Good Reads Book Giveaways

Guest Post by Joelle Anthony
Here you go. http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/5228-restoring-harmony

Giveaway on GoodReads.com

Last week, we talked about book giveaways in general. Today, we have a case study on book giveaways on Goodreads.com. Thanks to Joelle Anthony for this guest post.

On Your Site OR On GoodReads?

Book giveaways have become a great way for authors to draw people to their websites, and almost every day, several new announcements for contests pop up on Twitter and Facebook. There are usually more giveaways going than a person can keep up with though. Also, giveaways through blogs are often complicated and/or demanding for the person who wants to enter and can be time consuming for the author too.

It seems like many authors only want to give books away if you become a follower of their blog, retweet, fill in a form, or post about the contest on your site. If this works for them, and people don’t mind doing it, then I think that’s fine, but I personally like the ease of doing a book giveaway on Goodreads.

Goodreads Makes it Easy

For the author, Goodreads handles almost everything. There are a few requirements though. For example, your book has to either be coming out, or has only been out for six months or less. You can give away ARCs (advance reading copies) or actual books, but you do need to say exactly what you’re giving away, and ebooks are not allowed. You can read all their terms and conditions on their site. http://www.goodreads.com

It’s also easy for people to enter, which increases the entries. If you have a Goodreads account, and you see a giveaway you’d like to enter, all you have to do is click one button. If you’re chosen as the winner, you’ll get an email from the author asking for a mailing address. That’s all there is to it.

The nice thing about giveaways at Goodreads is that the site promotes them, they pick the winner, and they simply email you the winner’s information at the end.

Get Results at GoodReads

Also, the sheer numbers of entries can’t be beat. I’ve seen bloggers give away my book and have as few as twelve or thirteen entries and other more popular bloggers garner maybe as many as two hundred, but my first giveaway on Goodreads netted two thousand and seven entries.

In conjunction with this guest post, I listed a giveaway for my book Restoring Harmony on Goodreads one month ago. After ten days, I had over six hundred entries. Many of these people who entered also added my book to their To Be Read lists. I doubt all of them will actually read/buy it, but even if only a few do, those are probably readers I wouldn’t have reached.

Cross Promote

You can increase your entries, and thus your exposure (the more entries you get, the more actively Goodreads promotes your giveaway) by posting links on your own website, Facebook, or tweeting about it on Twitter. I do a reminder on Twitter and FB once a week during the contest, and the number of entries definitely jump when I do this.
So if you have a recent or upcoming release, I urge you to try listing a contest. Publishers can do the giveaway too, so you may be able to get your publicist to provide the book so you don’t even incur any expenses. One last thing I want to suggest is make sure you let your contest run at least a month. It gives it a chance to build momentum and interest and for plenty of people to enter. Speaking of entering, you can still enter to win Restoring Harmony through today, September 10th, 2010.