Tag: book giveaways

InstaFreebie Offers Authors a Chance to Build Mailing Lists, Find Fans

new-2016-instafreebie-branding-tealIn part one of this article, I discussed InstaFreebie, the site that lets you give away a book for free in exchange for the person’s email address, in order to grow your mailing list. I also mentioned I ended up with almost 2,000 new names on my mailing list because of InstaFreebie promos I participated in.

I was very excited to get the new names, but a little hesitant, because people signed up for the list with the express purpose of getting a free book. We’ve all signed up for lists we’re not interested in to get something free (well, at least I have). Given that, I was concerned I’d have a 50 percent unsubscribe rate, or some ridiculous number, because people didn’t want to be bothered with additional emails. It didn’t help that a few of the email addresses indicated the person was giving me a junk address — stuff like [email protected].

I decided to test out my new subscribers to see what happened. Continue reading “InstaFreebie Offers Authors a Chance to Build Mailing Lists, Find Fans”

InstaFreebie Offers Authors a Chance to Build Mailing Lists, Find Fans

new-2016-instafreebie-branding-tealBack in August, I started hearing authors talk about a site called InstaFreebie, where you could give away a free copy of your book in exchange for recipients signing up for your mailing list. Both Jim Devitt and Shawn Inmon have discussed the importance of mailing lists. Authors on different online groups said they’d scored upwards of a thousand names added to their lists using InstaFreebie.

Obviously, this sounded very cool to me. I thought I’d give it a try. What do you need to participate in InstaFreebie? Simple. A book you’re willing to give away for FREE. The book cannot be in KDP Select because it violates Amazon’s terms of service. (I will note, some authors give away a KDP book sampler — the 10 percent you’re allowed to post elsewhere — to drive sales to the actual book on the Amazon store. I don’t know how successful this is.)

Once you’ve picked a book you want to give away, you need three things: Continue reading “InstaFreebie Offers Authors a Chance to Build Mailing Lists, Find Fans”

Amazon Giveaways: Now with Ebooks!

Amazon book giveawayAbout a year ago, Amazon instituted a cool feature that allowed anybody who sold anything on Amazon to set up a giveaway on the product page. Unfortunately for indie authors, digital content wasn’t one of the things you could give away. That meant you could set up a contest for free hard copies of your book, but you couldn’t do it for eBooks.

That’s now changed. Last week, KDP announced eBooks may now be used as prizes in Amazon Giveaways. As usual, the Zon is rolling this out to Amazon.com (US) first. So right now, contestants must be residents of one of the fifty U.S. states or the District of Columbia. The person running the contest must have a valid Amazon.com account and a credit card with room to pay for the prizes to be given away. (Yes, sorry, you need to pay for the prizes upfront.) That would seem to indicate that non-U.S. residents can set up a giveaway, but I’m not 100% sure; in any case, your pool of winners is going to be limited to U.S. residents. Continue reading “Amazon Giveaways: Now with Ebooks!”

Why Use Amazon Giveaways?

Amazon book giveawayI like to try new things in the world of book promotion when they fit my budget, so when Amazon announced they were trying their own giveaways, I thought I’d give it a whirl. And the timing was good. For reasons only Amazon can explain, the price of one of my paperbacks had been drastically reduced in April. Coincidentally, this was the start of baseball season, and the book is a romantic comedy with a baseball sub-theme. So…(give) away we go.

Amazon made it easy. Continue reading “Why Use Amazon Giveaways?”