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Goodreads Self-Serve Ads and Giveaways
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Kat
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Jan 01, 2015 08:52PM
I have Goodreads self serve ads going for about two weeks now for my new book, How to Get a Job in 90 Days and a previous book, What Could You Possibly Be Thinking?!! They each have over 50 Want to Reads. And the Click rate for both is .04%, spiking to .05% at times. Are these stats good, average, or poor? Also, what % of people who add the book to their Want to Read on average actually buy the book? Does Books Added mean they have purchased the book? Also I'm doing giveaways on both books and they each have over 100 entries. Is that good, average, or poor? The Goodreads info recommends doing both at the same time, which I'm doing, but part of me asks, "Won't they enter the giveaway rather than buy and then forget about it if they don't win the giveaway?" Thanks for any feedback on using self-serve ads and giveaways!
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Can't comment on giveaways but click rate is similar. Books added means just to TBR list. Many readers including me have tens of books on the TBR list, if not more. Some of these may end up as sales or review but it is a % of a %. This starts with ad views then clicks then TBRs of course some clicks may go straight to a sale and some may go without a click. It's almost impossible to know.
I hate to disappoint, but I spent a year tinkering with GR self-serve ads using different approaches, targeting strategies, images, copy, etc. My conclusion: they made no statistically significant difference to sales. The results could vary widely depending on genre, though. My book was targeted to a very niche market, so your results could be different.
Ken wrote: "I hate to disappoint, but I spent a year tinkering with GR self-serve ads using different approaches, targeting strategies, images, copy, etc. My conclusion: they made no statistically significant ..."So far Ken I have to agree
We tend to advise people that a 0.05% click-through rate is average, so if your ads are performing at this level, they are on par with other campaigns on the site. Sometimes it can take a few variations on your ads to find what your target audience is interested in, but if you're around that 0.05% CTR you're doing well already!
Thanks for these comments! I'm learning a lot. Do you all think it is wise to run a giveaway at the same time as self-serve ads?
Running a giveaway at the same time can definitely be helpful. We offer the option to include a giveaway link in your self-serve ad, so that will just give users one more reason to click!
Thanks,Aaron! But instead of buying now, won't they sign up instead for the giveaway?
Kat: I've found the giveaways great for getting exposure. Exposure equals new friends, some who in my case have given me reviews. Reviews equals sales!
I haven't tried the ads. I have run a few giveaways on my thrillers, 'What Laura Saw' and 'Gods Inc'. These have resulted in being on the 'to read' self of around 2500 unique users. I don't know what percentage of those will actually buy or borrow the books but I don't expect it is very high. I think most members have tens - hundreds of books on their 'to read' shelves and so will probably not get around to reading my books. But I am pleased that they have at least been made aware of them.
Yes, I was shocked to see that one person had over 40,000 books on her "want to read" shelf! Because my book is one that you buy with a sense of urgency, I'm not putting much stock in the "want to read" results...
40,000 books ؟Do we have time?
I wish to read all the books in my library...
Aaron wrote: "Running a giveaway at the same time can definitely be helpful. ... Hi Aaron -- A question about a GoodReads Giveaway: are the recipient winners selected randomly by computer algorithm? Or are humans involved in deciding which of some 500 entrants get one of the ten or 12 books on offer?
Thanks.
Kat wrote: "Thanks,Aaron! But instead of buying now, won't they sign up instead for the giveaway?"This is a possibility, but ultimately more attention will be brought to your book, meaning more exposure and potential buyers in the long run.
John wrote: "Are the recipient winners selected randomly by computer algorithm? Or are humans involved?"
Hi John, humans are not involved in the selection of giveaway winners.
Aaron wrote: "Hi John, humans are not involved in the selection of giveaway winners. "Thanks, Aaron.
I did a free give away and was very disappointed that I didn't get one review. I don't think it's an effective marketing tool. Anyone found it to be helpful ?Also, since Amazon has purchased Goodreads it would be great if Amazon reviews were allowed on Goodreads. Any thoughts?
Sandra wrote: "I did a free give away and was very disappointed that I didn't get one review. I don't think it's an effective marketing tool. Anyone found it to be helpful ?Also, since Amazon has purchased Goodr..."
Sandra, I must agree with you. I didn't get a review from my first give-a-way. Somebody previously suggested sending a thank-you note in the book, thanking them for entering and thanking them, in advance, for their book review. Another suggestion was to use an autographed copy of your book so it would not end up on e-bay for immediate sale, before it was even read...something I never thought about!
Giveaway winners are not obliged to leave a review, so I don't expect them when I run giveaways (I think I've had 1 review in 3 giveaways). You do get some exposure for your book (on the first and last day of the giveaway). However, that won't necessarily translate into a bump in sales.
Sending a personalized signed copy to the winner will ensure that they won't be able to re-sell it. Giveaways is great for exposure, reviews not so much. I've seen a bump in reviews since running a free promotion.
I ran a self-serving ad campaign for a while; views only seemed to be anything decent if the bid was above a dollar - click rates hit GR average but sales did not appear to be improved - though my website traffic did increase.Am thinking about a new campaign at the moment and was debating whether to use GR again or spend the bucks elsewhere ...
Ken wrote: "Giveaway winners are not obliged to leave a review, so I don't expect them when I run giveaways (I think I've had 1 review in 3 giveaways). You do get some exposure for your book (on the first and ..."All true. Like everything else about publishing and marketing your book, a GR giveaway is a crapshoot. Everyone can enter and anyone can win -- exactly as it should be, but who these folks are and what reading interests they have might work against your book. For the GR giveaway of my second novel, a dystopian science-fiction, people entered the contest who reported they don't usually read that sort of novel and generally don't like it; at least a couple of these folks won copies and, amazingly enough, read or tried to read the book and, not surprisingly, did not like it, and said so. OK, fine, they're entitled to do that. But why? What is the point? I wouldn't request a review copy of a "chick-lit" novel, then trash it in a review. I am not the audience for such a book. My opinion of it is irrelevant.
I'm speaking here just for myself, so everyone please take these comments with a grain of salt, but my experience in trying to publicize my first two novels is that nothing works. The problem, in part, is visibility -- or rather, invisibility. Even if your book gets good reviews from a GR giveaway, or from IndieReader (cost me $300) or from Kirkus Indie (cost me $450), who sees them? Maybe the original 500 or 600 GR members who entered the giveaway might, although some/many of these will have stopped being interested in your book once they learn they did not win a free copy. I don't know how many people see the reviews at IndieReader or Kirkus, only that the first (of my first novel) generated zero sales and the second (of my second novel) was so incompetent (factual errors were the least of it) and poorly written that I decided not to publish it (and there went $450 down the tubes).
Maybe this post belongs more properly in the thread for grousing but I think it's fair to point out here that the many "promotional" services currently on offer from Kirkus and IndieReader and Publisher's Weekly and GoodReads and BookBuzz and so forth are of dubious value in terms of actually selling books. Yes, your book will get the listing you pay for. It will get a review (quality not guaranteed). A certain number of maybe-interested readers will request free copies and you will provide them, and some of these readers will write reviews of varying relevance and perceptiveness. A wider readership, however, to say nothing of sales, is purely speculative.
Without smart, well-written reviews from astute readers, it's close to impossible to persuade other readers that your book is worth the time, much less the money. Trouble is, it is also close to impossible to get such reviews in the first place -- even if you pay for them.
I'm not saying, "Don't buy these services." I'm suggesting that, if you do buy reviews and run giveaways, tamp-down your expectations of what happens next.
I haven't tried the ads but I do a giveaway on Goodreads when I first publish. However, I only offer 1 copy and I think it's good exposure for a small amount of money. I agree that the number of sales from people who put it on their TBR list is small but every bit of exposure helps, right? There are so many books out there, it's almost impossible to get yours noticed. At the end of the day, very few of us can write a best-seller and we are just indulging our passion! As for reviews, they vary so much it is hard to know how much help they are. Some people say they never believe 5* reviews, others that they never read reviews. Keep plugging away and keep your fingers crossed!
Best advice I've had in a long time.
Mod
IMO, it's an attempt by authors to game the ratings system. In the long run, it's hurting all of us who write.
I've downloaded hundreds of books because they were free. Most of them are still sitting on my hard drive, waiting. Maybe someday. And maybe I found the book useless, uninteresting. In one recent case I looked at what I'd downloaded and it was nothing I'd ever need to look at again; I got no further than the introduction. Yet the author was suddenly very highly rated. Based on those figures alone, I'm sure people eventually paid money for the book.
Instead of writing something that would continue to provide value or enjoyment to future readers, he'd artificially inflated it to drive short-term sales.
I'll discount my books; even at $0.99, the potential reader has invested something in the purchase which will cause him or her to read the book. At that point, if they think they've bought a substandard product, they can return it and get their dollar back; they can also review the purchase and say why they found it objectionable.
FWIW, I won't be giving my books away.
Want a freebie? Subscribe to Scribd or Kindle Unlimited. Ten bucks a month gets you as many free books as you can read. But again, you've got skin in the game. You've paid for that unlimited stash of books.
Mod
Hello All!
So far in my small experience, doing a book giveaway on goodreads has brought exposure for me and running a kindle count down special boosted my sales. I would definitely do a kindle count down special.
So far in my small experience, doing a book giveaway on goodreads has brought exposure for me and running a kindle count down special boosted my sales. I would definitely do a kindle count down special.
J. wrote: "Freebies, giveaways, people adding your book to their TRL, all amount to little or nothing, though getting exposure is necessary to actually sell books and finding readers who like whatever kind of book you write is tough. "There's a question I've been asking myself: How do readers identify new books that are similar to the sort of books they like? I thinking mainly of fiction. What do readers look for? What hints & clues do they notice? What is the persuasive weight of reassurance necessary to tip mild interest into a purchase?
Does anyone have theory? Or how about a practice -- how do you identity new books you believe you'll enjoy?
I go to Amazon and put in a book I like and get lots of recommendations. I also put my preferences in BookBub and get great choices there. I like murder mysteries and legal thrillers and if I like an author will read all of their books so that also helps.
Thrillers, romance, detective fiction, sci-fi, adventure and all the rest of the 41 categories ... but what about old-fashioned literary/general fiction? It appears one is being shoe-horned into category these days.
Mod
For some, there is no correct genre. My Wizards series isn't about wizardry; it's SciFi, speculative fiction, where I speculate about what might have happened had the CIA's attempt to develop people with telepathy worked. They really did that in the 1980's. This is a quote from someone knowledgeable:"The term ‘eight-martini effect’ was coined by Norman Jackson, a CIA spokesman and former Technical Adviser to John McMahon, Deputy Director of the CIA. On the US TV show ‘Night Line’ (28 November 1995) which was about the use of remote-viewing programmes in the mid 1980s, he said,
‘Well, if it’s the eight-martini results you want to talk about, I won’t talk about them. “Eight-martini results” is an in-house term for remote-viewing data so good it cracks everyone’s sense of reality.’"
So my 'wizards' are espers, people with psionic abilities.
There's a genre for magic; there's none for psionics.
I call it 'paranormal'. That tosses the books in the bin with werewolves, vampires, and zombies. Phooey.
Otherwise I'd have to call it SF, either speculative fiction (which it is) or science fiction, which it also is, except that last deals with machines and rayguns and spaceships. Phooey again.
Phooey doesn't fit either, but if I used the word I'm thinking of, I'd get booted off here! :D
Jack wrote: "Indeed. And if you write cross-genre books, you're often not allowed by publishers or promoters to point that out."Yes: the "cross-genre" or "crossover" novel is regarded as a duck so odd it doesn't belong on the pond. Booksellers (including Amazon) don't have a way to list, for example, "Literary/Science Fiction/Dystopian," assuming (I assume) that the author will just dump it into "Science Fiction" (which is what I did -- possibly forestalling any interest from readers who enjoy "Literary" fiction).
I don't have an answer to this one, either. On the book itself (backcover, I mean), its nature is noted as "Fiction/Literature/Dystopian," which hardly helps.
I split these hairs only because readers, I believe, go by these categories and I don't want to mislead anyone. True devoted fans of Sci-Fi might consider my novel not quite the genuine article (I mean according to the established expectations of the genre). Same goes for TDFs of Literary, who might be put-off/impatient with the science, real and imagined, that helps move the narrative along.
Anyway. All of this would matter a lot less or not at all if a professional reviewer with a readership who trusts him/her would read the novel and publish a positive review. But that's not going to happen, either, because no magazine, print or online, is going to pay any reviewer to review my book ... because I'm unknown and no one will care about such a review until I am known ... but the only way (apart from winning a prize competition, always a very long shot) of becoming a known novelist is to be publicly reviewed by a pro reviewer ... but I won't be so-reviewed until I'm known ... and so forth in infinite regress of a hopeless predicament.
The way out is, I guess, obvious: get the novel conventionally published. If the same book comes out from Viking or Knopf, for instance, it immediately becomes legitimate and maybe gets some positive reviews and maybe sells a bit, with luck. A perfectly reasonable approach -- but one can't pursue it without an agent. And (again, speaking purely from personal experience) it's pretty tough to get agents to pay attention.
Mod
Ken wrote: "I hate to disappoint, but I spent a year tinkering with GR self-serve ads using different approaches, targeting strategies, images, copy, etc. My conclusion: they made no statistically significant ..."That's my experience. As for giveaways, most of the people who register for the lottery have no intention of reading the book. They just like to enter lotteries and most of the books will be sold for a modest profit.
Wow, Ken, 'most of the people who register for the lottery have no intention of reading the book.' I didn't realise that.
You can't say "most people" about anything, folks. It may seem like people have no intention of reading the book or whatever, but blanket statements that you cannot PROVE should be avoided, no?
At a time when I'm frantically trying to get reviews for my new book: How to Get a Job in 90 Days, I found this really hilarious and truly grounding!!http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1cISkv/...
Enjoy.
David wrote: "Wow, Ken, 'most of the people who register for the lottery have no intention of reading the book.' I didn't realise that."I never said that. Charles did, apparently. For what it's worth, I agree with him, though. It's easily proved by correlating the number of people who add the book to their TBR list and the number who show up on the "currently reading" list over a given time period.
