Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Authors have probably already noticed this, but starting in 2018 GoodReads will charge authors $119 to run a GoodReads book Giveaway promotion. Previously, the author only needed to supply the book & postage – or ebook.

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Introduces New U.S. Giveaways Program–A More Powerful Book Marketing Tool for Authors and Publishers

Expect to see fewer GiveAways in 2018.

Yes, I saw that. It's definitely going to impact things. I've always done giveaways but I won't be able to afford this. :-(

I knew I should probably spend less time checking the GR giveaways. Thanks to GR to take the decision of my hands by making them not open to INTL readers for a while.

I am not really sure how better it is to make people pay something that was free before but GR is probably the one with the plan.

Yeah, read about this and think its pretty horrible on the part of GR's. Think this may essentially kill off the giveaways program. Authors are angry about it, many readers seem angry about it. Even publishers don't seem likely to pay to do giveaways. Don't think GR will win out on this one. Either they go back on it or their giveaway program is as good as gone I think.

This sounds so dumb in so many ways. And its confusing. I feel like giveaways have a lot of traffic anyway

Correct me if I'm wrong, but giveaways for ebooks has not yet been possible. It was, however, to come out soon. In this case, where is the expense to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for doing this? And since Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is owned by Amazon, it only helps the parent company sell book. I agree, it doesn't make sense.

I hate the world we live in where everything is about sucking every last penny out of everyone so that you can say you are making more money now. Apparently when you make a million one year then you aren't successful if you only make a million the next year, you need to be shooting for two million and damn the consequences. It's such a short-sighted mindset and it really pisses me off.

Shawn wrote: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but giveaways for ebooks has not yet been possible. It was, however, to come out soon. In this case, where is the expense to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for doing this? And since Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ i..."

I believe ebook giveaways work in the US, but no other country.

Well, I enjoyed receiving giveaways while it lasted, but already the competition to win a book is so fierce I only win something every 3-4 months or so, when I first joined I was winning them sometimes faster than I could read them. But if authors have to pay what is my mind a HUGE fee (and they already have to supply the book and postage which I thought was already a burden, especially when someone was willing to ship from Australia to Canada) then yeah, only publishers with big budgets will do giveaways anymore. And even they, they may go other routes, like Tor did with their monthly ebook giveaways.

Also, some time back GR removed the ability for authors to upload their book to download for free, thought that was sad too. They claimed it was because no one was using that feature, but in truth, their ebook listing was such garbage that it was impossible to find anything in English that wasn't an excerpt and you didn't have to pay for. Basically the entire set of ebooks was one giant flat list with no search except by popularity (and it seems Arabic was very popular) so yeah, I never used it because I *couldn't* use it! But I guess they didn't want to fix it because they didn't get any money from it, sigh.

GR will no longer get any reviews from me other than stars because I only wrote up all out reviews for books I won since I felt I owed the person sending me the freebie at least that much in return for their time and money. So their loss too. In fact, I joined because of the giveaways, if it weren't for being part of this group I might actually have just left GR so they can't data mine me for free without giving me some feature I really enjoy.

Maybe they just want to shut the feature down, but instead of being the "bad guy" for just ripping out the feature they can now point to people running giveaways and say "But no one is using the feature, so we can remove it now. It's their fault not ours".

BTW, I've seen other places that do giveaways like NetGallery often mentioned in reviews. Anyone know more about these? Looks like I'll have to go elsewhere to attempt to get ARCs and other freebies :)

Their number may slightly decrease in the short term but I don't think giveaways are doomed as some have said.
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ let the program run without making a profit on it long enough so readers get used to it and authors depend on it to get known. Now authors have to pay if they want to maximize their chances of selling and I suspect enough of them will pay.
It's common practice: entice people with free or very cheap stuff and when you've cornered the market (and killed/bought off the financially weakest competition) you can make people pay/increase price/push a premium version.
Amazon would not have become the behemoth it is if it were run by people with no business sense.

Interesting how they atypically closed the comments on this post, though.

Bryan wrote: "Their number may slightly decrease in the short term but I don't think giveaways are doomed as some have said.
Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ let the program run without making a profit on it long enough so readers ge..."

I don't understand why Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ would need to make a profit on it. All they are doing is providing a platform for users and authors to connect. It can't take much time or computer work to select a few winners from the entries and notify the author. Giveaways are one more thing that draws traffic to GR or keeps people on the site. I could see that if authors want bigger ads or more favorable placement they would pay, just like any advertising.

Robin wrote: "I don't understand why Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ would need to make a profit on it. All they are doing is providing a platform for users and authors to connect...."

There's an old internet saying (well, as old as something can be if it deals with the internet): "If you're not paying for it, you're the product".

Robin wrote: "I don't understand why Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ would need to make a profit on it. All they are doing is providing a platform for users and authors to connect. It can't take much time or computer work to select a few winners from the entries and notify the author."

Well they don't need to make a profit, but Amazon certainly didn't spend the big bucks with no intention to get them back with interests (I'm surprised we haven't drowned in blatant amazon and audible "integration", but then again they didn't do it with imdb either).
It's not about how much work it takes to run the service but about how much authors value it, and that's directly related to the number of goodreads members.


Robin wrote: "I could see that if authors want bigger ads or more favorable placement they would pay, just like any advertising."

Hence the steeply-priced "premium" version ;)
To be clear I don't approve of this, but it's just how most of the internet world works, especially where big companies get involved.
TANSTAAFL ;)

I don't think it will be the end of the giveaways.
Rather those who pay attention will see a shift.
Less new, independent, niche authors - the people and books that would really benefit from the exposure.
To someone starting out that fee would be a budget breaker.

More best seller, mainstream - people to whom a price under $200 would be no big deal.

Since my tastes tend to be offbeat it will be harder for me to find ones I'm actually interested.

I am not really convinced anymore that lot of the rest of the authors or editors would pay after reading the reactions in the Authors Group since some said NetGalley was cheaper or more or less the same price and the review % was a lot higher, the Amazon ads are a lot cheaper, the Amazon giveaways way cheaper...

If for the ebook giveaway, GR is the one taking care of sending at no added cost the ebooks, it is still the authors or whoever is the provider who have to mail and pay for the postage of the dead tree books after January.

By the way, NetGalley is less INTL friendly recently and requires a platform that isn't Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. So you need to have an active blog or else, and to review 80% of the books you got from it.

Jennifer wrote: "I am not really convinced anymore that lot of the rest of the authors or editors would pay after reading the reactions in the Authors Group since some said NetGalley was cheaper or more or less the..."

What are the Amazon giveaways? I hadn't heard of that, I'm surprised given that GR is owned by Amazon so funny they have two giveaway mechanisms. Maybe it's a US only thing?

Yeah, I looked into NetGallery but since I'm unable to write wonderful reviews I can't become a blogger (though I review 100% of the books I receive, I think that's a fair requirement, even on GR) so that one it not an option for me to switch to.

If you go to Amazon, on the page of some products, it says you can set up a giveaway to offer this item. It is maybe only for american participants because so far the books giveaways I saw said so.

The giver has to send the link for the giveaway so it isn't easily seen.

You can sell ebooks for free on Amazon for limited times, and it doesn't cost anything. But it is hard to let a large number of people know about the sale.

I would love to let everyone on GR know when my book is free, but I don't want to pay money to give something away. Now, if I were making a profit on the deal, it would be a different story.

I'm noticing the difference in number of books being offered now. I normally go through the giveaways once a week and usually I have to go through many pages to cover the entire week, but in only 4 pages of giveaways I got through a week and a half, so definitely far less than there used to be. On the other hand I'm seeing more with 25-50 books being given away at once.

It's always been easier to make money from SPAs themselves than from sales of their books. Vanity publishing here we come.

Idk, it seems like a decent deal for some powerful marketing.

The standard giveaway package costs $119. The premium package costs $599. These are serious amounts of money to many SPAs. What they mean is that the amount of exposure your book receives will not depend in the slightest on the quality of your book, but solely on the amount of money you are prepared to spend on it. To hell with that. I have no intention of being seduced into reading a book just because someone spent a lot of money advertising it.

What readers actually need is some kind of quality gatekeeper - a guide to which books are worth reading and which are not. Amazon's own Kindle listings are not much use for this, because they are heavily biased in favour of recent sales rather than relative quality.

To my mind this is where GR scores over Amazon. The big advantage of GR is that you can find out about good books by being in groups, listening to talk about books, getting recommendations from group members, and by looking at star ratings and reading reviews. These are much better guides to quality than giveaways, and far and away better than giveaways that have occurred merely because of the depth of the author or publisher's purse.

I shall continue to ignore giveaways, both as a reader and as an author.

Chris wrote: "The standard giveaway package costs $119. The premium package costs $599. These are serious amounts of money to many SPAs. What they mean is that the amount of exposure your book receives will not ..."

I guess as a reader and not an author when I go through the giveaways I'm just seeing "Free books". However I never considered whether or not something was in a giveaway was an indicator of quality though. I always read the summary blurb, look through the reviews, and then decide if I wanted to invest if not my money, my time. Because I definitely owe the person running the giveaway my effort to finish reading the book and then putting together a thoughtful review, so I try to avoid entering a giveaway where there might be a risk that reading the book might be as painful as getting my teeth pulled.

I just feel bad that the fee means that publishers with big pockets can continue their giveaways as usual but those amateur part-time going-it-alone authors will now have a harder time to get their books out there. I thought the burden of covering the shipping costs was already enough.

In discussing the big publisher advertising with several authors, they seem to have very limited budgets for most authors save for their darlings. Money makes the world go round & if you have money, it's far easier to make more. Still, GR is a great platform for all authors.

If you want to see a really good campaign to success, look at Michael J. Sullivan's. He was/is a marketing guy as well as an author. He & his wife, Robin, came here as he was writing his first novel. He had the first 5 books laid out & they participated in the groups. They recruited ARC readers & built a following, self-publishing the first 4 books. Before the series was fully published, Orbit had signed him on. It was very slick & well done from the first. It doesn't hurt that he's a decent writer & the books were quick, fun reads.

Few have his all around talent, much less such a helpmate, though. Most will have to peck away at promoting their book while writing & working their day job(s). Very tough & they'll probably have to just give their book(s) away for a while, but if they do & get some good reviews going, they can take off. Of course, they have to keep on writing & publishing. Not publishing regularly is taken as a bad sign, especially if the book is part of a series.

I don't mind authors sending me a PM offering me their book for free, especially if they mention that they saw I read several others which they think are similar. Most aren't up to my standards, but I never give those a public review. My silence is usually enough, but a few have badgered me. That I don't appreciate.

I've not read Sullivan, but from his profile page it seems that he's written dozens of books all set in the same secondary world. He seems to still be enjoying it, but if so, he's lucky. I recall reading an interview with Bob Shaw in which he said that writing had ceased to be exciting and had turned into an ordinary day job. That is presumably the downside of success. What starts off as a thrilling love affair can end up being a dull marriage.

Chris wrote: "I've not read Sullivan, but from his profile page it seems that he's written dozens of books all set in the same secondary world...."

Actually, he tried branching off to SF with Hollow World, but I guess that didn't do as well. He did originally say the first 5 books would be it for Riyria, but he found that he had a gravy train & I guess the balance between drudgery & profit is still working for writing more Riyria. I beta & ARC read his early novels, but lost interest around book 7 or 8. While I have a low tolerance for endlessly expanding the same world, apparently most readers don't. Series seem to be the way of the writing world these days, but I often only read the first or first few novels in a series before quitting.

Chris wrote: "What readers actually need is some kind of quality gatekeeper - a guide to which books are worth reading and which are not."

I've always thought that was the job of an acquisition editor and various professionals at publishing houses (with all the caveats that apply). Then again, I'm so old-school that if my car breaks down I don't bring it to the first self-proclaimed mechanic I can find on the internet but to an actual garage.

Bryan wrote: "I've always thought that was the job of an acquisition editor and various professionals..."

It should be, but the system doesn't seem to be working all that well for many authors or readers. The market has changed & the traditional publishers aren't keeping up with it. Can't in some cases.

Established authors like J.A. Konrath & Barry Eisler have dropped their traditional publishers because they don't get as much profit per book, even when the book is 3 times as expensive for the reader, & it takes too long to get to market. Konrath hired his own editors, sells his books for $2.99 rather than $8.99 or more, & gets most of the profit almost immediately rather than months or even a year later. He & Eisler have a free book about it on Smashwords.com here:


Other established authors say they have no continuity in editing, a big deal with long running, complex series. Plus, they have to do a lot of the marketing anyway & are hemmed in by traditional rules, like little/no control of the cover art & blurb(s). It really sucks for them because they want to write & are used to that. They don't want to market, & most aren't suited to it judging by some of the messes I've seen on GR in the past decade.

There are also authors who have somewhat unique items that traditional publishers won't touch. For instance, a how-to book can be a lot shorter relying on Internet links to fill in those areas where the reader wants to delve further & yet it doesn't bog down those who don't. It's a nifty idea, but a traditional publisher has to take into account a lot of things that a self-published author doesn't. They also tend to be niche books which will never generate enough profit for a large company.

I think GR's position on free books has grown into this area. There are so many being offered for free that price is being used to balance it. They are a for-profit company, after all. Readers are here for free which makes us part of their product.

Of course, there are a lot of self-published authors that skip the editing steps & shouldn't or just don't have a good product. That's where something like GR helps the reader. The communities of like-minded individuals helps sort the dross & still find the gems.

Jim wrote: "I think GR's position on free books has grown into this area. There are so many being offered for free that price is being used to balance it. They are a for-profit company, after all. Readers are here for free which makes us part of their product.."

There is truth that these sites need to make some money, after all it costs to maintain what with the staff, the servers, the bandwidth and more. There are ads of course, but I don't find them intrusive, usually just one on the right near the top, but I don't see how that would be enough to run the whole site, so there must be more sources income. The alternative is that the site would have to shut down or have everyone pay to log in.

Still, going from free giveaways to asking for over $100 for a package is a big jump for independent authors. If they changed a couple dollars per giveaway instead of forcing a big package they could probably achieve the same thing without making it unfeasible for many. 100$ for 50 books is not bad, but you may only want to give away 1 or 2 books (after all that independent author can't afford to print and ship an extra 50 books in addition to the giveaway fee)

I know GR does ebook giveaways now (which Canadians still can't participate it), in that case, maybe it is worth even an independent author to give away 50 books since then the only cost is the giveaway fee, would actuall be cheaper than the dead-tree giveaway...maybe that's another reason as a Canadian I'm seeing less giveaways, maybe authors are taking advantage of the ebook ones instead?

Andrea wrote: There are ads of course, but I don't find them intrusive, usually just one on the right near the top

Yes, they're very easy to ignore, which makes me wonder how successful they can be as ads. The same is true of the ones on Amazon. As a reader, I'm glad they're so small and tucked away, since the few I've bothered to click on haven't yielded anything I want to read. As an author, it makes me think they're probably not worth paying for. As a cynic, it makes me think that their real purpose is to raise money from the authors rather than the readers (as per my earlier comment).

Jim wrote: "I think GR's position on free books has grown into this area. There are so many being offered for free that price is being used to balance it. They are a for-profit company, after all. Readers are here for free which makes us part of their product."

Can't ever agree when someone makes the argument that large multinational corporations like Amazon (since GR is indeed owned by Amazon) are for-profit and that this therefore justifies what basically comes down to being needlessly greedy. Let's not pretend as though GR/Amazon isn't a multi-billion dollar corporation. They hardly need to worry about the "costs" of providing space for things like free book giveaways to authors.

The thing is too, that a lot of authors have said that basically it was a nice perk to be able to offer things like free books to fans but that it didn't make a particularly big difference in increasing their readership. But also that often those books were just going to people who basically enter every giveaway they see and may never actually review the book or even read it. The fact that GR saw fit to charge even for a perk like a free book giveaway honestly just makes them look greedy and their decision in bad taste rather than genuinely acting as a platform for readers and authors to engage more with each other.

NekroRider wrote: "Can't ever agree when someone makes the argument that large multinational corporations like Amazon (since GR is indeed owned by Amazon) are for-profit and that this therefore justifies what basically comes down to being needlessly greedy. .."

Needlessly greedy? They're charging what the traffic will bear. That's capitalism. It can run amok, but care needs to taken when trying to regulate profits. No one ever said they weren't a multi-billion dollar corporation. I don't know what that has to do with anything, though.

Well, I went through another week's worth of giveaways and instead of havng up to a dozen pages of giveaways I now saw in three pages 2.5 weeks worth of giveaways. They certainly aren't making much money off a handful of giveaways and they've killed the feature for everyone else *shrugs* If they charged say a dollar or 2 per giveaway they's probably make the same amount of money since people would still run giveaways, but this way, by charging a lot, very few are willing to pay.

And it's not just the independent authors, for example Tor.com no longer does giveaways either.

Though I only see the Canadian giveaways so maybe because we're a "smaller market" (at +30mil customers) our giveaways are being hit worse than the American ones, I can't tell.

Andrea wrote: "Well, I went through another week's worth of giveaways and instead of havng up to a dozen pages of giveaways I now saw in three pages 2.5 weeks worth of giveaways. They certainly aren't making much..."

Giveaways under the new provisions are not currently available for people outside the US, so if you are seeing them in Canada they must have been arranged before the new rules started in early January.

Faith wrote: "Giveaways under the new provisions are not currently available for people outside the US, so if you are seeing them in Canada they must have been arranged before the new rules started in early January"

Wait...you mean that they are stopping the Canadian giveaways altogether? Bad enough they don't do the ebook ones but at least that was a new feature. And I presume they aren't excluding Canada specifically, so giveaways through GR are going to become a US only thing? I guess that jives with Amazon charging more for Canadians before we get free shipping (35 instead of 25).

Andrea wrote: "Faith wrote: "Giveaways under the new provisions are not currently available for people outside the US, so if you are seeing them in Canada they must have been arranged before the new rules started..."

GR has said that they plan on expanding the giveaways to other countries, but they haven't said when this will happen.

Well, nearly 8 months into the year and I'm down to only two pages of giveaways I'm not holding my breath that we'll be getting this feature back any time soon. As a Canadian, Amazon is really starting to annoy me (I know Trump is pushing "America First" but didn't think Bezos would follow suit) so I decided that if they don't care about this group of users to let them in on any of the deals and such (I know of three features that they promised non-US users but haven't gotten around to), then they probably shouldn't care if I give them nothing in return either. And I only really started rating books in the hopes it would increase my chances to win other books.

So I'm removing my star ratings from everything I didn't get through GR itself (after all the authors who gave their books for free, whether through giveaways or free downloads should still get the feedback I owe them). I still "pay" for using the rest of the usage of the site by loading their ads, adding books to shelves and updating when I'm done reading them. But just felt the need for some kind of "protest".

Andrea wrote: "I know of three features that they promised non-US users but haven't gotten around to..."

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ seems to have.... reduced staff? Or, ceased to care? Replies from Support takes weeks now. II don't know if you've noticed, but the "search discussion posts" within the group doesn't work anymore. (Go ahead, type "Le Guin" into that box over on the right side of the page and see if you get any results.... I'll wait... ;) It hasn't worked since June, but GR can't seem to find a developer to fix whatever it is they broke. So, expecting them to add something new may be too much to hope for when they can't keep the old stuff working.

G33z3r wrote: "Andrea wrote: "I know of three features that they promised non-US users but haven't gotten around to..."

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ seems to have.... reduced staff? Or, ceased to care? Replies from Support takes w..."

Interesting. The only bug I ran into was that one where it lost track of the dates of when you read a book but that's all fine now. Guess that was a pretty major one they couldn't ignore. Didn't even realize I could search the forums (and now I maybe never will?)

G33z3r wrote: "Andrea wrote: "I know of three features that they promised non-US users but haven't gotten around to..."

Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ seems to have.... reduced staff? Or, ceased to care? Replies from Support takes w..."

Probably because it's continued to grow bigger and bigger, and possibly it might have something to do with who is in charge?

LOL, just as the Canadian giveaways were down to just two books, it seems like they've reopened giveaways for us :) Was sort of waiting for the day I would go and there would be none.

Kind of annoying that entering a giveaway now automatically adds the book to your to-read shelf, one used to be able to opt out, since unless I win it, I may or may not read it. After all I may experiment with a free book that I would never go out of my way to buy.

Plus my to-read shelf, for me at least, is used for things I will read in the next month or two, not what I want to read in the long term, like when an ARC is not just published but maybe out in paperback which can be a couple of years from now.

But I guess I can live with cleaning up unwon entries in my to-reads in exchange for a free book here and there. I can consider it "payment" for the chance to get the free book, just like I only give full reviews to books I get free since I "owe" the author something for the freebie. After all, I get that this would be a kind of advertisement for the book if a lot of people have marked it as "Want to read". Maybe I'll leave the default "to-read" to be my giveaway collecting shelf and create another to-read for things I actually plan to read soon...

Otherwise, if I actually put everything I'd like to read one day into the to-read shelf it would be enormously huge as to be useless LOL. Just my shelf with books I need to read to finish a series already has 360 books in it (and is probably incomplete anyway). I've got another shelf to track the 50 books currently on my eReader that I haven't read yet, which doesn't include most of the stuff sitting on my desktop not yet transferred to my eReader.

I've only got 7 books in my "to read dragons" shelf but then it's almost the end of the year so even that will be tight since I have 8 more in my Want to Read shelf, and 1 currently reading :)

So much to read, so little time...

Roger wrote: "I hate the world we live in where everything is about sucking every last penny out of everyone so that you can say you are making more money now. Apparently when you make a million one year then yo..."

Yeah, man. I think that's about it. it's not enough to own Amazon and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ (besides all the rest): "let's get more money out of those suckers!" seems to be the general rule.