Attention Authors and Goodreads Lovers!
Did you know that authors will soon be able to give away ebooks on Goodreads? They used to only allow giveaway promotions for paperbacks which precluded authors who only publish ebooks from participating. Let’s face it. Sometimes we get the ebook out well before the paperback goes live. Or maybe we choose not to do paperbacks at all.
But soon you’ll be able to give your ebook away! In May of this year, Goodreads started a beta program for US members allowing authors to give away up to 100 copies of an ebook. During this beta run, Goodreads is working exclusively with Amazon Publishing but assure the rest of us that it will open to us soon.
Here are the basics:
- Unlike the paperback giveaway, this ebook program is not free. It will cost you $119. But the upside is you don’t have to ship any books out.
- When someone enters your giveaway, your book is automatically added to their To Be Read shelf and all their Goodreads friends see that they entered. This can generate buzz for your book and encourages even more entries.
- Print book giveaways will continue to be free.
My recommendation: If you haven’t ever tried a paperback giveaway with Goodreads, give it a shot while you are waiting for the ebook giveaway program to open up. It is quite easy to run the contest. I’m personally on the edge of my seat waiting for the ebook giveaways to go live!
Book marketing is a tricky monster to tame and Bibliocrunch can help. We have tons of marketing courses available over at authortech2.wpengine.com. While your waiting for Goodreads to roll out their ebook giveaway, check out what you can do in the meantime.
Happy Writing!
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