Indie Author Series: Giveaways - Tips & Techniques

Plus, Enter Below to Win!

For this week's Indie Author Series, we're writing about our personal tips for having successful giveaways. In honor of this post, there's also a big giveaway of some of the books of Indie Author Series' authors. You can enter using the Rafflecopter at the end of this post.

If you're an author (or a blogger for that matter) doing a giveaway, here are a few things that have worked for me.

1. Keep it Simple I think when people come to your blog to enter a giveaway, they don't want to spend a ton of time doing it. One of the great things about Rafflecopter is the ability to simplify it for your readers. If they only have to click a single button to either follow someone via Twitter or Facebook, they're more likely to do so than if they have to leave your site to do something on a different site for that entry.

2. Blog Hops Blog hops are a great way to do a giveaway because you're tied to a bunch of other blogs who are helping to cross-promote the giveaway.  They enter your giveaway, then click on the linky list (like the one below) to hop to the next blog for the chance to win more prizes.

3. Make the Prize a Good One Followers of book blogs and authors are probably readers, so why not give away the thing they love: books! Or even a gift card to Amazon, or the Book Depository, or Smashwords, or wherever else they can purchase a book of their choice.

4. Don't Do Giveaways Too Often For me, at least, and I suspect for a lot of authors, we love to give things away. We love to keeps our readers, fans, and followers happy. But I think there's such thing as too much of a good thing. If you're constantly giving things away, particularly if you're constantly giving away your own book, pretty soon interest will wane because they know another giveaway is coming up soon. Also, as much as I love writing, I do need to make a little money on it to support my habit (my habit being writing). Readers won't be as inspired to purchase a book that they always see being given away because they'll just wait, enter, and hope they win.

5. Use Goodreads for a Giveaway Goodreads is an excellent place to do a giveaway. Tons of people enter giveaways on there, and it's a great way to expose your title, cover, and name to a lot of people in one place. Last I knew, your giveaway can't be an eBook, it has to be a physical book.

I'd be curious to know from you what really works for you when you see a giveaway, or what will turn you off of a giveaway.

Now, enter below to win some prizes donated by some amazing authors, then visit other Indie Author Series authors by clicking on the link at the bottom.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

1.	Laura A. H. Elliott	2.	Bryna Butler, author Midnight Guardian series
3.	T. R. Graves, Author of The Warrior Series	4.	Suzy Turner, author of The Raven Saga
5.	Rachel Coles, author of Into The Ruins, geek mom blog	6.	K. C. Blake, author of Vampires Rule and Crushed
7.	Gwenn Wright, author of Filter	8.	Liz Long | Just another writer on the loose.
9.	Ella James	10.	Maureen Murrish
11.	YA Sci Fi Author's Ramblings	12.	A Little Bit of R&R
13.	Melissa Pearl	14.	Terah Edun - YA Fantasy
15.	Heather Sutherlin - YA Fantasy	16.	Author Cindy C Bennett