Amazon has extended its Giveaway self-service tool to cover Kindle ebooks, giving indie authors a new promotional opportunity to offer ebooks as prizes.
Giveaways can be used to increase social media followers or followers on Amazon, drive video views, while promoting your product and brand.
The company introduced Giveaway in February 2015 for physical products to allow anyone to create and host their own giveaway to generate awareness and reward their audiences.
Electronics is the most popular prize category chosen by Amazon Giveaway hosts at 73% but Books are at a very respectable 20% with Home on 5% and Sports at 2%.
Amazon Giveaway takes the hassle out of organising a prize promotion by doing all the necessary work from setting up the rules to shipping prizes to winners.
The service is free to hosts who pay only for the products to be used as prizes plus shipping and taxes.
Anyone who wants to host a giveaway can get started at Amazon.com/giveaway or visit Amazon to find the eligible item they would like as a prize and click “Set up a giveaway” near the bottom of the product detail page.
The host determines the giveaway details, enters custom content and decides whether prizes will go to many entrants or to the first few entrants. Hosts receive a unique link they can share with their audiences. Amazon verifies the identities of entrants and prevents multiple entries.
Contest length for ebook prizes can be up to 30 days and a maximum of 30 physical prizes or 50 digital prizes can be awarded per giveaway, with a total value of up to $5,000.
The Amazon Giveaway service only runs on Amazon.com and contest entrants must have a valid US address.
In its first year of operation, Amazon says Giveaway has attracted 9 million contest entrants and over 2.6 million new Twitter followers for hosts.
A feature was introduced last December, where authors hosting Giveaway contests can require entrants to follow them and their books on Amazon which has brought 300,000 new Author Follows in just a couple of months.
Amazon claims that traffic to product pages running Giveaway prizes can rise by over 40% a week.
Giveaway has added new features for authors, including free samples of ebooks for contest entrants who don’t win a prize. Authors can also organise a contest in advance of a new release.