Amanda Luedeke

February 7, 2013

Thursdays with Amanda: 10 Prize Ideas for Giveaways or Contests

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Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

Next week, I’ll revisit those social media critiques we were working through, but in them meantime, I thought it would be fun to list a smattering of prize ideas for giveaways…prizes that won’t cost you a fortune.

  1. Gift cards
  2. Coupons for ebooks (could be novellas, shorts, etc. that you have self-published)
  3. The chance to name a character (may only work for established authors, but the idea is the winner gets to name a character in an upcoming book)
  4. Twenty minute Skype call with the author
  5. Free book
  6. A book dedication
  7. A shout-out in the Acknowledgements section
  8. A “fan of the year” or “fan of the month” badge for their blog/website
  9. Book tchotchkes in the form of PDFs that you email to winners, such as paper dolls (for childrens or romance genres), detailed world maps (for speculative fiction genres), recipes (for historical genres, etc), paper crafts/Cubeecrafts (for childrens or speculative genres), basically anything that either appeals to readers’ children/grandchildren or to the inner nerd or hobbyist. This idea may cost a bit of money up front, but the long-term use makes it worth it.
  10. Themed gift baskets that tie in with your novel, such as gardening theme baskets for gardening cozy mysteries, etc.

What else? What other great giveaway prizes can you think of (aside from huge doorbusters, like iPads).

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