The thinking behind a giveaway with books about learning

Hi, guys,

Cristina from The CEO Library here - a website with books recommended by entrepreneurs, for aspiring entrepreneurs or people with an entrepreneurial mindset. Our mission is to promote reading with a purpose, cut through the clutter of all the media-hyped / bloated /bullsh*tty books, and get to those that are a right fit for our context and needs.

I'm guessing some of you already know me - I've been lurking here for a while :P and I also interviewed a few fellow indie hackers about the books that impacted their entrepreneurial journey.

The reason I'm posting this is because I'm organizing the first giveaway and I'm hoping you can help me test some presumptions and prove me wrong (or not).

First, a disclaimer: I hate giveaways. I consider them shortcuts used by lazy marketers who aren't able to think of something that's creative and truly useful for their communities. I also think they attract the wrong people and they're not healthy over long term - especially if this is the only strategy used to grow a brand / project.

That's why I tried to do something completely different with this giveaway:

• I wanted to offer a prize that can really help future entrepreneurs.
• Is weird enough not to attract folks that are irrelevant and don't care about what the project's mission.
• Makes people spread the word about the giveaway, without being afraid that it decreases their odds to win.
• Fits the project's long term perspective.

So here's what the giveaway is about: we're offering 10 books about... learning. Yes, learning - one of those meta-skills that can help us become unstoppable - I think I was relistening to Naval's podcast with Shane Parrish when I got the idea. And yes, I know, I already mentioned that in the title of this post, so it wasn't really a surprise :P

I started by making a list with all those books about learning, together with a (perhaps too long?) introduction with my personal experience of switching domains and starting from scratch, why it's important that we master the art of learning and how it will help us in the future, a few words about each of those books, and quotes from entrepreneurs who recommend them.

I'm gonna digress for a second. Before starting The CEO Library, I've worked in the music industry for almost a decade, promoting local hip-hop and rock artists. I've seen most of those artists doing the mistake of building their house on a rented land. When they realized the potential Facebook has, they grew & entertained their fans only there and completely gave up on their websites or mailing lists - something I've repeatedly warned them it's a mistake, but I was too young (or too girl?) for them to listen to me. Obviously, years later, they all ended up regretting that decision - they realized that they now depend on the social networks' algorithm that changes overnight and they aren't able to reach their audience anymore. Well, at least not without paying for it.

So that's why at The CEO Library we're focused on building the newsletter as a main channel to communicate - a channel that's under our control. To enter this giveaway, people need to subscribe to our mailing list. Obviously, they can unsubscribe at any time if they don't find our newsletter useful, and we will unsubscribe them anyways if they don't open several emails in a row (we already do that).

We used KingSumo to host the giveaway - so that's the viral component. More shares -> more friends who enter the giveaway -> extra entries & increased odds to win.

We're now mid-way through the giveaway: we announced it 9 days ago (we had 713 subscribers to our newsletter at that time), and now there are still 9 days left until the giveaway ends. Still lots of stuff to do on the promotion side... aka almost everything, cause except for posting here, on my personal blog and a few social media shares, I haven't had time to do anything else.

Oh, and the links:

• Here's the giveaway: https://www.theceolibrary.com/giveaways
• And the list of books about learning: https://www.theceolibrary.com/collection/learning-how-to-learn-books
• Naval's talk with Shane Parrish, the one I mentioned I was relistening to when I got the idea of a list of books about learning - I highly recommend it, it feels like a brain upgrade: https://www.fs.blog/naval-ravikant/
• A guest post / study case published on Noah Kagan's website about how to use KingSumo to grow mailing list: https://okdork.com/kingsumo-grow-my-email-list/

Every time I'm posting something on IndieHackers I'm swearing I'm gonna keep it as short as possible. Clearly I'm really bad at it. Thanks for having the patience to read this and please let me know what your thoughts are. Any blind spots that I might be missing? And, of course, I'll get back with a follow-up and share the results when the giveaway ends.