Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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A request from your hostess regarding giveaways.

We are deep into the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch now, which means a new giveaway post is going live every day. Starting tomorrow, a new winners' post will also be going live every day. Fun!

Thus far, all of this year's giveaways have been RNG drawings. This means I am using a random number generator to select the winners, and this is where my request comes in. See, I'm seeing a lot of people replying to other peoples' giveaway entries. I need you to stop doing that. Please. Only top-level comments can win; if a reply to a comment grabs the winning entry, I choose another winner. So if I pick, say, #15 to win, and #15 turns out to be a reply to #14, I don't go down a comment. I hit the RNG again. That means that whoever replied to #14 has just caused the "real" #15 not to win.

I do this for a lot of reasons, the most important being that the sub-comments throw off my count, I start second-guessing, I'm doing this manually, and so it's just easier on my peace of mind to draw again. But it's still not fair to the people leaving the top-level comments. Please, please stop replying to other peoples' giveaway entries.

Also, please remember that when I say "the rules of this giveaway are...," that there is no room for negotiation. If I say "name your favorite fruit" and you comment with "I love fruit!," you actually cannot win, because you didn't follow the rules. This is to filter out the free stuff blogs that send their followers here to harvest prizes, but who don't actually have any investment in the things I'm handing out.

Thank you all. Today's post will go live in a few hours.
Tags: a few facts, giving stuff away, shameless plea
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  • 12 comments


I did that on the album giveaway. I commented on someone else's post. 😢
It's been happening a lot this particular round of giveaways. It's not the end of the world, I just need people to please stop doing it.
[looks down guiltily]

We must behave better.

And not go out alone.
It's really not a matter of behaving better, I promise. I last said "please don't do this" a year ago. You're allowed to forget!
What about those of us who weren't reading you last year?

I'll be better.

Is it OK if we discuss "well, choosing a favorite fruit is hard, I mean I love apples, grapes, and tomatoes but since I have to choose one, I'm going with tomatoes even though most people think that they are a vegetable"
Yes, that's fine. It's the people who clearly didn't read the instructions who tend to wind up disqualified.
I didn't think about using personalizations to make sure your giveaways go to fans and not disinterested strangers. That's a good reason to do it!
I don't mind when people enter drawings for things they already have because they want to give them away, but I do mind spending my postage money to become someone else's eBay profit farm!
That makes perfect sense to me!

I haven't been entering because I do already have things (or plan to have in the case of the ARCs) , this use of winning something to pass on hadn't occurred to me (although really, any of my friends who I would rec your stuff to are already reading you :-)

I'll have to admit that with the personalization that not entering is hard - getting into a discussion of my favourite cryptid or fruit or Toby character is fun!

Question the first: If it's a US-only giveaway, can I enter and give you the address of a US friend to whom I can gift if I win?

Question/comment the second: If you are doing any US-only giveaways, would you like to be able to offer a Canada-only giveaway, to make us feel less left out? I have a couple of books of yours which I would be happy to mail to fellow Canucks. If that complicates things too much, I completely understand, but I just wanted to make the offer.
Answer the first: None of them have been US-only; they've just all required a willingness to pay postage if shipping outside the US.

Answer the second: I wouldn't be able to sign them. Apart from that, sure.