Post Goodreads Giveaway Analysis (Part 1) and A Gold Star!

star-407747_640As you know, I ran my first Goodreads Giveaway this past week. I’d set it up to run from Thursday last week until Tuesday of this week but when the approval came back, I realised it wouldn’t have started until midnight on Thursday so I changed it to start at midnight on Wednesday. When I got up on Wednesday morning though, it was already live! This means that it will have run for a week in the end.

As I’m writing this, 735 people have entered the giveaway and of these, 349 people have added my book to their ‘Want To Read’ shelf. When you enter a giveaway on Goodreads (just in case you haven’t ever entered one yourself), the book is automatically added to your ‘Want To Read’ shelf unless you deselect that option. As only half of entrants have added it to their shelf, I’m hopeful that those people are genuinely interested in reading it. However, from everything I’ve read on the internet about Goodreads giveaways, they don’t tend to increase sales for the author but I will have to wait and see on that front.

I am really pleased to see that so many people have entered though and would count this giveaway as a great success in raising the visibility of my book amongst readers on the Goodreads site. At the moment of course, I don’t know who will win the book but when I send it out, I have decided to send a hand-written note with the signed copy, asking the reader to leave me a review once they’ve finished the book. I have to hope that they will read it of course and that their interest in my book is genuine. I have read some horror stories of people who enter lots of giveaways just to resell the books themselves! This is why I’m pleased that I’ve only offered one copy.

And so what of the other people who entered? What can I do for them? Well, the answer to that is nothing it would seem. Goodreads has rules forbidding authors from contacting readers who have entered a giveaway. I also tried to put in the link to the Amazon page on the giveaway to prompt people to buy it if they wanted to but they removed it. A lot of authors are keen to offer a discount voucher for a copy of the ebook to those giveaway entrants who didn’t win and have contacted Goodreads with this suggestion but to no avail. This is such a shame and really does seem like a wasted marketing opportunity. The other option is to include a message on the book’s Goodreads page once the giveaway finishes saying that there is a special offer for giveaway entrants who didn’t win and if interested, those people should contact you to find out more. You could then offer an Amazon gift voucher to them to purchase your book at a reduced price. The only problem with that is that you can’t dictate what people use the voucher for 😦 I can’t think of any other way round that problem.

In summary then, I would say that it is a good way to raise visibility for your book but as to what happens after the giveaway, I don’t know yet and will have to wait and see.

In other news, I found out this morning that the cover for From Here to Nashville has been awarded a gold star in the prestigious Ebook Cover Design Awards run by Joel Friedlander on his website, The Book Designer. He said it is ‘A beautiful cover with typography that evokes the country music theme of the book, and a great color scheme. It sings.’ Wow! You can read more here.

Finally this week, I wanted to mention that as it’s my big birthday next Monday (eek!) and the week after that, I will be on holiday in Nashville, normal service on my blog may be a bit out of kilter for a few weeks! I will be posting bits and pieces here and there, if not on here, on Twitter and on Facebook, so if you don’t already follow me there, please do go to those profiles and click to follow or like. When I return, I will do a big catch-up post about it all and I will be able to tell you more about the Indie Author Book Fair I’ll be attending on 17th April in London.

Thanks for reading, as always. If you have any feedback on the Goodreads Giveaway issue, I’d love to hear from you. Have a good writing week, y’all 😉

14 thoughts on “Post Goodreads Giveaway Analysis (Part 1) and A Gold Star!

  1. This is all good information. I also had a giveaway recently on Goodreads, and am unsure of the results, except for the uptick of “want to reads.” No uptick in reviews yet.

  2. Hi Julie, await further news of your book give-away with interest. Big congratulations for the gold star on your E book cover design! Have a great time in Nashville, look forward to hearing all about that too.

    • Thanks for reading Sam and for leaving a comment. Have you done a giveaway at all? It seems like it is hard to translate interest into anything else. I am really looking forward to a holiday! I’ll probably bore everyone about it when I get back 😉

      • I think you have earnt your holiday! I haven’t done any giveaways yet, still chewing ideas over and reading about it. It must surely be beneficial to generate interest in the book, even if increased sales are not immediately evident. I’m optimistically adopting a slow-burn marketing philosophy!

      • There doesn’t seem to be much of an alternative for the ‘self-published author with only the one book out’ type 😉 Still, it’s all part of the learning process, I hope!

  3. Hi Julie, congratulations on the gold star!! That’s amazing!!

    Thank you for a very interesting update on the Goodreads giveaway process. It’s strange to me that they would make it so difficult for authors to market their books. You would think it would be to Amazon’s advantage that you do well.

    • Thanks, Tracey. I know what you mean about Goodreads, it all seems very odd. Their reasoning, I think, is that it’s a site for readers, not authors and therefore, giveaways are for readers to benefit from, not for authors to learn more about their potential readers. It’s still skewed then though because I bet lots of those people who’ve entered my giveaway for example, would like a voucher to reduce the price of the ebook and that would benefit the readers. Ah, well.

  4. I had nearly nine hundred people entering my giveaway but as far as I could see, it didn’t affect the sales in any way. I think you are right that it should be used primarily to raise your profile.

    • Yes, there’s not much else you can do with all that info is there? Still, I hope it’s worth something in the end 🙂

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