Using Goodreads Giveaways for ebooks and ARCs prior to publishing through KDP/IS

[Tom Wood]

Brand new publisher here, starting from zero. Ebooks will be exclusive to Amazon, so KU. Print will be from IngramSpark. Both will have my own ISBNs.

I'm a little bit confuzzled.

I set up a draft submission at KDP, but I don't see where it assigned an ASIN. I can enter an ISBN, which I will do in the next few days. Goodreads recommends that you run a Giveaway for the 30 days prior to publishing. How do I get the ebook up on the Amazon site for the Giveaway without publishing it? They also mention using the Giveaway in conjunction with an ARC. How would that work if I have my print versions coming from IngramSpark?

Edit: Is it possible to run an AMS ad for a Goodreads Giveaway prior to publication?

Thanks!

[guest215]

I've never known anyone who found Goodreads useful for giveaways or advertising.

I'd suggest you look into a Netgalley co-op for ARC reads. There used to be a couple of them running around. Or Choosy Bookworm has an ARC service that's on the up and up. I've never heard of anyone having a negative experience with either of those. I wouldn't recommend doing print ARCs--way too expensive.