Promote Your Kindle Book With Book Giveaways

1
Successful Book Giveaways

• The importance of excellent self promotion.

2
Self promotion

• Every self-published author will at some point
  learn the importance of excellent self-promotion
  in the success of his or her book.

3
Dreams of success

• We all dream of the runaway success of
  self-published writers such as Amanda Hocking,
  but without the right promotion we know our books
  could languish at the unattractive end of the
  Amazon rankings.

4
The best techniques

• The problem is that there are no real tried and
  true techniques to ensure a runaway success. Your
  book might be better than anything else in your
  genre, but even a full time promotion schedule
  may fail to get it the attention it truly
  deserves.

5
Tips for success

• A well-orchestrated book giveaway could be just
  the thing you need to bring your work to a wider
  audience, and here were going to look at three
  quick tips to help you spring your book to
  success.
• Share
• Advertise
• Target

6
Share

• Any author who has run a book giveaway will know
  that its vital to get the word out well in
  advance. If you run your own blog, post several
  times in the days and weeks running up to the
  promotion. If youre on Facebook, create a fan
  page and ask your friends to like it.

7
Advertise

• Paid advertising can play a large role in
  promoting a book giveaway. Popular review sites
  such as Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily can
  increase downloads during a giveaway by thousands
  of copies per day. In fact, the most popular free
  books on Amazon are usually those that have been
  promoted by one or both of these sites.

8
Target

• While this may seem obvious, the trick to a
  successful giveaway is to get your book in the
  hands of people who are predisposed to enjoy it.
• If youve written an excellent romance novel you
  could give away a million copies, but if the
  recipients are all single-minded fans of science
  fiction youre unlikely to see many post-giveaway
  sales or positive reviews.

9
Finding good targets

• Sites such as Goodreads offer the chance to
  connect with fans of every genre at the click of
  a mouse. Before running your giveaway you should
  build a presence on the site, joining groups
  devoted to your appropriate genre and, where
  permitted, promoting your book to your target
  audience. One targeted reader will be worth
  dozens of untargeted readers.

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The importance of promotion

• As an author youll no doubt already understand
  the importance of promotion in making your book a
  success.
• While traditionally published authors usually
  have the luxury of an agent and publishing house
  to handle the heavy lifting of a marketing
  campaign, self published authors must take the
  lead in running their own campaign, getting the
  word out to potential fans and influential
  reviewers.

11
Goodreads

• Fortunately, in this connected age we no longer
  need face the horrors of an extended book tour to
  find our audience.
• Sites such as http//Goodreads.com bring our
  readers to us, and by leveraging the power of the
  Internet we can find an audience without leaving
  the comfort of our homes.

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Goodreads giveaway

• Perhaps one of the most powerful promotional
  tools available to the exposure-hungry author
  today is the Goodreads giveaway. The site, a
  social network that operates much like a book
  club with millions of members.
• IT offers authors the chance to get their book in
  front of countless potential readers, and by
  offering a giveaway you can not only generate
  interest in your latest book but also generate
  immediate sales and reviews.

13
Help to promote your work

• So, how can a Goodreads giveaway help you promote
  your work? Why is it such a powerful promotional
  tool, and how can you make the most of it?
• Here are two ways it helps promote your work.
• Awareness
• Reviews

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Awareness

• Plain and simple, a Goodreads giveaway will get
  your name out there to your target audience.
  Whether you offer a single free copy or 100 in
  your giveaway, an average of 60 entrants
  (according to Goodreads statistics) will add your
  book to their to-read list. This is, of course,
  no guarantee that they will actually read it, but
  all publicity is good publicity.

15
Reviews

• On average, 45 of giveaway winners will go on to
  review your book. While this may not sound like a
  great return, the truth is very different.
• One in five Goodreads members runs their own book
  blog, so not only will each review be seen by
  each of the reviewers Goodreads friends, theres
  also a very good chance it will be published on a
  popular blog, spreading the word even further.

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Tips for Goodreads

• Goodreads members who have run successful
  giveaways recommend that authors offer as many
  free copies as they can afford.
• They advise that the contest should run for a
  good length of time (several weeks to a month),
  and that during that time the author throws him
  or herself into promotion to spread the word
  about the giveaway.

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Exposer to potential readers

• There are a few things you should already have in
  place. It is important that you have a blog or
  web presence in which you can offer your
  temporarily free e-book to your readers, or even
  your friends.
• There are a few simple steps you can take to make
  sure that your e-book gets exposed to as many
  potential readers as possible.

18
Social networking

• Pay Close Attention To Social Networking You can
  use social networking sites to your advantage
  without much effort. Simply put on your Twitter
  and Facebook account that something you wrote
  will be going for free in the Amazon store a few
  days before hand.

19
Using Twitter

• On the day that it happens, make sure you mention
  it, and let people know that they can only get it
  for free for a limited time.
• For twitter use hashtags like bookgiveaway or
  something similar.

20
Doing a series of books

• This is good especially if you are doing a series
  of books instead of just the one and have several
  on Amazon at the same time, but only one of them
  is free, because if your book is good, it will
  spark up interest in the rest of your work.

21
Facebook groups

• Here is a Facebook group you can join that is for
  book giveaways
• https//www.facebook.com/groups/BookGiveaways/
• Submit your book to general book giveaway sites.
  These sites offer a variety of giveaways, not
  just books
• http//bloggiveaways.blogspot.com/
• http//winningmommys.blogspot.com/2009/01/sites-to
  -list-your-giveaway.html
• http//www.squidoo.com/giveawaylinkie

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Link-Aggregator Sites

• Use Link-Aggregator Sites These sites can be a
  bit scary and intimidating, because they tend to
  be so very big. You might feel like your link
  might be lost within a sea of other links.
• Most link-aggregators have subsections,
  thankfully, and you can just find the subsection
  that suits you the most to promote your book.

23
Reddit

• Reddit, for instance, has an r/selfpublish and
  r/write, dedicated exactly for this purpose. You
  might not become a front-page sensation but a few
  extra hits could make the difference between
  connecting with a reader and not being able to.

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Thank You!And Good luck!
Amy Harrop Avid writer
Amy Harrops Blog