In the last four and a half months, I’ve won thirteen Goodreads Giveaways. I’ve had people ask me how they can win a Goodreads Giveaway. While I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert, there are several things that I think have helped me to be successful. Of course, some of these tips may or may not be useful, depending on your own book contest desires and commitment.
Know the Rules
No matter how much time and effort you want to commit to winning a Goodreads Giveaway, it is important to understand the rules. If you’re like me, you may sometimes skim over the rules and disclaimers a bit. Admit it, you’ve done it before. With Goodreads Giveaways, two rules stand out.
First, there is only one entry per book per household. If you really want to win a specific book, it might be tempting to have everyone in your household enter the giveaway so you can increase your chances of winning. Nope, once that second person enters, you’ve canceled out each other’s entries. Neither one of you will win.
The second important rule involves your” want to read” list. When you enter any Goodreads Giveaway, that specific book automatically goes on your “want to read” list. One of the rules you agree to is that it will stay on that list at least until the drawing for that book is over. In the beginning, I’d enter Goodreads Giveaways and then promptly take the book off the “want to read” list, not wanting a bunch of books to take over the list. If you’re going to do that, you’re wasting your time even entering the contest.
Enter for Kindle Books
If you only want to read physical books, you can ignore this advice. I completely understand. Up until a few years ago, I was very anti-ebooks. Now, I still like a physical book better, but I do realize that ebooks have their advantages.
If you’re willing to read ebooks, it will be much easier to win a Goodreads Giveaway. Of the thirteen books that I’ve won, eleven have been Kindle books. That means that about 85% of the books that I’ve won have been ebooks.
This is not to say that I enter more Kindle Goodreads Giveaways. I don’t have the exact statistics comparing my physical book entries and ebook entries, but I do generally actually enter more physical book contests than ebook contests. I’d say that it’s probably more like 75% physical books and 25% ebooks when it comes to my own entries.
Why Have I Won Way More Ebooks Than Physical Books?
That comes down to two things. In general, more people enter the physical book contests than the ebook contests. I’ve seen some physical book contests with over 40,000 entries. I’ve seen some Kindle contests with around 400 entries. Those are the extreme examples. Most physical book contests don’t have that many entries, and most Kindle Goodreads Giveaways have more than 400 entries.
Along with that, most Kindle Goodreads Giveaways seem to have 100 copies of the book being given away. I’ve seen the occasional giveaway with 50 books instead. It’s rare to see fewer than 50 books for a Kindle giveaway, although I did see one today with only 10 copies being given away.
While some of the physical book giveaways also give out 100 copies of the book, others don’t give out nearly that many. For one of the 40,000-plus entries contests that I entered, there were only 5 copies being given away. As a bit of a nerdy nugget extreme comparison, your odds of winning some Kindle Goodreads Giveaways could be as good as about 1 in 4, and your odds of winning a physical book giveaway could be as bad as about 1 in 8,000. You’ve definitely got a better chance of winning the ebook.
Be Consistent
When entering a Goodreads Giveaway, you have several options for picking a contest. If you really want to win a Goodreads Giveaway, I would recommend not just going with the “Featured” or “Popular” categories. You are going to be competing with a lot of people if you enter these contests.
Not everyone is this dedicated to entering and winning Goodreads Giveaways but most days, I will go to the “Recent” category, and look through the contests that started that day. Because this category sorts by the date, once I get to yesterday’s date, I know that I’m done. I will scan down that day’s list of books, looking for titles and/or book covers that catch my attention. If the book stands out, I’ll read at least part of the book description and decide if it’s a contest worth entering. This might sound time-consuming, but when done on a daily basis, it usually only takes a few minutes.
Another option is to sort the books by the “Ending” category. This will put the books that are ending tonight at the top of the list. This is a good way to see roughly how many people you’re competing against to win the book. You can quickly scan through the list, looking specifically for books with only a few entries. When you find contests with only a few entries, you can decide if any of those contests are worth entering. This is a good option for anyone who wants to be consistent about entering Goodreads Giveaways but who really doesn’t want to dedicate a lot of time to the process. The one disadvantage is that you risk missing out on a book that might be a little more popular but that you’d really like.
Enter on the Right Date
If you’re not willing to dedicate time every day or even on a regular basis to entering Goodreads Giveaways, I would at least recommend entering on the first day of the month using the “Recent” tab to pick the contests that started that day. I’d noticed before that there seemed to be a lot of new books available on the first day of the month, so on October 1st, I decided to pay attention to exactly how many were actually available. There were 191 new Goodreads Giveaways. No, I didn’t enter them all. Yes, it did take longer than average to sort through the books to find the ones that interested me.
If you’re going by “Ending” instead of “Recent,” I’d suggest going with the last day of the month. I could be wrong on this one, but it does seem like a lot of the contests end at the end of the month.
Don’t Go Overboard
This will not help you win a Goodreads Giveaway, but I would recommend not going overboard. There are days, especially days when there are a lot of new books, where I go overboard. In my rush to get through the new books, I might read the book title or look at the cover and then read maybe a sentence or two about the book before entering the giveaway. Later, I might wonder why I entered that giveaway. That would be how I ended up winning a Christmas book with an almost-naked waiter in it. I can almost guarantee I would have passed on the book, despite it being a Christmas story, had I actually read the whole book description.
Good luck to anyone wanting to win a Goodreads Giveaway. As long as you’re not entering the same contests as me (or as long as I win too), I wish you luck.
