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I just wrapped up my book giveaway for “Slices” on Goodreads — it ran from October 12th to October 26th. I had five copies of my book up for grabs, and as soon as I found out who won, I dropped them in the mail that very same day in the hopes they’ll get there in time for Halloween.  A few people have asked me how the giveaway went, so I thought I should post about it.

In just two weeks, 1,264 entered for a chance to win, which was way more than I expected. According to this interview with Patrick Brown of Goodreads, the average giveaway gets about 750 entries. So I’m pretty excited about the response.

Why did it do so well? I think there were a few factors at work here. First, I think giving away a horror book at Halloween is probably about as easy as giving away snow cones at the beach in August. Secondly, I think the work I put into having an interesting book description and a professional-looking cover must have paid off.

Thirdly, I have a ton of friends on Goodreads right now — over 700. (Did you know you can import a list of your Twitter followers into Goodreads, and it’ll find which of your followers have Goodreads accounts and send them friend requests automatically? I sure didn’t, but I’m glad I figured it out.) Now, I have no way of knowing how many of those people found out about the giveaway by checking my profile, but it can’t have hurt.

Anyway, even more exciting to me than how many people entered the contest is how many people added the book to their “to-read” list — 179 people. So I can definitely say that running this giveaway has been good for increasing the visibility of my book, which is awesome.

If you’re not on Goodreads — or if you are on Goodreads, and you’ve been wondering what you can do there to support the authors you love – Deb’s Answers has a good, simple quick guide to how you can do just that:

Add their books to your shelves. Rate and review the books that you’ve read. Like quotes from their books. Enter new quotes from their books. Answer trivia questions or quizzes about their books or enter trivia questions or quizzes.  Add them as friends, if they are goodreads authors. Add yourself as their fan. You don’t have to choose, you can friend authors and be their fan too. Read their blogs and reviews, make comments or like the reviews and blog posts [ . . . . ]

Once you’ve become the fan of some authors, go to your profile page and scroll down until you see your favorite authors on the right of the screen below your friends. Click on edit and you can re-order your favorite authors and change your options to follow updates and get email notices about new blog posts.

– How can I support authors on Goodreads?

Oh, and don’t forget, I’m still running my own giveaway here as part of the Coffin Hop Blog Tour, so if you’d like another chance to get a copy with considerably better odds than one-in-1,264, you can enter that between now and midnight on Halloween.

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