Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Goodreads Giveaway

About a month ago, I decided to give away 15 free copies of my new book For What It's Worth. I first learned of this whole giveaway thing by way of another blog. This guy Todd Newton over at Initial Draft was giving away copies of his fantasy epic The Ninth Avatar. Never found out how it all turned out but just for curiosity sake, I decided to give it a try. As an independent author, you have to learn to give away a lot of copies in order to promote yourself. Some give away thousands of free books.

I set the giveaway for a month and now the time is up.

The giveaway was a great success.

654 people entered.

34 people have already put it on their to-read list.

What these 15 lucky people don't know is that they will be getting a special treat that comes with the book.

For any of you first time authors out there thinking of promoting your work, I strongly suggest that you set up a goodreads author profile, connect with your readers and start giving away free books. It's a win-win situation. I'm definitely thinking of doing this again when my next book comes out. But by that time I might be giving away 25 to 30 copies. We'll see. Thanks to all those who participated in this contest.

1 comment:

Todd Newton said...

Hi Rob, thanks for the mention.

The giveaway worked well for only being 3 copies. I did get a review out of it (on Goodreads), and I would second your recommendation to create a profile on there. I plan to re-visit it once the re-release of The Ninth Avatar (through Trapdoor Books) is ready to go.