{"id":2617,"date":"2013-01-31T13:40:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T18:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2013-01-31T13:58:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T18:58:45","slug":"do-goodreads-giveaways-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/do-goodreads-giveaways-make-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Goodreads Giveaways Make a Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sure they do.\u00a0 As far as visibility for a book goes, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/6909544-birthmarked\">Goodreads<\/a> clearly exposes a novel to new readers.\u00a0 Whether readers go on to remember the novel, buy it, or read it is anybody\u2019s guess, but since discovery is a key step before any of the rest of that can happen, visibility can\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2618\" alt=\"Giveaway1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Giveaway1.png\" width=\"200\" height=\"144\" \/>Here\u2019s a case in point.\u00a0 Though <i>Birthmarked<\/i> came out in 2010, the audio books for the series have just been released this month, and my audio publisher wanted to highlight them.\u00a0 Tantor Audio ran a giveaway of 5 copies of the audio books between January 14<sup>th<\/sup> and January 31th, and in those seventeen days, 1659 people signed up for the giveaway.\u00a0 This is not an extraordinary number, I might add; the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/giveaway?sort=most_requested&amp;tab=most_requested\">most requested<\/a> book at the moment has over 10,000 entries.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2620\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/GoodreadsGiveaway.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2620\" class=\" wp-image-2620 \" alt=\"GoodreadsGiveaway\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/GoodreadsGiveaway-300x259.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/GoodreadsGiveaway-300x259.png 300w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/GoodreadsGiveaway.png 663w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2620\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click to enlarge.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I have one other bit of proof that the giveaway made a difference.\u00a0 Through my author dashboard, I can call up statistics on how frequently people add my novels to their \u201cto-read\u201d lists, and a quick look at the green line shows two clear spikes on the days the giveaway began and ended.\u00a0 Those are the two days the <i>Birthmarked<\/i> giveaway was most visible on \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/giveaway?sort=recently_listed&amp;tab=recently_listed\">recently listed<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/giveaway\">ending soon<\/a>\u201d lists on Goodreads, for people who deliberately go looking.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>There you have it.\u00a0 Anybody can tell their mother they\u2019ve written a book.\u00a0 Finding ways to tell strangers is something else entirely.\u00a0 Goodreads does a great job at exposing readers to new books, and it\u2019s a nice place to visit with fellow readers, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure they do.\u00a0 As far as visibility for a book goes, Goodreads clearly exposes a novel to new readers.\u00a0 Whether readers go on to remember the novel, buy it, or read it is anybody\u2019s guess, but since discovery is a key step before any of the rest of that can happen, visibility can\u2019t hurt. Here\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}