The Giveway program
Writers! In short, stay away from the giveaway.
To re-cap. I entered the Goodreads Giveaway program at a cost of $119 bucks. Out of that 1,200 entered and 50 people won.
Did it spark interest in my book, a Beautiful Prison? No.
The problem is the giveaway program is pushed out to everyone, regardless of their interest, with equal weight, so people who are interested in kink have the same chance as people into sport fishing.
Worse, an overwhelming majority of those who entered are not readers at all. They have small if non-existant libraries. They are only trying to win something for free and have no intention of reading the book. I saw one with 40,000 books in their to read list, but only 8 books read.
Now I know that YOU, personally, only enter a giveaway for things you WANT to read. This post isn't about YOU, personally.
This can be fixed by giving weight to people who post reviews in the topic. In other words, someone who reads and reviews kink would have a better chance to win a free book on kink.
Will goodreads fix this? Why should they. They already have my hundred bucks and it costs them nothing but a little computer code to do. They've made their money.
How to be successful as a gold miner? Sell shovels.
The program is a NO.
As a writer, have YOU personally tried the program? What were your results. I'm not ruling out I did something wrong.
To re-cap. I entered the Goodreads Giveaway program at a cost of $119 bucks. Out of that 1,200 entered and 50 people won.
Did it spark interest in my book, a Beautiful Prison? No.
The problem is the giveaway program is pushed out to everyone, regardless of their interest, with equal weight, so people who are interested in kink have the same chance as people into sport fishing.
Worse, an overwhelming majority of those who entered are not readers at all. They have small if non-existant libraries. They are only trying to win something for free and have no intention of reading the book. I saw one with 40,000 books in their to read list, but only 8 books read.
Now I know that YOU, personally, only enter a giveaway for things you WANT to read. This post isn't about YOU, personally.
This can be fixed by giving weight to people who post reviews in the topic. In other words, someone who reads and reviews kink would have a better chance to win a free book on kink.
Will goodreads fix this? Why should they. They already have my hundred bucks and it costs them nothing but a little computer code to do. They've made their money.
How to be successful as a gold miner? Sell shovels.
The program is a NO.
As a writer, have YOU personally tried the program? What were your results. I'm not ruling out I did something wrong.
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Thank you for your wisdom, and kind words. I will look up Badger. Dallas has been a great help to me. I'm already on to the next. An internet troll gets locked up in chastity from a mysterious female dom he met on-line. Will he ever get out?
I'm disappointed the Giveaway is a fail. It feels almost like an easy fix.
Erik wrote: "Thank you for providing this feedback and I'm sorry to hear that it did not work out for you. Unfortunately, I did suspect that this sort of thing occurs.I've never done a giveaway, but some time..."
Well said!
40,000 books to read? Well, let's look at this in the way Emma would. Reading on average one book a week, meaning 52...Solve for X...
769 years to get through the pile! Happy reading!
Seriously though, Goodreads is for readers, right? Readers NEED writers, right? Who do we take advantage of? The writers. As if they get paid the big bucks.
Once there was a goose that pooped GOLD eggs.
Dexter wrote: "40,000 books to read? Well, let's look at this in the way Emma would. Reading on average one book a week, meaning 52...Solve for X...
769 years to get through the pile! Happy reading!
Seriously t..."
I can just see Auntie Mave adding them to her list of daytime reading, poor Emma lol
Chris wrote: "Dexter wrote: "40,000 books to read? Well, let's look at this in the way Emma would. Reading on average one book a week, meaning 52...Solve for X...
769 years to get through the pile! Happy readin..."
That would be Auntie Mave: The Oprah of kink! The Martha of Perversion!
I've never done a giveaway, but some time ago I had to republish a book of mine because the cover was too naughty (oopsie) even though Amazon approved it initially. I guess someone complained? Anyway, they didn't allow me to correct it so, long story short, I republished under modified title and gave it away for free for a while so people who had bought it before (like, 2 people 😃 ) could get the new one for free.
A ton of downloads, in fact maybe even a hundred. Did it result in increased sales of my other stuff? No, not at all. It's the same thing: people just grab free and have no real interest.
My summary: as a writer you must write. Just keep writing. Write for yourself and for the people that you know are buying and reading your books because they share your kink or your fascination with the same topics or they just love your style. As you publish more of them, more people will find, and more people will buy and slowly you will build a strong following that will stick with you because you write good things that they want to read.
I'm about 14 books into it by now (at least, that's what Goodreads tells me; some of that count are my collab with Badger Therese, shout out to a fantastic writer!) and slowly I'm gaining readers that seem to buy one book, then there's a spurt of purchases of my other stuff. Also, pre-orders are healthier than they were before.
Your work is great: super high quality and very engaging. You will make fans that will purchase absolutely everything that you put out, don't worry about that. Increasing your following is the thing that will take time and only writing more great stuff will help, I think.
It's also important we help each other. Read and review and leave ratings, especially on Amazon. Leave any review you put on Goodreads also on Amazon and cross-promote each other's works. Slowly we will all get more eyes on our works and the ones that really love it will show this. Big shout out to Dallas Dunlap who first started reading and reviewing my works. A fantastic writer as well.
And if that fails, perhaps we should try whipping someone? (Sorry, my bad! Forgot this wasn't one of my books 😃)