Tuesday Toolbox - Book Giveaways, Part 1

Today, I want to talk about a tool for authors after you've published a book (or ideally more than one book): book giveaways. Who doesn't love a free book, right?

There are several different avenues for book giveaways:

Goodreads: If you have a new or upcoming PRINT release, you can do a giveaway on Goodreads. You choose what countries you’re willing to ship to and how many books you want to give away. Be aware that you’re responsible for shipping costs to the winner. They also give you the code to put a widget for the giveaway on your website or blog. I've been doing a giveaway of one of my promotional print copies of Construction Beauty Queen. Over 250 potential readers have seen my book cover, seen my name, and taken the time to sign up. I think of it as an ad to gain exposure of my name and my books.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Construction Beauty Queen

by Sara Daniel

Giveaway ends February 08, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

E-book giveaways: The great thing about giving away a copy of an ebook is you send it through cyberspace, so there’s no shipping cost. If you’re self-published or if your publisher gives you author copies for giveaways, then it doesn't cost you anything. Now that I have multiple books, I can promote a new book and give away a copy of an older title. Below are a couple ways of setting up an e-book giveaway.

• Blog hops: I participate in blog hops, where I post on my own blog and use e-books as my giveaway prize. I usually pick my winner from a random commenter. You can look back over my posts for the past couple weeks and notice that I've participated in two different themed blog hops.

• Blog tours: Similar to blog hops, I use e-books as my giveaway prize, but I reach readers through guest blogging on other blogs through an organized tour. The prize is awarded at the end of the entire tour instead of each separate prize for each blog. Rafflecopter is an excellent tour for picking a random winner. You can see my blog tour for Psychic Lies that’s going on now. Feel free to enter the giveaway too!

I’ll discuss one more book giveaway tools in next week’s Tuesday Toolbox.