This week’s Help This Hound question is from Anne Roos of South Lake Tahoe, CA:
“I’m an author and I’ve received 40 free books from the publicist I used last year, 20 copies each of “The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings” and “The Brides Guide to Musicians: Live Wedding Music Made Easy and Affordable.”
“They were copies supplied without cost from the publisher to be sent out for review. Since I didn’t pay for them, I want to do a giveaway.
“What’s the most effective way to do a contest/giveaway? Where do I post it to get it noticed? Should it be a quiz with a question of the day? Should it be some kind of silly trivia? I just don’t know how to attract people to a little contest.
“Even when I had a big grand prize giveaway that I tried out about a year ago, it garnered very little interest. I’d love ideas from your Hounds on how to really attract attention with this.”
Ideas are welcome below. If you have your own dilemma involving publicity or social media, email it to me.
“The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings” and “The Bride’s Guide to Musicians: Live Wedding Music Made Easy and Affordable”
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Anne,
You’ll get the biggest bang for your giveaway copies if you contact popular blogs for 1)musicians (the type who do wedding gigs) and 2)brides and offer each blog one or two free copies to give away. Let them decide how best to run the giveaway as they’re likely to know their audience quite well.
Give them each a short one-paragraph description of the book they can use in the giveaway.
Good luck,
Marcia Yudkin
This might be too cumbersome for such a large drawing, but I have seen this used effectively for contests for one item. And perhaps this idea will prompt a spinoff idea that will work for you.
If you have a Facebook group that you would like to add members to, invite those group members and if you wish other FB friends to enter the contest by adding, say, five members to the group by a specific date and time. As each person adds five new members to the group, put the person’s name on a slip of paper. At the conclusion of the contest, take a video of yourself pulling slips out of a hat and announcing the winners. Post the video in the group, and email everyone the link to the video.
So many ways here Joan: 1 Donate the book to a library of local college/university with a music program–they will send you a tax deduction letter for the contribution. 2 Send to a music store–they always have musicians looking to find extra money playing weddings. 3 Send to chairman of music department of your local college/university as they always have students looking to play weddings and such for extra money. 4 Have hounds submit the names of people they know who play weddings and a book will be mailed to them in the name of the hound as “thanks” for their efforts. 5 The books can be sent to wedding planners and bridal/tux stores as a promotion as musicians as they usually keep list of musicians who play weddings. 6 Send to local NRP affiliate and suggest they do a story on local musicians who play for weddings. 7 Send to your state film commission and suggest they consider doing a documentary on people who play music for weddings. 8 Send a copy to the high school band directors as they have exceptional students who may want to consider playing music for weddings. 9 Send a copy to the guy who submitted 10 ideas to give away the books! 10 Send a copy to the local school for the blind or blind reading service as this would make an excellent reference book for the readers to read to the blind.
Hi Anne,
Doing a giveaway can be a lot of work and if you do it with just your resources it can be almost invisible. I totally relate to that. I’ve been looking for options, and I’ll pass some ideas to you. How about doing a blog book tour? If you have a book to publish, this is the best route. But you can adapt this to other goals and offers. Network with other bloggers who already do contests for your market and topic. Offer them a prize for a contest. Find one blogger for each of the books you have available or offer several books to a handful of bloggers with high traffic. Everyone wins. They get a new prize and do a new contest with less effort and you get more visibility and generate traffic and the readers get all those free books. The publisher will also win, as they will get what they wanted from the courtesy copy: publicity. The other idea is to find an internet radio show that interviews you and offer the give away books for those who listen live. This helps them attract more live listeners and gets publicity for everyone. I hope this helps.
Hi Anne,
Congratulations on your publications: that’s a big hurdle overcome right there.
I presume you are blogging, so I suggest you reward your audience (blog, Facebook, and Twitter folks) with a giveaway each.
Then, find a few related blogs and contact their owners with an offer to guest blog and hold a book giveaway associated with your guest post. (Seek out the Sites of musicians who play weddings and bride-related Sites.)
Are you a member of a writing group? If not, get involved! These organizations are great ways to network as well as to find out where and when local signing events are happening: give a book or two away in drawings that require folks to fill out their name and e-mail address. Instant mailing list! (If you don’t know where to begin, look into the California Writers Club, Sacramento Branch. It’s a bit far from Tahoe, but I live about 20 minutes west of you, and I am an active member of that organization.)
Look for groups (musical and wedding-related) who have gatherings, and offer to be a speaker. You being there as an expert will help “sell” your product. Again, hold a drawing and a sale.
Finally, search the Internet for bloggers who interview authors—choose the folks who actually interview you as well as talk about the stuff between the covers of your books. My experience as an author and a marketer is sales go up when I personally connect with people. Depending on the kind of show, you can give a copy of one of your books away to the 11th caller or the 15th person to leave a comment on your blog post—you know, the one announcing the interview!
Ultimately, the “best” way to hold a contest/giveaway is to hold many. I work with many authors, and almost all of their sales suffer from a lack of exposure, not a lack of talent. People have to know your name to look for your titles!
I wish you the best of luck in the upcoming New Year and beyond.
Thank you, all, for your wonderful feedback. So far, the idea of contacting other blogs that might be interested in partnering in a giveaway. This way, I’ll be getting the word out to many people about my books.
Please keep the ideas coming….
Oh yes, and if you’d like to check out the books, they are at http://bit.ly/vo5NKJ and http://bit.ly/tSLctP.
Hi Everyone! Thank you again for your feedback! Here’s what id decided to do:
I am giving away my “Musician’s Guide to Brides” book as gifts to fellow musicians who show up at the weekly Celtic music pub sessions that I attend: http://www.celticharpmusic.com/userpages/EventDescription.aspx?ID=94. They are absolutely floored by the book, and their word-of-mouth in my locale can help me book more gigs.
I am giving away my Brides Guide to Musicians to brides who attend my concert in February at My Wedding Library: http://www.celticharpmusic.com/userpages/EventDescription.aspx?ID=100
This way, I am spreading the word, locally, and I don’t have to deal with contests and shipping costs 🙂
Anne,
It sounds as if you made solid choices: I love the concept of staying local! The savings on shipping fees is the tangible return, but connecting locally to generate word-of-mouth buzz is that intangible that often grows unexpectedly.
Enjoy the fun!