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Publishing and Promoting
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Goodreads Giveaways - how to connect with applicants?
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Hi, John! Here's an excellent article that addresses your question and offers other tips to running a successful giveaway. Good luck!http://www.writehacked.com/writing/go...
Aviva wrote: "Hi, John! Here's an excellent article that addresses your question and offers other tips to running a successful giveaway. Good luck!http://www.writehacked.com/writing/go......"
Thanks, Avia, That's awesome information -and your response time was awesome too! I'd always wondered what the point was about Goodreads Giveaways, when authors patently got nothing out of them This idea gives me at least a chance to experiment...
Hi John,My experience so far with give-aways have been pretty good. I linked my give away with a free download of my novel and then coupled that with the give away. I asked those who collected the download to post a review either here or on Amazon and in doing so would qualify for the give away. So far so good. Love here what plans you came up with.
I usually get a review out of a Giveaway. I also get 800 or so additons to people's "want to read" shelf. Now, I don't get 800 sales out it, but those are the numbers I look at. T
Aviva wrote: "Hi, John! Here's an excellent article that addresses your question and offers other tips to running a successful giveaway. Good luck!http://www.writehacked.com/writing/go......"
Great information, Aviva. Thank you for posting it.
I wouldn't expect to get direct sales from a giveaway. The point is to get reviews, and those reviews can then help sales. For my last book I did a giveaway of 10 copies. I got one review out of that. I would have liked more, but I considered one review worth the effort of doing the giveaway.
Mark wrote: "I wouldn't expect to get direct sales from a giveaway. The point is to get reviews, and those reviews can then help sales. For my last book I did a giveaway of 10 copies. I got one review out of th..."I see the point, Mark, and many thanks for your reply. But ten books - posted - must have cost you around $100. You'd have to sell around 50 ebooks, subject to your pricing, to recover that cost. Would one good review, by itself, shift 50 ebooks? Do reviews ever shift books, all by themselves? Hm... I suspect that a lot of authors don't do the math. But I'll give a Giveaway a try, with just one book plus a lot of (ethical) followup. In the unlikely event it sells five books I've broken even :)
Yeah, author copies cost me something like $6 or $7, add in postage, so $100 is about right for 10 books. Also consider the effort to pack them and address them. I get about $4 per book sold in the U.S., so to break even it had to give me 25 sales. It's very hard to say how many sales that one review generated. Maybe none for all I know, or maybe half my sales would never have been made without that positive review. I don't know if anyone has data on this, but I strongly suspect positive reviews do indeed help turn prospects into sales. I often buy a book based on a good review. Maybe that's a subject for another thread: anybody got any solid evidence on how much a good review helps sales?
That would suit me fine because the first page of that free book would contain a link to my site where people could join my list to get a further free story. (My sole purpose in putting four novels at Amazon is to build my list. If 100 people read page one, ten will click my link and one will join my list. That's where the money is, not in the book sales.) But how could Goodreads handle that freebie offer? Is there any way a Goodreads Giveaway can provide a download link to everyone who enters, whether they win or not?