Sunday Discussion: Giveaway Accounts

Hello guys! Today has been such a great Sunday! And Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! Thank you so much for doing one of the hardest jobs on Earth, yet one of the most important ones. Be sure to give your mom a hug or a phone call or a kiss or a hi or a THANK YOU today!

Instead of a quote-flection of the week, I’m opening up a discussion question I feel like I need to talk about: giveaway accounts. Should you let people with giveaway accounts enter your giveaway? This includes Rafflecopter, Gleam, Twitter, Instagram, etc. giveaways. This isn’t that big of an issue, but I wanted to talk about it because sometimes it annoys me.

What is a giveaway account? A giveaway account is an account on Twitter or Instagram that is devoted to only entering giveaways. You can easily tell because 100% of the tweets or posts are “I just entered a giveaway!” Most of the Tweets aren’t even book-related! I’ve seen ones to win beauty prize packs, Amazon gift cards, toys, etc. Some say they’re “bloggers” and “youtubers” but they never provide a link in their bios or talk about those things.

This issue arose up when I held a giveaway by one of my good author friends. Anyway, I got a whole influx of followers and entrants on our giveaway, and we reached over 100, maybe even 200 entries on our Rafflecopter. When I checked those entries later, 90% of them were from giveaway accounts! And there were many people who “cheated”! One girl never even followed me or followed the author, yet entered through the Twitter methods. There were so many people that abused the Facebook page method that I remove it!

We talked and we were both worried that these people may illegally redistribute files or resell them. I didn’t want the book and swag to go to somebody who just wanted to win something. I saw one Twitter giveaway account recently about winning a toy, and I’m going “Did you win that for your child, your collection, or someone else? Or did you just want it?” It’s scary to know if your prize is going into the hands of someone who might not mind it at all.

Yes, I do enter and win giveaways where I haven’t read the book or don’t think I will in the future. But at least it’s going into the collection of a book lover! I’m guilty of tsundoku (acquiring books without reading them) sometimes, but I like to look at the spines or the covers. They’re being added to a collection! Sometimes, I enter giveaways to gain a book so I can trade it or give it to someone in the future. Other times, I just enter to see if I’ll win. I’m getting better at selecting which giveaways to enter now. I’m starting to adopt a “If you’re not interested then don’t enter so someone who is can win it” policy.

But sometimes I don’t exactly trust these accounts. If I were to see that a librarian won my giveaway or a blogger did, I would know that it’s going into someone who might read it. I know there are many giveaway accounts who actually want to read the book, but I can’t know that for sure! If you give a PDF file to one of these accounts, who’s to say they might not send it to their friends? They might resell it for their own gain? I want these books to go into hands of people who will want them, who will put them on a shelf, who will look at it, and who will read it.

So I’m opening up this discussion down in the comments. What do you think of giveaway accounts? Should they enter these giveaways? Why or why not?

I really want to discuss this with readers, bloggers, and authors, so please give your insight below!

Happy Reading!

+ J.M.J.

~ Kester