{"id":5906,"date":"2011-09-16T15:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2014-12-23T16:16:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T10:46:06","slug":"how-to-create-a-winning-author-contest-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/how-to-create-a-winning-author-contest-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Winning Author Contest!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new kind of giveaway turns contacts into evangelists to sell more books<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"We have marketed hundreds of books over the years, and many of our authors have launched their own book giveaways. For them and every other author we\u2019ve spoken with, those giveaways just don\u2019t do much to generate awareness, buzz, excitement or sales.<\/p>\n

While book giveaways are common (a Google search for “book giveaway” yielded 1.7 million results), they don\u2019t do much for the author, and they may even be counter-productive.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about why your typical book giveaway doesn\u2019t work, and then we\u2019ll talk about a new approach.<\/p>\n

When we worked with Book Sweepstakes LLC to develop a new kind of Viral Book Sweepstakes platform, we knew that we needed to analyze all of the reasons typical giveaways don\u2019t work and craft a solution that met those challenges. In fact, we wanted to go further than that; we wanted to create a platform that was inherently viral. We wanted a platform that would turn contacts into evangelists to promote the book, bring more visitors, and turn them into evangelists to bring even more people.<\/p>\n

First, if you\u2019re going to do a giveaway I suggest that you look at all of the elements of a successful campaign.<\/p>\n

Have a great prize:<\/strong> First, a book isn\u2019t the best prize to give away. Why?<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s a low dollar item. To attract attention, to get visitors to come to your site, to get them to fork over their email address, and to get them talking about your book so more people come, you need a sexy prize.<\/p>\n

Giving away a book has another downside: it actually undermines sales. How so? Well, you got someone to your website, and they\u2019re interested in your book. Now, it\u2019s time to close the sale. Sales are what you want, yes? But why should they buy now if they might win later? Bye, bye, customer. No sale today for the nice author who is giving away her book.<\/p>\n

When we created our AME Viral Book Sweepstakes platform, we decided to give away the iPad2, which everyone really wants.<\/p>\n

So offer a great prize!If you don\u2019t want to offer an iPad, make sure the prize is worth at least $500.<\/p>\n

The importance of going viral:<\/strong> You probably know the term going viral, where things spread from person to person, and from more people to more people, like the flu. That\u2019s what you want for your book. You want your contacts, friends and readers to tell more people about the book. Why is that so important? Because that\u2019s what generates sales. NPR reported that 80% of book sales are prompted by word of mouth!<\/p>\n

A typical book giveaway certainly doesn\u2019t drive viral word-of-mouth buzz about your book.<\/p>\n

How to go viral:<\/strong> Typical giveaways stop at \u2018register here to win,\u2019 and they don\u2019t reward people for spreading the word.<\/p>\n

You need a couple of things to make your book spread virally, and since a typical book giveaway doesn\u2019t do that, we set out to develop a platform that does. Here\u2019s what it takes:<\/p>\n

People are busy.<\/span> Why should they take the time to tell others about your book? You need to offer an incentive. Remember that great prize \u2013 the iPad2 – we talked about above? In addition to entering the giveaway for that prize the normal way, by providing your email address, we also provide additional chances every time you take certain easy, measurable actions that help the book giveaway spread.<\/p>\n

How\u2019s that for an incentive?<\/span> Consider this: every time your consumer tweets your message about your book, they get another chance to win. And every time they share a personalized link and get another visitor to click it and come to the site, they get yet another chance to win. And the best part: they\u2019re spreading the word about your book.<\/p>\n

You also need to make it easy.<\/span> Some people use email. Some use Facebook. Others use Twitter. Or they have a blog. Provide tools to make it easy to share those personalized links in all those ways. Let\u2019s say you happened on http:\/\/ClassWish.org\/books\/124<\/a>, which is the book sweepstakes for Marci Shimoff\u2019s wonderful book, Love For No Reason. You might grab the text with the personalized link and send it to 100 of your friends. If half of them click the link, you get 50 more chances to win and, that\u2019s 50 new people exposed to your book.<\/p>\n

You might not be able to easily replicate all the tools we built into the platform, but you get the general idea.<\/p>\n

Did it work?\u00a0 Oh, yes!\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen people sharing this like crazy. \u00a0Some of our book pages are getting 20,000+ hits in a month!<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t make people write:<\/strong> When you are encouraging people to share information on your book, you need to make it easy. The minute you ask them to \u201cwrite whatever they want\u201d you\u2019ve now lost a potential evangelist.\u00a0 Give them the text for the email, Facebook messages, tweets, etc.\u00a0 And be sure to include the right #hashtags in the tweets.<\/p>\n

Make your book look great: <\/strong>Of course, the reason to do all this is to promote your book, so be sure to present it in the most appealing way possible.\u00a0 Provide an overview, excerpt, video, if you have one; and information about you, the author.<\/p>\n

Get more followers:\u00a0 <\/strong>A successful giveaway should also capture email addresses to build your newsletter list and should get people to follow you on Facebook and Twitter so you can continue to market to them and share tidbits that they might share with others.\u00a0 It\u2019s called growing your social media footprint.<\/p>\n

Sell the Book!<\/strong>A campaign should also make it easy to buy your book, right on the spot.\u00a0 Many book sites offer an Amazon or other affiliate button, but what if your potential reader prefers another bookstore?\u00a0 We know that some authors have strong feelings about some bookstores, as do consumers, and publishers. Give people what they want, and they will give you what you want: a sale.<\/p>\n

Start with your base: <\/strong>Exponential growth is a wonderful thing, but you need to start with the largest number you can.\u00a0 The more contacts you start with, the more of them will help spread the word and the more of their friends will visit the site, discover your book, and in turn spread it to their friends until it spreads like wildfire.<\/p>\n

Start with whatever you have.\u00a0 Use your mailing list (even if it\u2019s just 50 people) to get them to share this giveaway.\u00a0 Ask your friends.\u00a0 Put notice of your sweepstakes wherever you can reach people: your book\u2019s page on Goodreads and LibraryShelf; your Amazon book page; on bookmarks you hand out at readings; etc.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a numbers game:<\/strong> Last year, 1,500 books were published each day in theU.S., and that does not include the recent eBook surge. What does this mean for you? It means that you have to get your book out in front of two or three times as many people in order to make a sale. While you may think that a giveaway like I describe is a big undertaking and expensive, it\u2019s actually a very effective and productive way to promote a book.\u00a0 I cited a large number earlier: 20,000 hits to a book sweepstakes page. Marci Shimoff\u2019s recent campaign actually had more than 30,000 visits.\u00a0 Imagine, 30,000 people presented with her book. Now, you might say that they aren\u2019t all going to buy it, and you\u2019re right. But some of them will, and others will tell friends about it.<\/p>\n

Regulations:<\/strong> One more thing: a giveaway is a sweepstakes, and so it is regulated by state law.\u00a0 Not just the state where you live, but every state.\u00a0 Be sure to provide rules that meet all the requirements and be sure to register in any states that require it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all it takes. <\/strong>\u00a0Now you know why traditional book giveaways don\u2019t work and how you can launch your own campaign to turn contacts into evangelists so word of your book can spread like wildfire.\u00a0 Good luck!<\/p>\n

Here are a few sample pages of books sweepstakes now on our platform:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/classwish.org\/books\/124\/Love-for-No-Reason<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/classwish.org\/books\/139\/Days-of-our-Lives<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/classwish.org\/books\/141\/Chasing-Zebras<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/classwish.org\/books\/127\/Incredible-iPad-Apps-For-Dummies<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author, an internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert, and an Adjunct Instructor teaching publishing and marketing for NYU. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Book to Bestseller which has been called the “road map to publishing success.” AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour\u2122, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book’s topic, positioning the author in his or her market. To learn more about Penny\u2019s books or her promotional services, you can visit her website<\/a>. To subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email to: subscribe@amarketingexpert.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Siddy Lam<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new kind of giveaway turns contacts into evangelists to sell more books Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri We have marketed hundreds of books over the years, and many of our authors have launched their own book giveaways. For them and every other author we\u2019ve spoken with, those giveaways just don\u2019t do much to generate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":5911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[353,3,718],"tags":[9,262,59,337,555],"class_list":["post-5906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbmtc","category-book-marketing","category-how-to-guides","tag-authors","tag-book-giveaways","tag-contests","tag-giveaways","tag-sweepstakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}