To get back to the original topic, my giveaway ended at midnight last night with 141 entrants, and 3 of the 5 have already claimed their ebook. All in all I can say that I'm pleased with how it went, and if you want to do contest-type giveaway Amazon makes it incredibly easy. The only downside I could see was that it was only available to U.S. residents.
Did the requirements for running it not have an option for a global giveaway, or did it simply restrict it from being bigger in scale? (I am not saying that you had much control as amazon does what it wants sometimes.)
For info - I know Goodreads giveaways can be global. Not sure if they have to be - I assume the giver can decide.
Good question - I don't think I've paid enough attention to any to see if they're paper or electronic.
according to this they do, but only in the US and only for kindle http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/645-goodreads-giveaways-just-got-even-better-kindle-ebook-giveaways-now-ava
It's an Amazon restriction. I think it's because most giveaways involve physical product that has to be shipped, and they don't want the person heading up the giveaway to be socked with exorbitant shipping costs. Obviously that's not an issue with a digital product, but right now it doesn't seem like there's any distinction between giveaways for physical and virtual product.
The amazon promotional thing where you give your book away and get it into readers hands. From experience I have also noticed that this correlates with better rankings but as soon as the giveaway is closed and back to normal pricing rankings will stabilize back to normal. At least this was the case for me...
