freebies

Goodreads losing ground to scotch whiskey in the battle for my soul

/ Scott Nagele / 4 Comments

I mention Goodreads often in this space. The part of Goodreads I write about most is the giveaways. After this, I probably won’t write about Goodreads Giveaways so much. If you are a Goodreads author or publisher, you can probably guess why. If you aren’t, I’ll come right out and tell you.

Goodreads will start charging authors and publishers to give away their books starting in January, 2018. For $119, or $599 for the premium package, you can give away (as in “free”) books to Goodreads members. The difference between this new system and the current $0 giveaways appears to be mostly that Goodreads will hound the winners into leaving reviews of the books they’ve won. This, it should be noted, is the exact activity Goodreads had prohibited the sponsors of giveaways from doing up until now. Perhaps they were just saving all the fun for themselves.

Goodreads has every right to charge whatever it wants for any of its services. Likewise, users have the right to stop using services deemed not worth the price. To me, $119 is way not worth the price to give away books.

Goodreads Giveaways seem mostly a tool to give Indy Authors something to look at besides stagnant sales. The giveaways result in, at best, sporadic reviews. They grow “to read” counts, which may make authors feel a little better, but don’t put any money into their pockets. The correlation between “to read” counts and sales is tenuous to non-existent.

I confess to running Goodreads Giveaways as a pick-me-up in the midst of sales boredom. For this purpose, it is occasionally worth the price of a book and postage to get the book into a potential reader’s hands. If I actually made any money on giveaways, I’d have done them a lot more often.

A short-term morale boost is not worth $119 – $599 to me. I’d rather spend the money on a good bottle of scotch and keep the change. The scotch would last longer than the giveaway afterglow.

For temporary relief of sales anemia. Take as necessary.

I think Goodreads miscalculated how much people will pay for the right to give away their stuff. It may also have misjudged how much money authors who are not selling books have to spend on services that don’t lead to selling books.

But that’s Goodreads’ problem.

My problem is now I really want a good bottle of scotch and I don’t have $119 to spend on it.

Meanwhile, I am taking advantage of the grace period before January to run one last giveaway for old time’s sake. I’m giving away one copy each of three of my books, which is kind of a splurge for someone with my sales numbers, but why not go out with a bang?

So, if you want to be part of the farewell party . . .

Click cover to go to giveaway entry.

 

 

Clinging to life in the Goodreads Emergency Room

/ Scott Nagele / Leave a comment

I’m haunted by this recurring vision in which I have a sudden crisis. I am rushed to the hospital and hooked up to all the most sophisticated machinery. As the doctor hovers over me and shines a light into my glassy pupils, the nurse hooks up the monitor, displaying all my vital statistics, as found on my Goodreads Author Dashboard.

The nurse starts reading important stats for the doctor to consider. “His average rating is stable at 4.29, but it’s based on only 21 ratings.”

“How many reviews?” the doctor asks.

The nursed scans the screen. “Seven.”

The doctor sighs. “That explains why I’m seeing signs of a collapsed ego.”

“It gets worse,” the nurse explains. “There are four books showing, but they only show up 1200 times on ‘to read’ shelves.”

The doctor shakes his head. “That’s only 300 per book. It’s a miracle he’s still writing.”

The nurse gasps as she continues reading. “Oh my goodness! There’s only one ‘currently reading’.”

“For each book?” the doctor asks.

“One, total,” the nurse replies, stifling the instinct to cover her mouth with her hand. “He’s hanging on by a thread.”

The doctor wipes sweat from his brow. “This is serious. Please tell me he has a few followers.”

“Yes, 37,” the nurse replies, trying to sound up-beat.

“That’s not good,” the doctor laments, “but I’ve seen worse. Is there anything we can use to jump start his writing career?”

“Well, he’s got quite a number of blog posts, but not too many people read them, maybe one view per post.”

“We’re going to have to do something to get his numbers up before his ambition flatlines. Set up some Giveaways, STAT! Let’s start with three and see where that gets us. Then I want him in some groups. Maybe we can get him interacting with people, if it’s not too late. If we can’t get his numbers up, he has no chance of becoming relevant.”

Later, the doctor greets my loved ones in the waiting room. “His writing career is not out of danger,” he tells them. “The good news is we were able to raise his average rating slightly, to 4.32. Also, we got his ‘to read’ shelf appearances up over 1300 and his followers to 39. These still aren’t great numbers, but, as far as his writing career goes, it’s a step in the right direction.”

“Doctor, I have just one question,” my wife says.

The doctor leans forward, showing a large, empathetic ear. “What is it?”

“Why do you keep making air quotes with your fingers every time you mention his writing career?”

It’s my party and I’ll Palooza if I want to

/ Scott Nagele / 3 Comments

Welcome to NookBookPalooza

I’m probably way behind the times on the whole Palooza thing. Everything fun, with multiple entries is supposed to be some kind of Palooza, right? Oh, that was in 2005? Well, that’s still progress for me as I am usually 20 to 30 years behind the rest of civilization.

Anyway I’m sticking with NookBookPalooza because it has a nice ring to it and I don’t feel like spending the time thinking up something more hip and modern.

For my NookBookPalooza I am making the Nook versions of all my books free. It’s only three books, but I haven’t found any rules stating that’s not enough items to constitute a Palooza, so you can see I am well within the law.

That’s right, for a limited time, Nook downloads of the following titles will be free.

Click on a cover for more information about that book.

Take me to the free Nook Download.
Take me to the free Nook Download.
Take me to the free Nook Download.

I’m not sure how long this will last; we’ll see how it goes. That’s why I’m using the legal term “for a limited time” rather than giving an end date. I learned this trick from fast food restaurants test marketing their new sow belly sandwiches.

Why not Kindle too?

I would love to do this for Kindle editions too, but Amazon is less flexible about free stuff. I could only make Kindle books free for five days at a time, and then only if I didn’t make ebook versions available anywhere else, like for Nook. I can make Nook editions free for as long as I want, with no strings attached. Hence, there will be no KindlePalooza at this time.

This Amazon business is unfortunate, as I know many more people who download to Kindle than who download to Nook. Nonetheless, I am not letting this disappointment put a dent into my Palooza. The show must go on!

So go ahead and download a free book or three, cause tonight we’re gonna Palooza like it’s 1999! (A 1999 that comes with modern ebook technology.) But hurry, because, as they say on the sow belly sandwich commercials, this promotion is subject to end without notice.

 

Author, Publisher, Promoter, Exporter . . . Exporter?

/ Scott Nagele / 8 Comments

Since I last wrote about Goodreads giveaways I’ve opened my giveaways up to more countries besides the U.S. This worked fine when the winner lived in Canada, but after trying to get a book to South Africa, I think I’ve hit my limit.

The shipment to Canada I mailed myself. It cost more than I’d expected but it was easy. In the South African case, it would be less expensive to send a copy directly from Amazon.com to the winner.

Shipping cost $14, on top of the price of the book. I was pleasantly surprised at how reasonable this was, and that’s when the surprises stopped being pleasant.

During the ordering process I learned that South African customs requires the national ID number of the recipient of a package. I suspected the recipient could provide this number to customs when the package arrived there, but I wasn’t sure. Not wanting to ship a book that might never get to its destination, I paused to investigate.

Online searches yielded no helpful information.

Since Amazon had alerted me to the requirement, I decided to ask them about the particulars. I called customer support. The representative assured me all I need was the recipient’s address. Great. I asked him why Amazon requested the recipient’s national ID number in that case. He put me on hold. A minute later, he returned with a changed mind: I certainly needed the ID number to ship the package. I decided to try a different Amazon representative.

Via web chat, the next rep told me I could substitute my own national ID number. The only national ID number I have is my Social Security number, and I’m certainly not plugging that into Amazon to buy a book. Besides, it’s hard to see how my Social Security number would do South African customs any good. I hope they don’t have a database of all American’s and their most personal information. When I asked the rep about this, she began answering questions I had not asked, but not the ones I did. I said thank you and goodbye.

The humble, little humor novel that caused all the trouble. According to Amazon's shipping department, it might just be explosively hilarious.

The humble, little humor novel that caused all the trouble. According to Amazon’s shipping department, it might just be explosively hilarious.

Still confused, I broke down and did the unthinkable. I sent a message through Goodreads to the winner of my giveaway. Goodreads strongly discourages this, but under the circumstances, I hope to be forgiven.

The winner was a very nice man, who even apologized for his country’s red tape. Though I’d been careful not to ask for his ID number, he offered it anyway, along with a more specific address than the one supplied by Goodreads. I returned to my Amazon shopping cart. Problem solved.

Or not.

Amazon would not ship to the new address at all. A pop-up box explained that I might be sending something that South African authorities would not allow – for example, weapons or explosives. Well, I have handled hundreds of copies of this book, and it has never yet exploded. What the pop-up box didn’t mention is that the new address contained the phrase “PO Box,” which is more likely the reason Amazon didn’t want to deal with it. But it was convenient to blame it on the South African authorities.

I went back to the non-PO Box, address. Combined with the winner’s national ID number, no warning lights flashed and no gates came crashing down. I was free, as far as I know, to ship a humble, non-toxic, non-invasive, paperback book to South Africa.

What do you guess the odds are of it making it to its destination?