Giveaways and Your Book Marketing

In the previous days I have come across the same topic several
times. Then I thought that maybe you have not heard of it yet so
decided to let you know about this. What I am talking is Amazon
Giveaways. Amazon let’s you create and promote a giveaway of
items that are sold there. The interesting part of this for us is
that we can now create kindle ebook giveaways. 


What many authors did before was organizing book giveaways -
mainly on Goodreads. Unfortunately you could give aways only
paperbacks. I tried a giveaway of my first novel Highfall on
Goodreads and although it did bring visibility to my book it did
not impact the sales figure.


So why is Amazon giveaway different you may think. Well before I
dive into this, I have to make a disclaimer. It seems like the
Amazon giveaway can organize only the US residents, so if you
have amazon.com account but no US address linked to your account
then you won’t be able to make it… Hopefully they will roll over
to the other markets soon too. The good news though is that you
don’t have to be in KDP Select to be able to organize giveaways
and of course giving away ebooks is more affordable and there are
no shipping charges involved obviously.


Ok now let’s see why would you as an author possibly want to make
an Amazon giveaway.


The first obvious reason, of course is get your book front of
more people. And since those who have already purchased your book
are not eligible for your giveaway you will end up will be
reaching new potential readers.


The second good thing is that all the participants, who have not
won the giveaway get the free sample of your book. Which means
that the potential new readers will probably get the taste of
your writing style.


Another good thing is that when you organize your book’s Amazon
giveaway you can choose chose an option where in order to
participate people have to follow you on your Amazon’s author
page. This means that whenever you have a new book out all who
follow will be notified. It is not as good as having them on your
e mail list of course, but it is most probably the closest thing
you can get with Amazon.


To wrap this topic up I’ll just need to say that your giveaways
can last up to 30 days, ebooks purchased for the giveaway are
non-refundable and you can check there is a Twitter hashtag
#AmazonGiveaways you can follow. And maybe the best part of it
all is that those who have tried the Amazon giveaways tell that
it impacts book’s sales ranking.


Ok, that was it about the Amazon.


Now I will share my ideas about giveaways in general.


I personally feel uncomfortable, when things are not under my
control. That is why strategies, which rely on specific social
media channel, or only one platform, or an audience, which is not
mine are not my favorite. I mean what if something happens to
Facebook one day? Where do I find all those people who liked my
page… You see what I mean right?


That is why I prefer to put time and effort bringing my audience
to my place, that is my website and my e mail list. Are you
already there btw? If no check out www.anialexander.com


Having that said I prefer to use