Amazon Giveaways

I've been eyeing Amazon Giveaways for a while, now that they work for e-books as well as physical items. Giveaways help create buzz, cultivate potential future readers, and possibly earn those much-needed reviews.

So yesterday I decided to try it.

You can run a giveaway on any item you like, even if it's not yours, but I did it for my new e-book. Another idea is to give away prizes that are somehow related to your book. Then you can change the settings to make it less public and send the link only to your readers as a sort of loyalty reward. Various other possibilities make this a versatile tool.

This is how a giveaway goes:

-Go to your book (or whatever item you want to give away) and click on “Set up a Giveaway” near the bottom.

-Buy as many copies as you want to give away (so doing this on a sale day might be a good idea, depending on your pricing). You can choose from 1-50 copies, which means it's economical to play around and do small test giveaways. Pay as normal through Amazon. If you're giving away your own book, you will recoup some of this money as royalties when the sale goes through.

-Set various parameters, like if you want a random drawing at the end or if you want, for example, every 100^th entrant to win.

-Decide what people must do in order to enter. Possibilities include following you on Amazon or Twitter, tweeting a message, watching a video, or answering a poll. You can also do it without requiring anything from the entrants, but I think getting followers or having people tweet about your book would be helpful marketing tools. It's a bit unclear how useful Amazon followers are. You can't see how many you have or contact them directly, but Amazon supposedly sends them e-mails when you publish new books or have other big events. Amazon may also ask you to write messages which they send on to your followers. If anyone has experience with this, it would be interesting to see in the comments below.

-Create a title for your giveaway.

-Write a short welcome message, a message to people once they've entered, and a message to the winner/winners (maximum 250 characters each). Look at some other giveaways to see examples of their welcome messages (usually a snappy contest or product description) and decide what will work best for you.

-Upload a photo of you (or your logo, etc). Don't upload your book cover here, as they'll automatically show the book cover below and you don't want to duplicate. Something went wrong with my picture, as it didn't appear when the giveaway went live. Unfortunately there's no preview.

-Submit it. Mine went live within a few minutes, though it can take several hours.

-Post your link on your social media, blogs, etc. For legal reasons, be sure to include wording like “enter for a chance to win,” not “enter to win.”

For more information, see Amazon's FAQs.

My Experience So Far:

In the first 4 hours that my giveaway was live, without me doing any advertising at all, 129 people entered the contest, and they all had to follow me on Amazon to do so. Then the rate slowed so that in 24 hours the number was about 180. 

 Obviously I wish one of the requirements were to subscribe to my mailing list, but it still seems a positive thing. Now I'm going to do a bit of promotion and see what happens.

If you're interested in Alaska, or just want to see how it works, check out my giveaway: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/76034327196b88cf

Your Experience?  

If any of you out there have done Amazon Giveaways, we'd all love you to share your wisdom in the comments below.

Being an Arizona girl, Melinda Brasher loves glaciers, streams, whales, bald eagles, and real trees with green leaves.  That's why she's in love with Alaska.  If you want to see a bit of Alaska for yourself, check out her latest book, Cruising Alaska on a Budget; A Cruise and Port Guide.  Read it for free with Kindle Unlimited.

5 steps to a successful giveaway

I love giveaways. My books would forever live in a cyber black hole if it weren't for the book giveaway. At first I wasn't too keen on the idea of giving away my literary masterpieces; I mean I spent a lot of energy on my work, why should I give them away? Because its necessary. So, let me just get to it, here are 5 steps to a successful giveaway.

1.Write a basic inquiry letter. You remember those from back in the day when you were trying to get an agent.Put it on your desktop for easy copy and paste. It should have some very basic information such as your name, the isbn# of your book for easy reference, the genre of your book, an introduction of your book, the number of books you want to giveaway, your website or blog link, your book trailer link,and a big fat juicy kiss.

2. Bloggers! Bloggers! Bloggers! This is a partnership. They need writers just as much as we need bloggers. The two go hand and hand like Oreos and milk. So don't be intimidated. When sending your inquiry to bloggers always greet them by name and include something specific about their blog so they know you didn't just send them a form letter. Make sure to read their "about me", and their "review policy", you'll find most of the information you need there. You want to make sure the blogger is in your book genre too.

One of my rookie mistakes were sending queries for my "realistic" YA fiction out to bloggers who were only interested in "dystopia" or "fantasy" books. There should be a blog directory for different genres. I put my YA book blog directory on my bookmarks for quick reference. When the bloggers email you back be prepared for either an author interview or to share information about the book or yourself that they'll post on their blog.

3.Book giveaway sites. Let your search engine do the work. Google the words: book giveaway and a treasure trove of information will come up. Goodreads.com is one of the best sites for giveaways; you're allowed to enter the number of copies and the dates of the giveaway. There are sites available that cater to authors and publishers looking to giveaway an ARC or (Advanced Reading Copy). But never pay for a giveaway, I stumbled upon a site where they were charging an author $100.00 to post on their site. That's not necessary.

4.Don't forget to send out the book. I know this should go without saying but sometimes you can forget. I usually send out the book to the winners within 24 hours. Don't forget to autograph the book with a little note using the winner's name. They aren't just winners, they're potential customers. And BTW: keep your giveaways in the U.S. and Canada. Trust me, you don't want to get sticker shock when you go to the Post Office. I spent $12 to send a giveaway to Brazil, that's more than the book costs.

5.Nurture you fans. There are readers and then there are fans. I'm so happy to say that I have fans. And its the coolest feeling in the world. I only have 7 of them right not, but they're my fans none the less and I give them the royal treatment.

My fans email me and tell me how they love my books and for that, I reward them with free copies, book marks etc... Your fans will eventually become a part of the "word of mouth" machine that's so powerful and you can depend on them to write good review too. I have one fan who's 13 years old and in middle school, she sent me the sweetest email about how she could relate to one of my characters in the book because she's going through the same thing. It made me emotional. It's email's like these that makes me realize my writing is a gift to be shared. When I read email's from my fans, all the mess of marketing melts away because I made a connection.