Goodreads Giveaway was the lead widget in the right margin of this website for the past month.
Goodreads is a readers’ website and they offer a great way for a book to find new readers: an author or publisher can offer one or more printed books to be given away (sorry, digital books need not apply). Goodreads conducts a raffle and the lucky winners each get a free copy.
In this case, I offered twenty copies of Death By Probability by Urno Barthel / Art Chester for the Goodreads Giveaway, with one month for prospective readers to sign up. I was happy to see 1,501 people sign up – although of course the price was right!
There were thirteen winners from across the U.S., six from Canada and one from the United Kingdom. Since Scotland is scheduled for a September referendum on independence I should probably be more specific: the U.K. winner was in fact from Scotland. There were no winners from Australia or New Zealand, although those countries were also eligible.
Although Goodreads Giveaway is obviously attractive to readers, it also has much to commend it to an author:
– Reviews are the lifeblood of book sales today. Goodreads Giveaway winners are encouraged to post reviews of the books they win, and 60% of them comply. The Goodreads Giveaway helps encourage reviews by giving higher chances to entries from past reviewers.
– Those who enter to win a book have that book automatically added to their “want to read” list, which can’t hurt the book’s chances of further readers and sales.
– The exposure of the book description to a thousand new pairs of eyes can help find new readers.
– The author specifies the countries whose residents are eligible for the raffle. Death By Probability owes a stylistic debt to some of my favorite British authors – Wodehouse, Dexter, Mortimer, Doyle and W S Gilbert – so naturally I included the principal English-speaking countries on the list.
Have you entered a Goodreads Giveaway? Why not give it a try?
Image Credit: book cover image © 2014 by Getty Images as successor to Jupiter Images
Did your publisher help you with the book’s marketing in any way? It’s great that your book is getting exposure!
Outskirts Press gives lots of help, some of it free and some you pay for. What I found especially useful was their professional cover design, their summary writeup for Amazon, and information about sites I can submit to for reviews and awards.
Outstanding read for great intrigue !!!