Goodreads Giveaway Print versus Ebook

I did a few Goodreads giveaways of print books and now the ebooks. Here’s what happened.

In brief, the print book giveaways were more popular.

• Every Single Day (print): 881 people requested it, December 24, 2017
• Every Single Day (print): 925 people requested it, January 23, 2018
• The Secret of Markree Castle (print): 529 people requested it, January 24, 2018
• The Secret of Kite Hill (print): 570 people requested it, February 02, 2018
• Every Single Day (ebook): 326 people requested it, February 20, 2018

Granted, there might be many factors in play:

• Time of year
• Promotions I did (some FB ads, Twitter, sporadic)
• Print vs. Ebook
• Saturation of market (with the same book!)
• Who knows what else

In any case, I’d conclude that, at least in my case:

I had more success with Goodreads Giveaways using:

• Print books
• Fewer copies available

I don’t know if that was a factor, but I gave 20 ebooks away whereas I usually only gave 2 or 3 print books away. Frankly, it was just a question of cost (book + shipping) for me.

I didn’t see any or much of a change in book sales or sales rank doing any of this. But hey, that’s the danger of doing 14 things at once and then you don’t know what worked and what didn’t.

In all, I’d say print giveaways via Goodreads is a good thing. Because this is my most important and potentially interesting indicator:

Or maybe this one is the most important. The count of how many readers put it on their To Read list.

I don’t know the actual “worth” of this, meaning: will they actually read it later!), but a few hundred potential readers is IMHO a great benefit of such a giveaway.