A Guide to Goodreads Giveaways for Authors

Goodreads is a pretty cool platform for authors to connect with readers and get more exposure and sometimes Amazon book reviews. If you're not utilizing Goodreads Author Program and you're wondering if you should and how you should, well then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, a full service self publishing company helping nonfiction authors write, publish and promote a nonfiction book to grow their business and their brand. Because our focus is is on business and brand growth around a book, Goodreads is not our number one priority around here. Let's be real, an author like Roger Hernie who's written a book like this beauty here out think outperform, it's not really going to find a lot of its readers hanging out on Goodreads. His book is all about understanding customer motivation and behavior as the key to driving business success. This is behavioral marketing for for marketing leads at big companies. They might be hanging out on Goodreads, but that's going to be the exception, not the rule. We still run Goodreads giveaways for a book like this. More on that in a minute. But it's not like Goodreads is going to be the backbone of his strategy for him. In fact, we have him set up to sell direct from his website so he can capture contact information of his buyer and direct his corporate clients there instead of to Amazon or other places. You can check out his beautiful website right here@rogerherney.com but a book like Suzanne Murray's Skidding into Heaven is one that could benefit from some time spent on Goodreads and a bit more of our launch strategy with her incorporated Goodreads. But I know I'm getting ahead of myself because you might be going what the heck is Goodreads? I'm so glad you asked, because it's a platform where readers and authors come together to share and discover books. And as an author, joining the Goodreads Author program can be a really, really smart move. So what is the Goodreads Author Program? It's a free program that allows any published author anywhere in the world to claim their profile page. Once you're verified, you get the official Goodreads Author badge on your profile. This badge tells your fans, hey, I'm here. Follow me on Goodreads. Claiming your profile page comes with several benefits. First, you get to manage your profile. You can update your profile picture, write your bio, and ensure your book listings are accurate and up to date date. Take a look at mine. Admittedly, it's a bit neglected. And here's the honest truth. I probably haven't logged into this since the last time I did a video on Goodreads for you. That said, my team has used it to do some Goodreads giveaways, and when I launched Self Promote and Succeed last year, they went in and updated it like we do for our clients, so it's not collecting that much dust. But I don't really hang out in Goodreads. But when you log in after you've created an account, I'll talk about account creation in just a second. But when you log in, this is your dashboard. Now, looking at this, you can get a sense of what the platform is. People can connect it to their Kindle or just add books as they're reading them. This list is out of date right now. I'm not reading these. I'm reading the Hormone Shift and the Freedom Frameworks. Oh, and looking at my Kindle app, I also have Write your story how to half Read. Oh yeah, I've got a lot of books in progress and I haven't finished very many. That's my life. Anyway, you see this section here? Want to read list? All right, this is an important section when we get to the Goodreads giveaways because this is where your book will sit when someone adds their book to their list to enter your giveaway. Then down the middle are updates from authors I follow or things Goodreads wants me to see. You can see. I can click on this and Want to read button if I want to add something to my shelf for the future. There's also notifications. Yikes, I got a lot. Like I said, I don't spend time in here, but you don't need me to give you a tour. Let's talk about promotion. As a Goodreads author, you can run giveaways, connect your blog, and advertise your books. These marketing tools are useful for creating buzz around your books. You can also interact with your readers. Again, this is assuming your reader is active on the platform. So going back to the examples I talked about at the beginning for Roger, I wouldn't say he' going to find a bunch of corporate executives hanging out here, but Suzanne Murray will be sure to find other women who have experienced disease, divorce, and other death defying moments in their life. And she can have some great chats and connection points with those ladies on this platform with features like Ask this author. You can take questions from readers, write reviews, share your favorite books. Readers love knowing what books their favorite authors are reading, so you can even add a blog and it's super easy to do. I'll do it right now since mine isn't on here. Okay, are you ready to claim your profile? Yeah. Here's how you do it. Number 1 Sign in or create an account on Goodreads. Number 2 Search for your most popular book using the ISBN ASIN or title number 3. Click on your author name. 4. Scroll to the bottom of your author profile page. Number five click Is this you? Let us know to complete and submit the application. Once you've submitted the application, you'll receive an email within two business days letting you know if you're approved. Your login and password will stay the same. Now, as noted, there are a handful of ways to use Goodreads, but the primary thing we use Goodreads for at Book Launchers is Goodreads Giveaways. Goodreads giveaways are an effective way to promote your book. They generate interest amongst a large community of readers, causing them to add their book to their own want to read shelf. Now here's how you can set up your own giveaway and we haven't mentioned it yet. Guess who owns Goodreads? Yes, Amazon. And that makes things extra interesting because when you do a giveaway, readers hopefully write a review and that hopefully goes to Amazon. It's not 100% on either piece, but you get more reviews and most of those reviews get posted in both places. So log into your Goodreads author account. Click Browse from the top navigation bar. Then select Giveaways from the top drop down menu. Now click List a Giveaway in the right sidebar. Alternatively, you can go through your Author Dashboard and just click the profile picture or or the button that's in the top right. Select Author Dashboard from the dropdown menu, scroll down the page, and then same thing. List a Giveaway. Now you have choices. So you can choose a print giveaway or an ebook giveaway. Most authors will do ebooks because it's more cost effective. You don't have to ship books, so you don't have to pay for the print costs and you don't have to pay for the shipping costs. Now let's set up your giveaway. You'll need to choose between the standard 119 or premium 599 giveaway package. You can see the difference here. The premium is a lot more costly and typically we aren't doing that for our authors because the only real benefit is the personalized email and premium listing. It's worth doing that if your ideal reader is a Goodreads user and most of the Goodreads highly active folks are fiction readers. Do your research on this before you invest in the $599 premium listing. And if you're doing it, make the most of that personalized email so that you're attracting people to your audience, not just promoting your book. Goodreads demographics veer towards women who are under 35 and likely drive a van. I'm not even kidding. Go figure. But you get why I said Roger Herney isn't going to get value, or at least as much value out of spending time on this platform as someone like Suzanne Murray, right? So select the book format for your giveaway. For this guide, we'll use print books. But how should you choose? Well, like I said, print books are often preferred by winners who who like to post a photo in their social media. And you can include a personal note and signature in your book for additional excitement around your giveaway, but it has an added expense because you're responsible for the cost of printing and mailing them. With the Kindle Ebook Giveaway option, you don't have to spend time and money mailing the books to winners because Goodreads handles the distribution for you. Another benefit is that winners immediately receive the book upon winning the giveaway, allowing them to start reading and talking about and hopefully reviewing the book much sooner. You do have to be connected via Kindle Direct Publishing for this option, but there's no distribution cost to you, so choosing 100 copies for your ebook giveaway is a lot more viable for you versus giving away 100 print books. Here are the steps to complete the giveaway detail. Start Date make sure the start date is at least three days out from today, but no more than six months away. End date the duration should be between seven and 30 days. We recommend 30 days to maximize exposure and entries. Release Date Provide the release date for your book ISBN. Fairly self explanatory. Enter your book's ISBN. This unique identifier can be found on the back cover or inside front cover of your book. By the way, you want to make it match. If you're doing a print giveaway, use your print book ISBN. If you're using an ebook giveaway, use your ebook ISBN Eligibility choose whether you'd like winners to be eligible. Print Book giveaways are open to U.S. and or Canada residents, so choose six copies determine how many copies of the book you'd like to give away between 1 and 100. Mature content well, check the box if your book contains mature content genres, choose the appropriate primary and secondary genre for your book, which is going to make a big difference in who submits for your giveaway. Contact information Provide your contact details Description of course, write a compelling description of your giveaway. Use up to 150 words to hook those readers. Once you've filled out all those details, click next to proceed. Review your giveaway details and confirm everything is accurate. Then proceed to payment by clicking on Amazon Pay button. Confirm your Amazon login details and complete the payment. After setting up your giveaway, it will be reviewed and once approved, you will receive a confirmation email with the start date. Once that happens, it's not set it and forget it. You must promote your giveaway on your website social media email newsletter list to maximize its reach and engagement. Use the URL provided in the confirmation email or the code that you are sent on your Goodreads page to share it. And don't just promote it once. Especially if you're doing a 30 day giveaway, new people are finding you all the time. So promote it multiple times during that 30 day period and promote it one last time before it ends. As you grow your audience, it's a good idea to consider doing a Goodreads giveaway at various points in time, maybe every six months, because many followers are new on Goodreads and anyone who has added the book to their Want to Read list automatically gets notified of your new giveaway. Every time a Goodreads member enters your giveaway and your book is added to their Want to Read list, an update is shared in their news feed to all their friends, introducing your book to even more people. If you happen to catch the eye of a Goodreads influencer of sorts, this can be really powerful. Oh, and how does it help reviews? Well, eight weeks after your giveaway ends, winners receive an email from Goodreads to remind them to rate and review your book. This does help other readers discover and decide to read your book too, and hopefully you caught it. But we run them for books that have just launched and after six months and after a year or so, a giveaway for an older book can be run anytime. To rekindle interest in the older title or to cross promote your next book. It can also re engage an audience that you've already built to start reading your book. What feature of Goodreads do you want me to dive into next? Is there anything I didn't cover that I should? Let me know in the comments below. And when you comment the day of videos released, you get entered to win some of our fabulous swag and our books and you get one step closer to being a YouTube bestie. Now YouTube says you should watch this video next. And this video is on the five things you should know about Amazon reviews, which is probably one of the main reasons you're running a Goodreads giveaway. So that's a much must watch. Click on over and say hi in the next video when you get there.