My first two book giveaways at Goodreads.com finished this week. Was it worth it? My gut feeling is yes, but as with most promotional efforts, results will take a long time to play out, and I’ll never have a good way to measure them.

A giveaway is easy to set up. I pick the title, the number of copies, and the start and end dates for people to sign up. At the end of the giveaway, I get an email from Goodreads linking me to a page with the names and addresses of the five winners. I send the books out.

Hopefully those five winners will like the book and give it a good review, or maybe even try some of my other books. But the real gain is that all those other people who didn’t win a copy at least took a look at it. 1002 people signed up to win a copy of The Dread Hammer; 136 have it marked as “to read.” 672 signed up for Skye Object 3270a; 62 have it marked as “to read.” Not overwhelming numbers, but it’s a start.

The cost to me was printing for the books, postage to get them here, and postage to send them out individually to the winners. I live in Hawaii, so shipping costs can get pretty absurd. “Media Mail” isn’t an option for me, because that can mean up to two months in transit, so everything goes via Priority Mail.

Would I do another book giveaway? Probably. When I have the right sort of book to promote.

What would the right sort of book be? An original book, that was not second or later in a series. Basically, something no one’s ever heard of because it’s that new, and one that doesn’t require the reader to be familiar with an earlier volume.

If any of my Goodreads winners (or readers) ever happen to wander by here, I’d love it if you would comment on the experience from your point of view.

Posted on: Friday, June 17th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Categories: Publishing.