Goodreads Giveaways

As an avid reader, I’ve belonged to Goodreads for many years. Goodreads promotes itself as the meeting point for the world's readers and I like using the site as a handy way of keeping track of the books I’ve read. Usually I give a rating, and more often than not a few words of review, as feedback for the author concerned. Speaking now as a writer, we crave hearing that our books have not dropped into a black hole - that someone has read them!

Goodreads also runs a Giveaway service. An author can offer free copies to Goodreads members but a condition of entry is that applicants agree, in return, to add the book to their ‘To Be Read’ pile. At present, although the author of a Giveaway does not have to live in the US, only US residents are eligible to win a Giveaway. (There is talk of change to this restriction.) The scheme is meant to be especially useful for authors needing to spread the word about a forthcoming book.

As a resident of Australia I have never entered a Giveaway but, as a newbie novelist, this sounded like a good way of reaching American readers who would otherwise never hear about my new book ‘Still Waters Run Deep’. It was due to be published on 1 May and I decided to offer 100 free digital copies to Goodreads members, the offer running from 4-31 March. 

On opening day 29 people added my book to their 'To Be Read' pile. It seemed like a good start. A further 490 readers entered in the four weeks to come. 

My Giveaway closed at 6pm, 1 April, Australian Eastern Standard Time and Goodreads notified me at 7.43pm that there were 519 entries, with 100 winners (names listed) who had all received a free copy of my book delivered to their Kindle. As a bulk listing, Goodreads had shelved a further 471 as 'Want to Read'.

So far this seemed to offer much better value than Facebook advertising!

I crossed my fingers and hoped for some reader feedback in the month between 31 March and 1 May. 

One reader did respond, bless her heart - on 28 April, with a five-star rating - but no ‘review’. 

There has been nothing since, despite the Goodreads promise to remind entrants about this book on its release day, 1 May. 

This very disappointing result prompted me to analyse the profiles of the winners, using an Excel spreadsheet. 

What a surprise. The average age of those who received a free copy of my book (and stated their age) was 44, the oldest aged 69 and the youngest aged 20. Fair enough. On average the entrants had listed 348 books as 'read', but this covered a range from 0 to 2,439. BUT - the 100 winners had, on average, 14,021 books on their ‘Want to Read’ pile! Some were multiple winners of Giveaways although they’d read very few books. I noticed six who’d won, on average, 566 free books each although they already had thousands of titles on their ‘Want to Read’ list. Surely these people should be excluded as potential winners. 

It fascinated me that the only person who appears to have read and rated my book was aged 45, has read 660 books and has only 6 books on her 'Want to Read' list. As a Gen X reader she suited my target group of Gen X and Boomer readers. She was clearly an avid reader. What’s more, she was likely to read my book because it would not be buried in her huge pile of unread books. People like her are the perfect target for authors offering their work for nothing – if only Goodreads had a better algorithm!

P.S. 'Still Waters Run Deep' is available via this link - https://books2read.com/Still-Waters-Run-Deep and you can dip your toe into these still waters here.