many copies. Perhaps this will be suitable for larger publishers with good profits, but it doesn't suit struggling indie authors at all.
Brad wrote: "James, not to insult you, but...
You remind me of the monkey in the Indian monkey trap. The hole in the coconut is just big enough for the monkey to get his hand inside and grab the rice, but not ..."
Brad, I am not James, but I found your answer to be insulting. Are you a shill for GR.
You remind me of the monkey in the Indian monkey trap. The hole in the coconut is just big enough for the monkey to get his hand inside and grab the rice, but not ..."
Brad, I am not James, but I found your answer to be insulting. Are you a shill for GR.
About time! Goodreads stung me for almost AU$1,000 in overseas postage costs when they doctored my ebook giveaway without my knowledge. And why only the US? I hope this service will be extended after the beta program. Level playing field, please!
Wait. So paperback giveaways are free but ebook giveaways get charged through the nose? Thanks but no, GR.
I don't publish in print, so I'm obviously not going to be doing any giveaways there. And I'm unlikely to spend USD 119.00 to give any any of the three upcoming books.But didn't someone say earlier that the print book giveaways aren't actually free? There may be no cost to get recipients selected, but doesn't the author have to buy each book himself, plus pay for shipping/postage? Granted, you get back your royalties, but there's still a net cost to book purchases.
I obviously have no personal knowledge, but just offering a recollection of what someone said above.
Just my USD .02.
Eric
Wow. Have a great marketing plan, but not for authors. $119? No way. Authors can run their own giveaways for less. Too bad Goodreads put such a cost on this.
Great idea, GR, but you've priced yourselves out of the market. No writer who values their dollar would bother to advertise with you at this inflated price.Out in the real world, $119 buys you a paid advertisement with Kindle Nation Daily + Book Gorilla, one of the biggest players in the market. Actually, for books priced FREE, KND does a $29.99 package and you can give away 3-5,000 books each time (this is in my genre, Fantasy). For a 99c Countdown promo with KND you'd move a good few hundred copies, making your money back if not twice or three times over. On a BB advertisement writers are typically making back 10 x their initial investment, often more.
A few people here mentioned exposure. Sorry, there are better and cheaper ways to gain exposure. Be smart - DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!
It was intended not so much as an insult, but as a challenge of a stupid argument, which I have seen on here by lots of other posters to the point I am only going to say it once more, and then I will, to your delight, shut up.The point of a free promotion, whether it's books or perfume or whatever, is to introduce a new product to a new audience. If you give one person a free book, and they like you and then buy your next three books, aren't you ahead? Some moron said, in effect, I'm too lazy to quote exactly, that she's not going to give away 100 free books because it would cost her the revenue on those sales. What? She's never going to GET those sales! That's called counting your chickens before they are hatched.
You are right to point out that the ratings/review system is a mess. We had a friend who liked our first book and gave a good review, and Amazon took it down because they have an algorithm that figured out we knew each other... but at the same time they'll happily sell you fake reviews - if you pay. It makes no sense.
Books can only be judged after they are read. Scott Fitzgerald died out of print, out of sight, out of mind. So I would worry about improving your own writing before you slam others. And yes, that is an insult.
D.J. wrote: "Brad wrote: "James, not to insult you, but...
You remind me of the monkey in the Indian monkey trap. The hole in the coconut is just big enough for the monkey to get his hand inside and grab the r..."
Sorry if I smoked the wrong target. :-) I'm not used to this web site. I apologize. I had e-mails and pricing from Amazon, I wish I had saved them, didn't realize it was such a big issue. I actually wrote a post on my marketing blog on Linked In about how to spot fake reviews.As to improving our writing, my opinion now is the secret is not to write 'writing' but to tell a story you feel compelled to tell as passionately and as clearly as you can. Then go back and back-fill technical and exposition issues. I wrote my first novel LONG HAND because I knew that if I didn't I would re-write the first act 16 times and never finish it. And it was in first person. Talk about a death wish :-)
We used an editor for two novels my wife and I wrote together, and that is different, as I'm sure you know, from a copy editor. People like to take short-cuts, unfortunately.
The other way to tell if your fiction is going well (in my opinion only) is if the characters take over and you just have to chase them around and write down what they say. Those are the good days.
Very best to you. Remember what Fran Liebowitz said - "Writing is a life sentence."
I was really excited about this until I saw the price tag. Very disappointing. I usually give away 3-5 copies and send them to the winners using the book rate. I think my average cost is about $12 total.
Diana... please think about this. It's not about selling books. It's about building an audience. An author's fans are the most loyal people on the planet, they keep buying your books even if you crank out a turkey. Each reader who likes you will tell a friend or two. That's how you build an audience. Then, with books 2, 3, 4... you have instant numbers upon publication.What else can you do with $119 that will have that much potential impact? Someone accused me of shilling for GR... not true, I've always thought of them as a bunch of snobs. But with this I see potential to build numbers. I've given away hundreds of our first book on Kindle, and was delighted to do so. Got lots of 5* reviews for my trouble. Also, it's not like you're sending out free paperbacks that have a physical production and shipping cost. A download doesn't cost you anything. Think about it.
Ken wrote: "From the original post:The primary benefit of running a giveaway on Goodreads is generating excitement for your book.
That sounds like it's not any different from a print giveaway. The book make..."
Of course it is different from a print give-away! You have no hard cost or shipping cost! Can no one do basic math anymore?
A great idea ruined by an outrageous cost model. Indie authors won't be giving away that many copies of physical books, why not have tiered pricing. At the moment you are helping 1% but leaving the 99% out. We will have to keep using other methods to promote our work, this one is cost prohibitive.
Cost is way too much, especially since it won't count in rankings. As a number of others have suggested, a sliding scale for a lesser number of books would be more enticing.
Nicki wrote: "... No way can I afford the fee or to give away that many copies..."For what it's worth, you don't have to pay for the copies, the fee includes that. And you can choose to list up to 100 copies; you can giveaway fewer.
Helen wrote: "Cost is way too much, especially since it won't count in rankings. As a number of others have suggested, a sliding scale for a lesser number of books would be more enticing."
Doesn't seem fair not to count as " verified purchaser" if goodreads winner cross posts a review to Amazon, though. Not that "verified purchaser" means "real reader review from someone who read the book and wrote an honest review" necessarily but at least it says they really got the book so very well could be. Wish Amazon would consider a "giveaway winner" equivalent labelling now that they have giveaways here and on amazon.com.
Not counting towards sales rank -- well, free books haven't and the winners are not buying book.
F.P. wrote: "...I think there might have been phishing going on w...."If anyone has gotten email only pretending to be from Amazon, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome... for how to report the spoof.
Joshua wrote: "The $119 fee is ridiculous and is punishing people (indie authors, particularly) for not having hard copy books. Amazon allows you to do free giveaways which is why so many people use it. I was exc..."I agree. The math doesn't add up to me. If you use Amazon's free giveaway where you have to purchase the books, don't you still get a commission on the sale? If that's the case, 100 ebooks that normally sell at $3.99 would cost the author/publisher $120 - the same as the Goodreads giveaway. What's the advantage?
You're charging a $119 fee to send 100 ebooks? A virtually cost-free program to run but you charge $0 to manage giveaways of paperbacks? Surely that's a joke. I was excited about this program until I saw that. It's cheaper to do a free promo and buy advertising for it ($5 on Fiverr and less than $100 on most other sites) and reach substantially more than 100 readers.
I really think you guys can do better than that.
Easier to just run the e-book giveaways same as for print copies, supplying winners names to the author who would then send a Kindle e-book gift to the winners. Make sense?
The Suitable Inheritor - As the author of the just-released novel "The Suitable Inheritor" (spans CHICAGO and PERU with a strong INDIA connect), I would like to sign up for the Kindle Ebook Giveaways. How can I do so? Please let me know. Thank you so much.
Scarletine, can you please tell us more about the Smashwords coupons? (A link will be enough.)Everyone, thank you for sharing all this useful info!
I'm looking forward to the time when Goodreads will introduce giveaways of any ebook format, from any vendor (including self-published).
From an author's perspective: Oh dear.Are you really suggesting that I should PAY to GIVE AWAY my books?
Joan wrote: "The math doesn't add up to me. If you use Amazon's free giveaway where you have to purchase the books, don't you still get a commission on the sale? If that's the case, 100 ebooks that normally sell at $3.99 would cost the author/publisher $120 - the same as the Goodreads giveaway. What's the advantage?"There are two advantages I can see right away.
The first is that with the Amazon giveaway, you have to pay the full retail price upfront, then wait a couple months or more to receive the royalties. (As I'm finding out right now.) So it may (depending on your list price) cost about the same, but with a big difference.
The second is that you'd probably get several hundred readers entering the goodreads giveaway without lifting a finger, whereas (as I'm also discovering at the moment) you have to promote an Amazon giveaway yourself and fight for every dozen readers you can get to enter.
Whether you want to give away 100 Kindle copies (and it sounds like a good marketing move to me) and whether the results will be worth the cost - I think those are the two central questions we have to ask ourselves. And we'll each have our own answers.
Hi, What advertising will we get for the $119 other than Goodreads signups? Once an author links his Goodreads account to Amazon, will Amazon remove Goodreads friends' reviews from the Amazon book's site? This has been a problem in the past with Amazon where they remove legitimate reviews from reviewers linked to author in any way. Thank you.
I'm sure I speak for most authors here...but, $119 is steep. Especially since MOST NEWBIES only offer eBooks. Can you please offer this free as well or allow X amount free, then a price structure for more?
I think is a great program that Goodreads has sorely needed for a while. But I do find the cost of $119 to be a little too high as I can send out Kindle ARC copies on my own for free. I totally understand that it will take time (which is money) on Goodread's end to set up each giveaway, but I do feel the cost could be more affordable. Or maybe even offer a plan where the author/publisher is responsible for sending the copies for less.
Just last month, I hosted a private giveaway for 50 Kindle copies, paid nothing and had a better winner review rate than I have had with my past Goodreads giveaways. If you could provide statistics of winner review rates, that could help justify the high cost, but again that isn't something you can guarantee. Just food for thought.
Either way, thank you for making this huge step forward. I think it will greatly help many micro-publishers and self-published authors get their names out there.
I'm really glad to see this new program implemented. As for the cost, I'm a hybrid author and would definitely do this for my self-published books (and encourage my publisher to do it for the titles they put out). I don't think $119 is too expensive. As many people pointed out they can do their own for free...so do so!! The difference here is your giveaway is being seen by millions of readers that aren't already in your echo chamber. When you give books away for free from your site, you are only getting people to enter who KNOW about you and your books. By doing a goodreads giveaway you're exposing your books to an audience you don't already have!
Are you out of your mind charging $119!? You just killed your own promotion. I'll continue to give away my ebooks on my own until you come to your senses. I literally can't stress how stupid it is to charge such a ridiculous amount when there are so many other avenues to give away e-books for free. This is a massive bummer for authors, publishers, and readers.
I have to add; I'm not stupid. I know what this is all about. At $119, only mainstream writers with lucrative careers will pay for this service. That means that their titles will overshadow the titles of indie writers amd self pubbed writers; that's their goal. The market has been flooded by people, who can't string together a sentence, much less a book, yet they release this poorly written excuse of a book to honest readers, and then, these writers go the extra step to give each other fake, five star reviews in the hopes of tricking readers into buying their unreadable, hot mess. Goodreads has obviously signed a contract with some company attempting to restore the balance of well written works, which is a novel idea. Unfortunately, there are some of us, who can write, but what we write is for a niche market only, and so we suffer from poor sales, but Goodreads doesn't care about that; they juat want the people, who can't write, to get off their site... Touche, Goodreads....
How is it a bummer? If you are having success wanted with how you are currently doing your ebook giveaways, kudos! Continue or not as you want. No one is stopping you.If goodreads had signed some deal with mainstream publishers, businesses or authors -- why aren't more of those books in the giveaway program?
This program isn't required for goodreads authors. When it's out of beta and open to authors, goodreads hasn't said they'll be changing site policies to prohibit the read-for-review, beta-read and giveaway groups and group threads some authors are currently using.
It's an optional program for authors wanting to put kindle editions in the goodreads giveaways.
I'm thrilled they put a price tag or some sort of gatekeeping to prevent being so flooded the giveaways become useless for discoverability. I don't think $119 is out of line for both the exposure, the product, the ROI (impressions and click-thru kinda equivalent to shelvings, viewings, and entrants), the number of "subscribers" ( if used to thinking in terms of the growing number of marketing and review services touting they'll put your book in their posts/mailings to x number of readers -- their subscribers / participants ain't likely matching the millions on goodreads), etc.
I don't think $119 is out of line; but, I am in favor of offering authors some lower priced options for giving away say 1-50 books and 51-100 book levels instead of just 1-100. I think pricing too low like $5 to run a giveaway for 1 copy could still flood the giveaway past being useful.
It will be curious to see the return in terms of reviews and satisfaction for authors who do use and offer all 100 copies. On print books, generally not that many copies are offered by indie authors (their consensus seems to be that the exposure/ discoverability seems to be the same for a few books as for large numbers and paying for print on demand + shipping costs hasn't been affordable for most to even consider offering 100+ copies ...).
You either think it will be an effective promotion to reach readers or not. What marketing you define as successful in terms of reviews, views, sales, etc. is up to you. If $119 is outside of your marketing budget, it's outside of your marketing budget but hardly makes goodreads the villain for offering a new opportunity.
Here is just another option. It's never likely an independent will have the budget a larger organization will have for marketing or anything else. I do think goodreads is rigging the probable statistics on the success of the new kindle giveaways by pricing it where authors will likely offer a lot more copies than usual -- I'd expect a giveaways for 100 copies to get more reviews than a giveaway for 1 book; I don't suspect any new "deals" or relationships than they already had with owner Amazon and mainstream publishing by adding kindle option to giveaway beyond the mechanics.
D.A. • shelf! Shelf! SHELF! wrote: "How is it a bummer? If you are having success wanted with how you are currently doing your ebook giveaways, kudos! Continue or not as you want. No one is stopping you.If goodreads had signed some..."
Glad you like it. Go use it. I won't, and I want Goodreads, and everyone else here, to know that I don't like it.
Aaron wrote: "Glad you like it. Go use it. I won't, and I want Goodreads, and everyone else here, to know that I don't like it..."I like reading ebooks; my eyesight makes the larger text nicer. I don't need you to tell me to enter or not enter the kindle giveaways (currently the only one I might be interested in is for the later book in a series where I have bought but not read book one -- so I have no idea if I will like the kindle giveaways beyond knowing I stopped entering print giveaways when eyesight made me not prefer).
No one is making authors (unless your publisher does) ever giveaway a book here or elsewhere, print or ebook. You authors can use it or not, like it or not, give whatever feedback you want -- but, seriously, how is it awful or villainous or some conspiracy of goodreads/Amazon to add the option (or event to set the price for using any promotional feature on their site)? No more a conspiracy than who can afford to do top and banner ads here.
Price it where the giveaways are flooded and I won't bother wading through to enter any (other readers may feel differently and I do know some that just enter everything so don't bother looking to see what book they are entering to win and can whip thru page after page of giveaways quickly and easily).
D.A. • shelf! Shelf! SHELF! wrote: "Aaron wrote: "Glad you like it. Go use it. I won't, and I want Goodreads, and everyone else here, to know that I don't like it..."I like reading ebooks; my eyesight makes the larger text nicer. I..."
You're upset, and you're confusing issues. I'm not denouncing e-books or telling anyone which giveaways to enter. Goodreads asked me to comment on this post, and I'm doing my due dilligence, but you telling me not to use this new feature, is no different than me telling you to use it.
Furthermore, I never insinuated villainy on anybody's part; I just know what's happening behind the scenes; feel free to disagree.
Finally, my objection is soley to the price, and if you'll read previous comments by others, I'm not alone there. I'll thank you to check your anger now. Good luck to you.
119$???? You serious Goodreads? No thanks.
Library Thing lets you do exactly this for absolutely free and they even allow you to give away way more than 100 copies. Maybe you guys might want to rip a page out from their playbook, because charging indie authors 119$ without any other kind of options to go lower in pricing or even have a free option is just insane.
I was SO excited to read about this in the newsletter you sent this morning and of course, I click the link to "read more" about this awesome deal, and turns out it isn't awesome at all.
Rethink your strategy here guys, please. Library Thing offers the same exact deal for free, and if you really want to see how ridiculous your "all in" pricing really is, think about it this way: I can pay you guys 119 dollars to reach up to 100 people with my free ebook giveaways, with NO guarantee anyone receiving the free ebook will even review my book. OR-Instead, I can go on fiverr and for 119 dollars, get 29 GUARANTEED REVIEWS by people there. And before you spout off about how paying people for reviews is not good, well, I point to Kirkus and their enormous racket they have going on with charging authors three times as much as you guys for ONE small tiny review. And now I'm paying you guys, essentially, also for reviews, or the chance to get them, rather. I personally don't see the difference between paying somebody on fiverr or paying kirkus or now paying you guys, except in two of those three instances, I am guaranteed a review for my money.
Anyway, the point is that this is a huge letdown from a company I really respect and thought much higher of. You guys can do better than trying to grind more money out of those of us who are on Goodreads trying to make a living as writers. Please revise your policy and get back to me when you do.
I think this is a great start, since sending ebooks is more cost effective than how much it costs me to send print books during giveaways (about $8 a book, currently) but I wish there was tiered pricing.
Derek wrote: "119$???? You serious Goodreads? No thanks.
Library Thing lets you do exactly this for absolutely free and they even allow you to give away way more than 100 copies. Maybe you guys might want to r..."
Paid reviews ARE the professional way to go. These people will kill your book if it sucks and worship it if it's great, and that's what readers deserve, honest, unbiased reviews. Thank you. I will have to check out Library Thing now....
