Published: June 10, 2025
It may seem counterintuitive to give your book away for free in an effort to boost sales, but marketing professionals encourage you to do it anyway. The reasoning behind giving away your book is threefold: First, you’re seeding copies for potential reviews. Second, you’re increasing visibility for your book and author brand. Third, you’re enhancing word-of-mouth marketing (so-and-so recommended this book and I trust their judgment…). We’ve outlined below the three benefits and listed a few different ways to go about listing a giveaway for your consideration.
Benefits
Seed Books for Potential Review
“Seeding” is another term publishing industry professionals use to mean “giving away” or “handing out.” Much like a garden, we want to plant as many books in the hands of readers as we can, hoping that some will take the extra step to leave a review and recommend it to others. Those reviews and recommendations (or sprouts, if we’re keeping with the metaphor) make a significant impact in sales and visibility for your book page, especially with those pesky retail algorithms!
While there isn’t an exact ratio for the number of reviews generated from a giveaway, we generally see that between 7 and 10% of readers will leave a review. Therefore, to achieve the suggested 10–50 reviews on platforms like Amazon or Goodreads, you may need to distribute several hundred books. This may seem a lot, but giveaways are a budget-friendly and efficient method for reaching interested readers that don’t require a great amount of time, research, or outreach efforts.
Expand Visibility
Hosting a giveaway also means having additional content to promote on social media, in newsletters, and to your audience. It’s a nice value add to offer potential readers and a great way to show that you are an active author interested in connecting with your audience.
Additionally, if you’re hosting the giveaway on an established reader platform, like Goodreads, you’re getting prime visibility on those sites, which means more impressions for potential book sales! We want to give readers as many opportunities as possible to discover your book and make that click to learn more and (fingers crossed!) purchase.
Increase Word-of-Mouth Marketing
We know from experience that very few people who read the book will expend the extra effort needed to log in to their accounts and leave a review, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t recommending it in other ways.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the most impactful form of marketing. Any knowledgeable book marketer (including myself) would give up 10 online reviews to have one person tell their friend/family member, “Have you heard of this book? You might like it as much as I did!” After all, who are you more willing to trust, a stranger online, or your neighbor/fellow book club member?
Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see reviews pouring in, because there is no way to track how much people are enjoying and talking about your book out in their everyday social lives. And if you’re feeling kind, go out and talk up another author’s books. See what people in your social circles are reading, and if they’re interested in comp titles, it could be an easy, natural opening to mention that you have a book in the same genre they may also like!
How to Run a Giveaway
Now that I’ve convinced you of the benefits of giving away your book for free, it’s time to discuss some options for going about it!
Goodreads
A Goodreads giveaway is maybe the easiest way to give away books, aside from leaving out a box on your front porch for the public (which doesn’t sound terribly safe, if we’re being honest). Goodreads is a book review social media platform owned by Amazon and is where you’re likely to see the majority of your book reviews come in anyway. Because Amazon owns the platform, your book is automatically added to the database once it is available for order/pre-order on Amazon, and once you claim your author account, you can go about listing either a print or Kindle giveaway on your own. Listing a giveaway costs the same no matter which format you choose, but if you go with print, you will be required to pay for the printing and shipping of books to winners, which can be time-consuming and tedious, but will lead to more entrants overall. Kindle giveaways allow you to seed up to 100 copies that will be automatically delivered to winner devices once they wrap up—nothing extra needed from you.
The biggest benefit of a Goodreads giveaway (aside from the ease) is the visibility your book will get on the platform. Not only is your giveaway listed on the giveaway page, but when someone enters to win, it updates their feed with a post saying that they did so, which informs all their followers that they entered and provides a link for them to do the same. Marketing on top of marketing!
As your publisher, Luminare Press can also create Goodreads giveaways on your behalf if you need additional support.
Social Media
Established author brands with a robust following may opt to host giveaways through their own platforms to give back to their readers and increase social media engagement. It’s a great way to get those remaining ARC copies out of your basement or attic while also seeding books for review and potentially growing your following! The main benefit of this format is that you can require entrants to follow you and whoever you’re collaborating with, which will grow your pool of readers to promote to in the future. It’s exciting, fun, and you’re likely to get a lot of engagement in one fell swoop!
If you plan to go this route, however, it’s important to follow community guidelines for whichever platform you’re using and make sure that everything is aboveboard and ethical. While you can encourage winners to review, it’s not a good idea to require that they do so, as it may be seen as another way of buying consumer reviews (generally deemed unethical and outwardly restricted on sites like Amazon).
Handouts
Most successful authors I know keep a box of books in the trunk of their cars to hand out to people they come across in their daily lives. While not as efficient as giving away dozens of books at a time, it is a nice way to connect, and it gives readers a good first impression of you as an author, which makes them more likely to become a loyal follower. Those in-person interactions go a long way with readers, and they’ll be more likely to mention them to friends and family, which, as we know from above, makes a big difference in future purchasing decisions. In general, it’s smart to have some copies on hand, even if they’re ARCs, so that people leave with something tangible from your conversation and you’re not left crossing your fingers, hoping they remember to look up your book when they get home.
Of course, these are just a few of the options available to authors to give away free books, and, more importantly, giveaways are only one of the multiple marketing activities that should be implemented. If you are struggling with your book marketing or haven’t seen much success from your giveaways, it may be time to review your marketing plan. Feel free to reach out to Luminare Press, and we can help you manage or figure out the next steps that are right for you and your book.
Article by Olivia W. McCoy, book marketing specialist and founder of 5 to 9 Books. You can work directly with Olivia to build your marketing plan.