The Post Is This The Best Launch Giveaway You’ve Seen? Originally Appeared on Epic Brand Storytelling.
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Is This The Best Launch Giveaway You've Seen?
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I remember the moment I decided when I’d launch I Unlove You to the world, and how I said to myself, “We need to celebrate by doing a massive giveaway at the same time!”
When you’re someone like Stephen King or JK Rowling, I imagine a giveaway is rather easy. You decide to literally give away lots of your own books, knowing an army of people will enter, share, and get true value from your offer. When you’re me, a mere up-and-coming self published author… well, I can’t imagine a hoard of folk beating down the door to win a signed copy of my own book.
My mother would like it, but if we were to make this a MASSIVE giveaway… we had to think outside of the box.
That’s what this post is all about, delving into:
WHY we decided to do this giveaway (and why we chose the grand prizes we did)
WHO this giveaway is for (and how we wishe to focus on two very important types of people)
HOW we created, setup, and managed this beastly offering (step-by-step so you can do it too)
As often is the case, it’s why you choose to do something that matters above all else. From a truly selfish standpoint, I wished to create this giveaway in order to spread the word of I Unlove You’s launch and gather new email subscribers, but this isn’t the main reason. There are cheaper and easier ways to spread the love and grow your list, but few as involving and outreaching as a giveaway like this.
I suppose you’re wondering what this I Unlove You Giveaway looks like, right?
Well, there’s 3 types of prizes specific to three types of people who live in the world.
The UK Main Prize = a crate of beautiful coming-of-age books from my own bookshelf
The USA/Canada Main Prize = a 3 month subscription to OwlCrate
The Rest of the World Main Prize = 3 Signed copies of I Unlove You
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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We’ll get into why there are three types of prizes soon, but right now we’re focussing on why this giveaway exists at all.
You see, when you launch a new novel like I Unlove You, you’re tempted to make it all about this single book. It’s easy to fall into a state of me-me-me, which is never good. There are too many people in the world who make it about me-me-me, and I do my best to not be one of these folk. But around a big launch like this… It’s difficult. It’s really damn difficult.
It comes down to fear for the most part: the fear of failing, the fear people won’t like your book, the fear two years of hard will fall flat on its face.
But no matter who you are, and no matter how big your big-day is, it’s never about me-me-me.
This is why we crafted The I Unlove You Launch Giveaway in such a way:
Because it introduces folk like you to other amazing books
Because it shares a peek into my own reading-world, and the novels that mean something to me
Because it introduces people to an amazing brand like OwlCrate
Which in turns, introduces people to new books, artists, and authors doing great things
Because although so much of this is about I Unlove you, not everything has to be
Beyond this, it allowed me to expand and extend this Forever Free Concept and the journey we’re on together. For instance, I sign and write a message in each of the books that appear in the incredible crate of booky-goodness. I deliver this crate (along with my better half) to the winner… to their door… so we’re able to meet and grab a coffee and extend our relationship.
I wish I could have opened this to the entire world, but I don’t have the funds or resources to make that happen. But I do have the capabilities to forge a great connection with OwlCrate who deliver a similar personal experience.
Simply put, I wanted to place meaning into this giveaway. I wanted YOU, no matter where in the world you live or whether you win or not, to feel like you’ve not just been sold to once again. I wanted to make it about other books, other than I Unlove You.
I wished to make it about other people, other than myself.
Which brings us to the all important who…
THE TWO TYPES OF WHO THIS GIVEAWAY IS FOR
Like I say, the entire why behind this giveaway is to make it about the who.
Avid Readers who wish to be part of something bigger than single book (are you one of them?)
Reviewers & Authors & Businesses who share the same mindset as me.
The first who is obvious, right? It’s readers like you. It’s people who love books and love to read new books. It’s people who like to win signed copies and place them on their bookshelf. It’s people who wish to discover new books and further their journey into the book-reading abyss.
But what about the second who? What about the reviewers and the authors and the businesses? What does this mean?
Well, let me share something with you that you may not know. There are wonderful book reviewers and bloggers in this world, and the vast majority of these read a lot of books each week for free (in other words, they don’t get paid by authors to read them. The reviewers who appear in newspapers and magazines… these guys get paid. But these online mavericks who read books from writers like me? They read for the sole purpose to read.)
I owe a lot to these amazing reviewers and bloggers. I’m lucky to call a few of them friends. Authors like me tend to make it about me and my book. I email them and ask for them for help, and plead with them to read my book and share it with their audience. We often email lots of these people, ultimately spamming them and smashing them in the face with a sales message.
It’s not cool, and I’m not proud to be one of these authors.
I honestly want reviewers and bloggers to know I appreciate them, and I wish to help them and befriend them and be better than the majority. So although this giveaway is designed to place a smile on an avid reader’s face, it’s also for the Reviewer & Blogger.
You see, I haven’t asked many reviewers to review I Unlove You. I want them to. I hope they will at some point. But instead of spending the weeks leading up to the launch asking them for reviews, I share this Giveaway with them. I invite them to place an actual excerpt from the book on their blog. I invite them to share this giveaway with their own audience, because I believe their audience will love it (being avid readers, and all).
Instead of asking what 95% of authors ask for and hoping they invest 6-8 hours into me and my book, I invite them to share something valuable with their audience; something that will only take them a matter of minutes.
I believe us authors need to escape the me-me-me mindset and think about the reviewers and bloggers more often. These guys and gals put so much time and effort into things, and for a self-published writer like me, they’re often the difference between success or not. I wish to befriend them and develop real relationships with them, and I don’t think pleading for a review is the best way to kick such a friendship off.
So… yeah… I hope they review I Unlove You at some point, but not now. At the moment, I hope they enjoy the giveaway, and I hope their own audience enjoys it too.
As for the authors and businesses… well, this includes brands like OwlCrate. Here lies a business that offers something amazing to avid readers, and I believe they share similar ideals to me. This giveaway brings the opportunity to connect with them, forge a relationship, and begin a friendship. There are other businesses with these like-minded ideals, and other authors too.
This giveaway is for them. This giveaway is for all of us who wish to spread the love of literature.
Sure, it’s about I Unlove You and its launch, but it isn’t all about I Unlove You and its launch. It plays a rather small role, which I’m 100% okay with.
Now we’ve covered why we’re doing this and who it’s for, let’s consider how we did it and the tools we used. You may be surprised at just how simple this all is, too…
HOW WE CREATED THIS AWESOME GIVEAWAY
Creating a giveaway isn’t that hard. I suppose the hard part is making sure people know about it and enter it, which can be rather tricky in this social media world of MANY messages. It’s difficult to stand out and raise your head above the crowd, but we’ll focus on how we overcame this soon. First, let’s focus on how we made the actual giveaway, and the marvellous (and free) tool that made it possible.
But before this tool came the goodies I had to choose to offer.
The Free Signed Copies of I Unlove You were easy, but I knew this wouldn’t cut the mustard. I’m not JK, remember… So, I thought about what an avid reader like yourself might like, and I placed myself in my reading shoes (rather than my writing ones). I figured books were a good start, but not any old books, oh no… Books owned by me, and books that changed my life.
Books from my own bookshelf that left a mark on my own journey, and a crate of them I could hand-deliver to a lucky winner.
When I talk about experience and what this is all about, such personal touch points define it well. Such meaning is what it’s all about, and it’s because of this I like to think a whole army of avid readers will love this giveaway – well, my fellow UK residents, anyway.
What about the rest of the world? I mean, I wish I could catch a flight and hand-deliver a crate of books to America, but I don’t have those sort of funds (yet). Which is where OwlCrate come in, and my-oh-my am I stoked to share this excellent service with you. As for how I got them involved… I asked them.
I emailed them and said, “I’d like to buy a 3 month subscription and give it away to one lucky person. Would you like to be part of this giveaway?”
Of course they did, because who wouldn’t want to be involved in an amazing giveaway like this. So… after an hour or so of thinking and making notes, we had the prizes we’d offer and share with the world. But an idea alone isn’t enough, which is is where that special tool comes into play.
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STEP 1: CREATE THE GIVEAWAY IN RAFFLECOPTER
Rafflecopter is this marvellous tool, and if you’re an avid reader like me, chances are you’ve entered a few of them in your time. It is, quite frankly, an author’s go to giveaway tool.
It’s super simple to use, and although it does have its limitations, and although the free version only allows you to do so much, it’s easy to create a new giveaway in a matter of minutes. The first step is to ‘Create a New Giveaway‘, and from there it’s as simple as giving it a name, defining what the prizes are, and writing a short terms of conditions section.
As I say, For I Unlove You’s Giveaway, we created 3 main prizes:
The UK One: a crate of coming-of-books from my own bookshelf, hand delivered by moi
The USA One: a 3 month subscription to the wonderful OwlCrate
The Rest of The Word One: 3 Signed Copies of I Unlove You
I would have loved to have made the Crate of Coming-of-Age Books a worldwide prize, but I simply cannot afford such things – especially as I wanted to make it super personal and hand-deliver the books myself. So although it pained me to do so, I had to split up these main prizes, but all is well because Rafflecopter makes this easy.
You can add as many or as few prizes as you like within your Rafflecopter Giveaway, but I wanted to keep things simple with a less-is-more approach. I’ve run big giveaways in the past where there’s lots of prizes on offer, and they’re hard to manage. Worse than this, I don’t think you guys like them because you can’t get your head around what you’re actually going to win.
Which is why I bit my lip and resisted the temptation to offer other swag and previous books.
Once the prizes are done, it’s time to move on to what the reader has to do in order to enter:
This is where things can become fairly limited because Rafflecopter’s free version only allows you to do so much.
For instance, activating the Viral Share feature (where you get more entries for each person you refer) requires you to upgrade, which costs $84 per month. This was a little too rich for my blood, so I had to settle for less. But there’s still room to get creative, and in the end I encouraged those who enter to:
Send a Tweet (which results in one entry to the giveaway)
Follow me on Twitter (which results in one entry to the giveaway)
Visit & Join The Merry Misfit Facebook Group (which results in two entries to the giveaway)
Buy a Signed Paperback of I Unlove You (which results in five entries to the giveaway)
Again, there’s no limit to how many options you can create, but the free service does limit you somewhat. For instance, the Pinterest, Mailing List, and Poll features are all off limits, but this worked out okay for me because my main focus surrounds:
Growing The Amount of Merry Misfit Members
Growing the Mailing List
Generally Sharing The I Unlove You love
I feel like these options achieve this, so I didn’t see the need to upgrade and spend all that money (especially considering the giveaway itself would set me back a pretty penny).
Once the prizes and entry options are sorted, it’s a case of saving it, previewing it, setting the date of the giveaway (and how long it lasts), and installing it on the website. Rafflecopter make this easy to do too, providing you a simple piece of code that you can add to any blog or website. It also has a Facebook Feature that allows you to install it within a Facebook Page, but since I don’t utilise my Facebook Page much (instead using my Personal Profile and Merry Misfit Group), I didn’t use this option. Still, it is a cool and useful feature. It’s as simple as that. Setting up a giveaway takes about fifteen minutes, and once you add the code to your site, you can continue to edit and tinker away until the giveaway begins. Best of all, it updates automatically so you don’t have to add a new piece of code each time you make a change. I loved this, and it saved me a lot of stress – because as I often do, I tinkered and changed the details all the way up until launch .
STEP 2: CREATE THE GIVEAWAY LANDING PAGE
Of course, a Rafflecopter Giveaway is fine, but you only add so much information and description into it. I wanted to give people the chance to learn more, watch videos, and delve deeper, so decided to create a dedicated Landing Page.
As always I used DIVI to do this, and once again it took me no time at all (although I did, as you can imagine, tinker and change it during the lead up to launch). I didn’t wish to overbear anyone or make it too detailed, but I did want to make it visual and break everything down. After all, there’s a lot of noise and messages out there, so even entering a free giveaway offers quite the decision to make.
I wanted to make it a no-brainer, so felt a lovely landing page like this one was in order.
I split this page into six sections:
THE HOOK: the first thing you see, so a simple message that explains the giveaway in an instant
THE ENTRY FORM: the actual form alongside a brief overview of each prize
THE UK PRIZE: a detailed overview (including a video) of what this crate of books includes
THE USA PRIZE: an overview of this prize, including a video demo of me using OwlCrate
THE REST OF THE WORLD PRIZE: a quick breakdown of what this prize includes, and who it is for
THE SIGN-OFF: a recap of the T&C and a final call to action (to both SHARE & ENTER)
My overall aim throughout this is to make it visual and compelling. I didn’t wish to drone on, so kept the amount of text at a minimum. It’s easy to place too much focus on a landing page like this one, but all it’s designed to do is:
Encourage People To Enter
Encourage People To Share it With Those They Know (Social Media et al)
That’s it. It doesn’t require any more detail than this, and if anything I probably overdid it (as I often do). So with the giveaway and landing page ready, it’s time to share this bad boy with the world and engage awesome folk like you. Easy, right…
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STEP 3: SHARE – ENGAGE – SPREAD THE (UN)LOVE
As I said earlier, I’m grateful for Online Bloggers and Reviewers, because I, like many authors, bombard them with requests. This isn’t cool, so I made a firm decision to resist the temptation to make this all about me-me-me and all my book-book-book this time around.
Do I want reviewers to read and review? Of course!
Will I ask and encourage bloggers to do so in the future? Yes!
But in the here and now I wish to engage these people (along with avid readers like yourself), by introducing I Unlove You to them and their audience in an easy going manner. You see, this giveaway is in aid of I Unlove You, but you won’t see it mentioned often.
I want to provide value to those awesome reviewers and bloggers (as I’ve already mentioned), and more important then this, value to THEIR audience. I don’t think bombarding them with an I Unlove You sales pitch achieves this, and to be quite frank I think such an approach hinders the success of the book. Because all of a sudden it becomes just another book and just another marketing message.
Not cool. Not good.
The truth is I don’t need readers to download and read I Unlove You right now.
I don’t even need them to know about it straight away.
That can come later. The first step is to reach out, engage, and begin a conversation. Which takes us full circle to the WHY of this giveaway, and why it exists in the first place.
So, in the lead up to the Big Giveaway Launch, we reached out to those wonderful bloggers and reviewers I know, asking them to share the Giveaway (and a short excerpt from I Unlove You) on their blog and social media. I also created a Google Doc full of all the information they need, including:
Rafflecopter Code
Pre-Written Tweets & Messages
Images for Pinterest & Facebook
Except From I Unlove You
Author Info
All the links they may ever need…
Again, this is important because I wish to make their lives easier. I want to offer them value and say thank you. You don’t do this by making them search for info or ask you a million questions over email. You do this by placing your feet in their shoes and imagining what helps them the most.
I hope my approach achieved this because it remained centre focus the entire time.
Of course, I didn’t do this all by myself. My awesome VA helped reach out to new bloggers and reviewers (again, asking them to share the giveaway, not review the book), and found relevant Goodreads, Facebook, and Pinterest Groups full of avid readers like you.
And let me tell you this for nothing… it’s been so tempting to change track and make everything about the book, especially when the big day edges ever closer. Because I want I Unlove You to do well. I want people to download it and like it. I-want-I-want-want, but it’s important to resist such urges and stick to the plan.
Because all that nonsense is pure fear, and it brings nothing positive to the table.
So when I enlisted my awesome VA, I told her to focus on giveaway entries instead of book downloads. I asked her to find reviewers and bloggers and groups and avid readers, ask them to enter the giveaway, and to share it with those they know. Sure, We mention I Unlove You in passing, but we move straight past it and turn the attention back to:
That Beautiful Crate of Coming-of-Age Books
That Awesome 3 Month Subscription to OwlCrate
Those Signed Copies of I Unlove You – You Can Have For FREE, Not Have To Buy
Because we can talk about the book later. We can encourage them to download and read in a little while.
Right now, it’s about sharing books other than I Unlove You with the world. It’s about engaging and inviting, because if you get this part wrong, the rest of the journey matters little.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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WHAT DO YOU THINK OF A GIVEAWAY LIKE THIS?
I don’t want to pretend that this giveaway is the best thing since sliced bread. I don’t wish to trick you into believing I’m the only author who does stuff like this, because I’m not. But unfortunately there are far too many writers (I was one of them – still am, to extent) that let’s fear get in the way of offering real value.
But I do like to think the reasons why this giveaway exists matter, and the people who it’s designed for… well, I hope they love it.
It isn’t hard to create or setup or manage, but without giving it meaning a giveaway like this achieves little. You may get some new email subscribers but who cares? These newbies probably won’t and they’ll probably unsubscribe soon enough. We have to give people a reason to give a damn these days, and this is never more apparent around the launch of a new book.
After all, this is the first time they’ll come across I Unlove You. This is my latest novel’s first impression. How do I wish to come across as an author.. a person… ?
But what about you? What do you think about this giveaway and the prizes on offer? Do they excite you? Do they tempt you into entering? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so be sure to say hello on FACEBOOK or TWITTER. And if you like what you read here, you may like to join The Merry Misfit Facebook Group that’s full of avid readers just like you.
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The Post Is This The Best Launch Giveaway You’ve Seen? Originally Appeared on Epic Brand Storytelling.