READER OFFER/GIVEAWAY
Reader offers at a reduced price, particularly ebooks at around £/$1.99, or £/$0.99, are important in genre fiction, less so in other areas. It’s an area we’ve been recently developing – last year we submitted 250 and had 200 promotions.
What we do
Your publicist is in touch with key media contacts in your genre, and they will be aware of opportunities for both print and online opportunities. This may involve a single copy of a book or a bundle of books. The choice of book(s) is dependent on either the subject matter, theme or the readership of the magazine.
The giveaway also acts as an advert for our books/imprints/clusters.
Some media contacts have robust and popular online social network. They may utilise hashtags such as #FreebieFriday. These kind of promotions get a lot of hits. In these instances, we offer a copy or copies of a book to be used. This often goes hand in hand with a review or article that appears on the site or in a magazine.
Examples
Teddy Rose Book Reviews regularly offer Giveaways on fiction books. http://theteddyrosebookreviewsplusmore.com/
Giveaways to support Newsletter sign-up. We are trying to build up our Newsletter signups, as these are dedicated email lists of people interested in specific genres of books. They should then form a loyal following of our titles. We typically send newsletters every month.
We use Facebook to highlight the newsletter, offering free books for new sign-ups. This is done at regular intervals during the year to encourage social media followers to sign-up with an email address.
Events/Conferences: A giveaway can be run at the end of a conference or event when it isn’t worth returning unsold books to the warehouse. We can send flyers to add to each giveaway book inviting the winner to post a review or pass on to another reader.
Other sites and what you can do
Ebook Promotion companies offer giveaways; as a rule we do not offer any books free. It just doesn’t make commercial sense.
For ebook promotions; we review progress three months after publication. We will pay to price-promote your title through one or more social media book retailing sites to subscribers in relevant categories, if your book has met the criteria for those sites. We routinely submit titles to BookBub the largest and most influential ebook promotion site (although their criteria are strict, and acceptance is limited).
There are many sites, and the criteria vary, generally getting more demanding (and the price more expensive) with the number of subscribers to the site.
Goodreads offer giveaways.
We record all these activities on your Marketing page in “Marketing Activities” as “Reader Offer/Giveaway”.
If you undertake a giveaway yourself, then please enter it as an activity in the same way. Please let us know so that we too can highlight the offer on our social media in return.