Today (28th Feb 2015) marks the end of the my first ever Goodreads Giveaway.
646 folks entered, which I have to say is pretty good by my estimations, and 314 now have it marked to read. Whether that will translate into sales... well, that's anyone's guess.
Although the amount of people entering varied day to day, over the month or so of the actual giveaway, the peak amount per day, prior to the last few days, was 12.
The figures below are just the last five days:
23/02/2015 2
24/02/2015 7
25/02/2015 23
26/02/2015 40
27/02/2015 89
You can clearly see the "rush" towards the end.
I like a bit of excel, not quite as much as my friend T O Munro, but I still like a litle play. So, here are some charts to show the data:
This one (as the title suggests) shows the number of people per day who entered the Giveaway on Goodreads.
One reading of this data would suggest that just running the Giveaway for a week would have resulted in, perhaps, the most number of entrants by time alloted. There is a chance that all of those who entered early would merely have entered right at the end instead.
By week, as this data suggests, the hypothesis above would remain true. However, there is also the chance that this ignores the advertising and marketing done by having a Giveaway running in the first place. Was there any word of mouth? Does one entrant speak to another? A friend, a member on an online social circle, a colleague? What was the impact of Twitter and Facebook - I have relatively few followers/friends compared to other authors and some of those were gracious enough to retweet and help out.
I like to think that, perhaps, the long lead in to the last week helped folks find out about the Giveaway and increased the final number. What I lack is evidence to that effect. The solution, run some more Giveaways over different time frames, or perhaps two side by side.
However, this was my first and I am quite pleased with the way it went. Think I'll focus on getting book 3 started (and then finished) whilst I think about other ways to "get the book out there".