I ran a Goodreads giveaway & a Storygraph giveaway — They didn’t go the way I hoped

Last month, I ran two giveaways for my epic fantasy novel The Wilderlands, roughly coinciding with the audiobook released this summer.

I did this in hopes of getting my book in the hands of some more readers and, hopefully, generating a little bit more word of mouth interest.

The giveaway I did through Storygraph was for 10 physical books and ran from June 19 to July 18, 2025. The giveaway I did through Goodreads was for 20 digital books and ran from June 24 through July 21, 2025.

Now, on Aug. 20, winners have been selected, prizes have been distributed, and I can tell you what these have done for me and my indie fantasy book so far.

Should you run a Goodreads giveaway as an indie author?

UP FRONT COST: $120
COPIES DISTRIBUTED: 20 ebooks
TO READS GENERATED: ~1,200

No.

Well …

Maybe?

But probably not.

Here’s the deal. Goodreads has the option to give away physical and digital copies of your book. If you do a digital give away, the book is immediately delivered to the winners via Kindle; if you do a physical giveaway you’re then responsible for shipping the text to the reader. Regardless of which kind you do, anyone who enters the giveaway immediately has your book added to their “to-read” list.

I was fortunate in that one of the twenty people who won my book immediately read it and, soon after, rated it. (This wasn’t just in the first month, this was in the first week or two.)

Unfortunately, that rating also represents my first “low” score for The Wilderlands on review platforms. Which means that my hope for some steady word of mouth buzz isn’t going to come out of that person’s friends seeing the review and being interested. I’m thrilled the person took the time to read the book and write and review! I just wished that such an enthusiastic reader would also be able to be an advocate for the book.

This isn’t a problem with the reader—they didn’t like the book. Looking through the other stuff they’ve read makes me think, “Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this book to them.”

That said, the impression I get looking through the people who entered to win is that a lot of them (maybe 80%) might just enter to win any book on the chance they’d get the dopamine hit of a new book.

I would have much preferred the book land in the hands of more interested readers. (Even if other hypothetical readers disliked it, I would have liked to see negative reviews from more avid fantasy readers.)

Maybe the other nineteen readers will give the book a shot and be more familiar with the genre I’m writing in and maybe that will lead to a few sales. Maybe some of the 1,200-ish people who entered in the contest and had the book added to their “to-read” list will check it out (though many of those “to-read” lists are hundreds or thousands of volumes deep). I’m hopeful that all of this helps the visibility of the book as I make efforts to promote it elsewhere …

But I’ll be surprised if this ends up being worth the $120.

(Fun fact: WAY back in the day, 2013, I did a Goodreads give away for the earlier version of Light Keeper Chronicle. It was free to do a giveaway then and—had I thought about marketing even a little back then—probably could have been a better tool for spreading word about my book.)

If I were to do a Goodreads giveaway again, it would have to be for a book that I knew had much higher appeal. (So if you’re a good Romance or Thriller/Mystery author, I could see this being worth it!) If I were to do one in the future, it would be in tandem with the release of the Light Keeper sequel.

There is one other facet of the Goodreads specific giveaway that’s worth mentioning. That’s the digital copies. If you turn your attention to this graph:

Kindle Direct Publishing Sales from Jan. 1- Aug. 19, 2025.

The 20 books I gave away counted toward the book’s digital “sales.” Though I didn’t make any money on those 20 sales, it did (from what I can tell) count towards Amazon’s algorithmic calculations, meaning the giveaway raised the book’s place in the sales ranking.

For me, all that means is that I was at spot 200,000 in sales instead of 2,000,000 — but I did get into the top 2,000 in some of the genre specific categories. I don’t think I caught the interest of anyone browsing for random books, but maybe if I’d timed this to the release of my book and given away the maximum number of copies I could have cracked a top 50 trending list for a day or two on Amazon.

Should you run a Storygraph giveaway as an indie author?

UP FRONT COST: $50 (for now)
COPIES DISTRIBUTED: 10 physical
TO-READS GENERATED: 129

I’m slightly more optimistic about this. At least for the moment.

Sine the Storygraph giveaway program is still in beta, the price of this is slated to eventually increase which might dissuade me from doing this in the future. But I think $50 about represents the threshold of what I’d be willing to pay for this sort of thing.

I also got twice as many people who entered to win here compared to Goodreads. (About 2,210 here vs. about 1,200 on Goodreads—which might just mean that people are more interested in winning a physical book.) I’m not sure how interested all those people who entered feel about epic fantasy, but do you know what group I think is certainly interested? The 129 people who added the book to their “to-read” list.

Yes, that 129 number’s only about 10% of what I got from Goodreads, but since Storygraph doesn’t automatically add books to people's to-read list, I have a stronger sense that these 129 people are actually interested in reading the book in some capacity. Odds are probably slim that all of them (or even half) end up picking up the book, but I’m hopeful that some might circle back to it.

Since this was a physical giveaway I did end up spending an additional $70 or so on Media Mail shipping as well as packaging. (If we add the printing costs of all the books, that would comfortably bring things to an additional $120 range).

As of right now, I haven’t noticed any reviews or buzz from any recipients of physical books in this giveaway. That said, from what I can tell—the people who entered on Storygraph generally more closely align with readers who might like The Wilderlands. So they’ll hopefully be more inclined to tell others about it.

Also, since I was able to ship physical books, I was able to include a bookmark and a note asking them to leave a review once they’re done. My hope is that a physical presence makes it easier to eventually read and review. (As opposed to a digital edition that will disappear into an ever growing ebook library.)

Again, I’m optimistic on this right now, but I think my opinion will diminish if/when the price of this particular giveaway goes up.

Conclusion

I think there are better ways to market and better ways to get word of mouth. Because of that, it’s hard to recommend either platform for a giveaway if you’re an indie author.

I’m glad I did this to get a sense of how things work and connect with at least a few possible readers … but it is hard to recommend. If you’re small like me, I don’t know that it’ll help building much more of a following. And if you’re a bigger creator, then it seems like you’d be better off doing giveaways on your own platform(s). It seems like there’s probably a middle space where this is most impactful.

Again, I’m only a month out from the Goodreads giveaway and a lot of my Storygraph winners have only had the book in hand for about two weeks, but I just want authors considering trying either to know that a giveaway probably won’t result in the immediate spike in interest you might be hoping for.

*****

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The Wilderlands is available for physical purchase now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks. The audiobook is also out now on most major platforms.

Light Keeper Chronicle: The Unspoken Prophecy is available for physical purchase from Schuler Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon or wherever you read ebooks.