Do you participate in holiday group giveaways?

Group events are a great way to have multiple people sharing the advertising load. All the participants send an announcement to their mailing lists and post on their social media to spread the word and in some cases, to build those mailing lists.

Many authors swear by mailing lists. The trouble is, if you keep one, you then have to come up with content. It all takes time! I do have a mailing list that I’ve built through a giveaway, but as I have so little time, I’ve promised those on it that they will only hear from me if there’s a new release or a special sale.

Personally, as a reader as well as a writer, I don’t want to be on hundreds of mailing lists if they are going to send regular emails about anything else. It fills the inbox with too much that I don’t have time to read!

Others may feel differently and find it interesting to read about the author’s writing process, their project planning and their dog’s graduation, but if I get more than one email in a month, I’m inclined to click the unsubscribe button.

Having said that, group promos are a great way to get a sales boost. Though some who read this will be old hands at this, others may be wondering how to get in on these events.

I’ve participated in promos through author groups on Facebook and currently participate on a giveaway site called Voracious Readers Only [https://voraciousreadersonly.com/authors/]. This one sends individual requests and it’s up to me to record the names and email addresses for my list. So far they’re coming in at a pace I can keep up with fairly easily.

A popular method at present is using Bookfunnel [https://bookfunnel.com/]. With this service you upload a book to give away in all the formats and can join in group promos for your genre. The giveaways can be full books, short stories or even sample chapters. Personally I never download the previews as I can get samples from Amazon.

The pricing for the service ranges from the lowest, which is comparable to Voracious Readers Only, to much higher priced packages. The lowest level doesn’t allow collecting addresses for your mailing list, but I know an author who is experimenting with giving away a short story with a call at the end to join his mailing list through his website. It’s early days, but he is getting a response.

One of the advantages to Bookfunnel is you don’t have to know people to get in on appropriate events. A tab for group promos at the left of the author dashboard will take you to a list of genres where you can sign up for already organised events.