If ROI is judged solely on ‘did I take in more than I laid out’—this would indeed have been a bust.
The Goodreads Giveaways, which used to be free, are now pay-to-play; however, authors can offer Kindle e-books, which wasn’t previously the case. With their no-cost fulfillment, the outlay to run a paid, 100 e-book giveaway may actually equal the cost of printing and postage for the 10 hard copies that were typically offered in the freebie.
The giveaway is engineered to build buzz on the book lovers’ site to which all aspiring authors pay court. Entering the contest results in your book being featured on that member’s Want to Read list – so potentially hundreds of other visitors can see your title on friends’ lists – or not. While the contest is running, it’s also lots of fun to check back and see how many people have entered. Whether the entertainment value in logging on to Goodreads several times daily to watch the numbers climb is worth $119 over a month’s time, each of us can answer only for ourselves. I dug it; someone who wasn’t prepared to write off $119 as an experiment might feel otherwise.
Besides generating this non-quantifiable buzz, the intent is to garner ratings and reviews from your winners. They understand they’re expected to come through with a review and thus far, the people who read the book have either rated it or left a comment. All four of them. Here’s the catch: apparently a lot of people who enter these giveaways never actually read the book. I guess they just like to win stuff.
While people are reading your book – and Kindle, in its omniscience, knows exactly who’s reading what, where when and how fast – you’ll see how they’re progressing and how many other books you’re competing with for share of attention. One gal who is “Currently Reading” my book is also currently reading 172 others. I’m not sure mine will ever get to the top of that pile. On the other hand, one of the readers left remarks about
Goodreads sends out a follow up to the winners after 8 weeks reminding them to leave a review, and at that point maybe I’ll see a few more ratings, possibly a text review or two. Realistically, that’s about what the program delivers. Worth It? In its current iteration, not. Maybe if the deal involved these ratings and reviews being cross-listed on Amazon, the spend would have been justified. Since Goodreads is now an Amazon company maybe that will be the case in the future. At that time, it would be worth a second look. Till then I’d spend those marketing dollars elsewhere.