Do Goodreads Giveaways Make a Difference?

Sure they do.  As far as visibility for a book goes, Goodreads clearly exposes a novel to new readers.  Whether readers go on to remember the novel, buy it, or read it is anybody’s guess, but since discovery is a key step before any of the rest of that can happen, visibility can’t hurt.

Here’s a case in point.  Though Birthmarked came out in 2010, the audio books for the series have just been released this month, and my audio publisher wanted to highlight them.  Tantor Audio ran a giveaway of 5 copies of the audio books between January 14^th and January 31th, and in those seventeen days, 1659 people signed up for the giveaway.  This is not an extraordinary number, I might add; the most requested book at the moment has over 10,000 entries.  Nevertheless, for as long as it takes to push a button, 1659 people were aware of my book, and some of them might have considered the giveaway long enough to notice the cover and a description, too.

Click to enlarge.

I have one other bit of proof that the giveaway made a difference.  Through my author dashboard, I can call up statistics on how frequently people add my novels to their “to-read” lists, and a quick look at the green line shows two clear spikes on the days the giveaway began and ended.  Those are the two days the Birthmarked giveaway was most visible on “recently listed” and “ending soon” lists on Goodreads, for people who deliberately go looking.  Considering that the graph was elevated between the start and end dates, and that the graph is otherwise fairly steady, I feel safe in assuming it was the giveaway that made the difference.

There you have it.  Anybody can tell their mother they’ve written a book.  Finding ways to tell strangers is something else entirely.  Goodreads does a great job at exposing readers to new books, and it’s a nice place to visit with fellow readers, too.