Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Breakfast with the Bookie: My Two Cents on Giveaway Hops


Breakfast with the Bookie is a semi-weekly feature here @ Badass Bookie which is making a reappearance in 2012. Every other Wednesday morning, let's all grab our teas and coffees to gather and discuss and share our opinions! Everyone is welcome to join and make sure you leave a comment to state your opinion. Don't be shy!

This Week's Topic - My Two Cents on Giveaway Hops

Okay so recently I did a Breakfast with the Bookie on Giveaway: Are We Bribing Our Followers and I guess this is like a follow-up discussion about Giveaway Hops. I mentioned briefly in the first post that one of my peeves is the "Must Follow on GFC" rule and that kind of carries on into this post. This week - I will explore further into the topic of Giveaways! Beware - major ranting ahead.

In theory the concept of a giveaway hop is great. Massive giveaway of books, short and beneficial to both  host and the entrees. In reality - it's a nightmare. There I said it - giveaway hops suck. There must have been point my blogging career where I liked them because I used to enter them all the time! And then I came to a revelation - I'm not going to be entering or participating giveaway hops EVER.

Why? 

1) Too Many Giveaway Hops - If there weren't so many giveaway hops maybe I wouldn't be so put out with them but it's gotten to point where it's ridiculous. There are at least 3 every month! You can find a giveaway hop for every weird occasion ( Lunar giveaway hop...really?) and when there isn't an occasion to host one - let's just host one anyway! Honestly, I have nothing against all the wonderful bloggers who go out of the way to host them but the idea of the giveaway hop has been corrupted. 

2) They Clog Up Your Feed - I don't know about you but my dashboard looks like this three days out of five a week - Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop, Review,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop, Interview,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop,  Giveaway Hop. What happened to book blogging? Where can I read some of these mysterious things called "reviews" and "interviews"?

3) Benefitting Who? - AGAIN. Must Follow on GFC - I'm sorry but I thought a giveaway hop is meant to be you know a giveaway hop. Not a chance to bribe followers! I completely understand that people want to get a little back for what they give but why force someone to follow you? Make it optional - you might find that people will become more willing to visit your blog and comment on non-giveaway posts

4) Waste of Time - Downside of so many giveaways to enter is that you spend the bulk of you sunday afternoon sitting there ENTERING THEM ALL. With so many hoops to jump - it takes 10 minutes give or take a few to just enter one of them! And then you ask yourself - how many times have you actually won? 0 and how many winners are there? 1 or 2. In the end - it's just a waste of time!

5) What Book is That? - I love discovering new books and all but a giveaway hop is meant to be about giving books that are desirable to read. I find blogs that giveaway E-Books I've never heard of and looks quite terrible or worse, non-fiction! I also find blogs who giveaway books that they don't want anymore - the terrible ones that you want to just burn... Seriously, what are you giving away?

In all - giveaways just don't make the cut for me and I know lots of people like them! That's perfectly fine - this is just my two cents :) And now, what's your two cents on giveaway hops?

Badass Bookie xx

13 comments:

  1. Morning Lisa, I'm reading this while having a cup of decaf tea :)

    I have noticed quite a few giveaway hops lately and I think I entered one but most of the time I'm not interested in the books on offer. I understand that bloggers want to promote books they love and take part in a fun event and I don't usually mine the must-follow-to-enter because I'm sure some bloggers want to get their followers up so that publishers on Netgalley will consider their requests.

    And I agree that too many of them all the time would get annoying!

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  2. Interesting post. I actually just signed up for my first giveaway hop, but I think it's a good one: Favorite Reads. I'd love to share my favorite books with the community!

    There are quite a lot of them happening, and I admit I have entered quite a few (and won 1!). But I have found a lot of great blogs to follow through them. I actually found that I'm more likely to follow the ones that don't require following as an entry. If it is required, I automatically skip it unless something on their blog catches my eye and I decided that I do want to follow them.

    I agree about offering bad looking e-books as prizes. I actually saw a few bloggers who were giving away FREE ebooks. They had a list of about 5 books, and all of them were Free on at least Amazon; I know, I grabbed them!

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  3. I have never actually entered a giveaway hop, but I completely agree with you on all of this. There are certain blogs that I can't remember posting anything else than giveaway hops (I am sure they do, but it gets buried in the hops), and they're almost always for books I've never even heard of. They really seem like a slightly desperate way to raise your follow numbers without doing much work for it..

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  4. It's so true - during the past few months the number of giveaway hops has gone through the roof! While I do participate in one each month, I've seen some bloggers signing up to pretty much everyone which is crazy!?
    As to the following and hoop jumping I couldn't agree more - big turnoff! And, oddly enough, people will still become new followers even if you don't make following mandatory. I don't want to know how many folks unfollow once the hop is over.
    I also have to agree on the odds of winning which are very slim. I think I only won in one hop during my time of blogging, yet I've won quite a few great books through "normal" giveaways.
    Last but not least - what's wrong about giving away non fiction? I had to ask, I mean, I do review mostly non fiction, ya know! Hahaha ... but I do know what you mean - I think giving away a book of choice or a GC beat giving away some obscure novel you've never heard about before.

    P.S.: Love your Breakfast with the Bookie feature :-)!

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    1. @Vegan YA Reads - I'm glad you're actually reading my breakfast post with a cup of decaf! :)

      @Angie - Giving away FREE E-books??? That's where the line is drawn.

      @Nina Reed - desperate way to raise your follow numbers without doing much work is the perfect decryption for a "must follow on GFC rule!"

      @Birgit - Nothing wrong with non-fiction except when it's unappealing! I like my non-fiction too but not the ones about things I've never heard of!

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  5. I like them because I tend to win a lot, haha.

    But some things annoy me. Like, I hated the Sping Cleaning one because you looked down the list and 99% of them (the ones giving great books) were open to US only and the ones open internationally mostly weren't any good! That's just me being bitter but it sucked. :P

    It annoys me when authors use them as a means to promote their books. By 'giving away' their ebook with an ugly cover I've never heard of that is available free on Amazon every few weeks anyway!

    So I don't think hops are bad things but I think they can bring about bad things and they'd be much more fun if they were going on EVERY week. I personally don't know how people can afford to sign up for all of them, haha.

    Awesome post by the way!

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  6. Giveaway hops are fun...until like you say, there's about 100 for the sake of having one. I like the scavenger hunts that go on, like the YA Spring Scavenger Hunt or the YAmazing Race. I've found some great authors and books and connected with fellow bloggers through them. In terms of having to follow GFC or the rest of it, it becomes really annoying and actually puts me off, despite the fact that I want to win the giveaway - and I've as of yet to win one!! All that effort - like you say, it takes about ten/fifteen minutes just to enter - and you don't even get anywhere. If you want GFC followers, then become a reputable blogger, don't sham people into following you so it looks as if you've got hundreds of 'fans'.

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  7. Definitely too many out there. I choose a few each year to be a part of and that's it. What I prefer to do is offer a monthly giveaway to the peeps that actually come to my blog all on their own. And I try to give away ARCs or books people would like to actually read. But I do find myself going through a bunch each week and entering those that have great new releases or let me choose my own. But I only do this cause I've been on a winning streak lately and have pretty much won at least one giveaway per hop.

    But like you said, it doesn't get me to come check out their blog between hops...which is all some of these blogs seem to do these days.

    Devon
    http://devonashleywrites.blogspot.com

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    1. And I actually don't mind the ebook giveaways since I have a reader, but I do still prefer to get a physical copy. :)

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  8. I have actually won many great books through giveaway hops. You bring up some interesting points about the horrible looking ebooks- and those I don't enter and skip over but some I work on fulfilling every entry because the prize is amazing. That's actually how I won my very own copy of The Hunger Games. Rafflecopter has made entering giveaways a lot easier now- so much that I'll generally skip over any blog without that requires commenting as the main entry. I also love that I've found a lot of blogs through giveaway hops that I wouldn't have found and followed otherwise. :) All in all, I'm a fan of giveaway hops mostly because I love the thrill of getting the congrats email and its a fun way to fill up your sitiin' around internet time. :)

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  9. I definitely agree about #4. When you consider the odds against all the time it took to fill out forms, it isn't worth it. I prefer to read blog hops with interviews or when they tell you a lot about the author/book. Then I know whether to add the book to my to-read list or not.

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  10. I tend to avoid most of the giveaway hops because there are TOO MANY ENTRANTS! I shy away from giveaways with more than 1000 entrants -- usually I enter ones with a lot less than that. But 500,000+ entries? Right. My odds, and the time spent, make them worthless as far as I'm concerned.

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