At the end of November, I entered A Guilty Mind in a book giveaway on Goodreads. How an author structures their giveaway is up to them. You determine the number of books, how long the giveaway will last, and you can even advertise that the books will be autographed. (I still haven’t gotten used to people asking for an autographed copy of my book – weird!). The only stipulation Goodreads makes is that the book must not have been published more than 6 months ago. In other words, giveaways will work for books about to be published (great way to build interest) or for those recently published. This makes sense to me as that is when most authors are trying to build some early momentum for their book.
Today is the last day of my giveaway – something like 17 hours remaining as I write this. I chose to give away 5 books. I chose an end date of 12/15 because it is my responsibility to send the books to the winners chosen by Goodreads and I want them to receive the books before the end of the holidays. I’ve noticed that some authors choose very short windows (5 days) and only 1 book while some choose long windows (45 days) and 25 books. Obviously, how you structure your giveaway will be based on the type of book you have published and how long you feel interest in a giveaway can be sustained. Goodreads will include your book on the “recently listed” page when your giveaway starts and on the “ending soon” page when it is about to finish. You can also choose to have it included in any advertising you do with them.
So how has it gone? Well, the jury is still out on how any of this translates into sales but during my giveaway, nearly 400 people have signed up to win one of my 5 books and nearly 200 people have marked it as “to-read”. And these numbers have continued to rise all day as the giveaway is ending soon. While I believe romance and young adult novels seem to gather the most interest in giveaways on Goodreads (at least that’s how the numbers appear to me), I think my numbers are strong for my genre. However, what is unknown is how that interest translates into readers and reviews. Still, none of it hurts.
As with everything in my life lately, I’m wondering “where did the time go?” Good grief – two weeks flew by and my giveaway is nearly goneaway. Happy Friday to All!