After writing my post, The Business of ARCs – How I get my books, I received a lot of comments on how helpful it was. So, I’ve decided to make a part II, and there are definitely additional avenues I use!
Today’s post is going to focus on giveaways! Don’t close this reading window yet, I swear, there’s some good stuff in here.
Remember these giveaways can work just like publisher-provided ARCs. Once you receive a giveaway win, promote it, tag the publisher, and make sure to review it. Show the publisher what an awesome reviewer you are!
Bookish First
Bookish First is a site that features a few books each week that you can enter to win. Your entry requires a short review on their site after you read a short excerpt from the book. You click submit and you are entered! I just won a book a few weeks ago that published on Feb 25, so I received it ahead of its pub date.
You can check out their Welcome and Info page here. They tend to have popular, mainstream books from major publishers. If you do sign up, I would love it if you could use my referral code, c83e1532edab10432. I earn points for this, which I’ll explain below!
How it works:
New books are posted each Monday. You can see that list here. There are usually 2-3 books and you can enter to win any number of them that you choose.
Once you decide on a book you would like to enter, click on the book and scroll down to the “Read Excerpt” section. Click to download, and then read your excerpt.
When you are finished, head back to Bookish First and write a short review of the excerpt. Bookish First calls these First Impressions. Once you have completed your first impression, there will be an option to enter the giveaway. It’s that easy!
Winners are notified the following Tuesday of each week. If you win a copy, once you receive the book, read it and write your review.
One More Cool Thing About Bookish First:
Bookish First has a points system that allows you to gain points for writing First Impressions and book reviews. You gain 500 points for signing up, then more points for the reviews. Once you reach a certain point goal, you can redeem them for a free book! Pretty cool, right? My referral code is c83e1532edab10432 and I’d love it if you used it!
Last Thoughts:
Once you have written your first impressions and you are waiting to see if you won a book, take a look at their previous giveaways. If there are any books you have already read, write a review about it and earn points! You can take a look at their previous giveaways here.
Publisher Newsletters
If you aren’t subscribing to publisher newsletters, there’s a world of early access to books that you are missing out on!
A lot of publishers, and their imprints, have newsletters. These are great places to hear about new books, but they are also a great place to snag an ARC!
This avenue to advanced reader’s copies requires you to sign up and read (or scan) through the newsletters from publishers. I like to do this anyway because I like to see what’s coming up for them. A lot of these newsletters have ARC giveaways. I won a bundle a few months ago with three books in it!
Macmillan and their imprints are pretty great. You can check out their signups here. I like their newsletters because you can tailor it to the genres that are right for you!
Simon and Schuster has a cool first-time-sign-up offer for a free e-book. You can check out their sign-up page here.
I was a bit underwhelmed with the “free e-book” claim. I received an email as soon as I signed up to redeem my free book, however, there were only 12 options. I was able to find one I was interested in, however, you must read it on a new app and my phone is constantly running out of memory, so adding new apps is a bit of a pain. If you don’t mind a new app, this is a great way to grab a free book! After that, you can be on the lookout for ARC giveaways in their newsletters!
There are lots of other publishers out there that do this type of thing. Think about the publishers that you enjoy reading books from and check out their newsletter sign-ups. The great thing about newsletters is that you can opt-out if you ever regret signing up!
Goodreads
Goodreads has so many giveaways running all the time! There are e-books as well as print copies. It’s a great way to throw your hat in the ring for a book that you have your eye on!
If you have a book on your “Want to Read List” and Goodreads adds that book to a giveaway, you get an email notification, which I love! It’s nice to be notified of giveaways for books I already know I want to read!
You can check out the Goodreads giveaway center here. There are a lot of options to narrow down the giveaway list, which I really appreciate. You can filter by all, kindle, or print giveaways, and then you can sort by ending soon, or a variety of other options. My favorite is ending soon just so I don’t miss anything.
Make sure to check out the “Availability” section of the info. You’ll see how many copies are available for the giveaway and how many people have entered. You’ll be able to see your chances based on that. A giveaway with only 10 copies and 8,000 entries gives you a pretty slim chance of winning. A book, however, with 100 copies to giveaway and only 3,000 entries gives you much better odds! It takes only a few seconds to enter, so if this is an avenue you would like to pursue, it’s not very time consuming, and you can try to enter giveaways where your odds are better if you would like.
When I started Bookstagram, I found all of these Bookstagrammers were hosting giveaways. I also discovered that people would tag me in them. I thought it would be nice for me to tag people back, so I started entering giveaways, just to let those friends of mine know about some new giveaways I found. And then I would win!
Bookstagram is FILLED with giveaways and I am so surprised EVERY SINGLE TIME I win one. I recently was notified of one where it turned out I was the only person that had entered! I feel like there is a treasure-trove of giveaway opportunities on Bookstagram that aren’t being used all the time. They do, usually, require you to follow the host, and sometimes the author, which is a deterrent for some.
If you don’t like to follow a lot of people, watch for giveaways where it is just the host that you are being required to follow. Find a host with content you enjoy and periodic giveaways that you can sign up for.
If you don’t know who to tag in the giveaways, check your activity feed and see who has tagged YOU in a giveaway recently. Think about people that you know have hosted giveaways, they are also more likely to enjoy being tagged in one themselves. You’ll start to get a feel for who of your friends also enjoys giveaways and you can continue to tag each other as you enter.
If you don’t want to give out your mailing address, but are okay sharing your email, you can give your place of work OR only enter e-book or gift card giveaways. There are a ton of those and some get very few participants. The Instagram giveaway option will not work for you if you are unwilling to share an address or email.
If you don’t feel like you ever see a giveaway on Bookstagram, check out the #bookgiveaway on Instagram. You can scroll through and see if there is anyone you are already following, or enter to win a giveaway of someone new!
That’s it! I hope that you have found a new route to help you get new books. Now that you’ve got the info, go enter some giveaways, and “May the odds be ever in your favor”.
Let me know if you use any of these, or you’ve won a giveaway from one of them!
She Just Loves Books 
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