Free Book Rant

  Alrighty peeps, I promised you an actual post that wasn't just about what I was going to talk about on my blog & so here it is. It is a small rant, but I just have to throw it out there  & where my rant lands I can only hope it's not on deaf ears (or blind eyes in this case, LOL). For those of you who may not know, there are a great many ways to earn free books. You can go to a site called Goodreads & they have daily pages of books being given away by authors & publishers. You can also go to another site called Librarything, which tends to cater more to the eReader society, but they have their own pages of electronic & physical books that are given away throughout the month. I'm a part of both, I love books & I love free books even more. The less I have to spend to feed my book obsession the better. The way these sites getaway with doing this is, first, the authors & or publishers list how many of what books they are trying to giveaway. Then, you are allowed to put in a  request for it. You are then notified the next day & or whenever the drawing is over if you won. Now you are probably asking how they can afford to do this & why would they give away all these books. While the publisher or author is paying out of pocket to send you this book it is still beneficial to them. They mail you the book with the understanding that you are to read it & then post a review on as many sites as possible once you've finished. This then generates publicity for them & their book & all it cost them was postage & a few of their books, all paid for out of their own pocket. It's really a great thing & I do this all the time, sometimes my book stack gets a little out of control, but I eventually get to everything & post my reviews. I may never have to buy another book again if I keep this up.

  So, now you may be thinking, "That sounds great Ms. R. Bookworm, but where is the rant in all this?". Let me explain. A while back I got curious about what some of the other reviewers thought about some of the books I read. When you enter the contests on Goodreads you can see the other members that won the book too. So I started doing occasional checks to see how everyone else felt. You see, some of these books were so new that they didn't have a single rating or review until I posted mine. Sadly, after about a month & a half I still wasn't seeing anymore reviews other than mine & some of the giveaways had given 15+ books away! That's 14 or more people who got the same book & who either read it & tossed in the corner of there room or never even picked it up after it made it to their house. Now I know some people may not be fast readers, so I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to the other winners, hoping I would still see more reviews & ratings. To this day some of those books still don't have more than my review & perhaps one more, & like I said, a lot of the authors gave away 15-20 books. I was astonished! So, I explained all this to my loving but non book reading boyfriend. Even though he isn't into reading like I am he is at least as passionate about what he feels is right or wrong, just as I am, & we came to the conclusion that to enter these giveaways & to not read & review it, after the author or publisher paid out of their own pocket to get it to you, was a lot like STEALING! Now some of you might think that's an extreme word to use, but the more I think about it the more I believe we are right. I get that the publishers may have cash to spare, but not everyone hosting a giveaway is a publisher, a good deal are simple authors. Later down the road I found out from one of the authors I've recently done a review for that he did his own giveaway & spent somewhere around $300 or more to do this & out of all the people he sent stuff to he only got 2 responses. Though he understood that not everyone was going to post, this really astonished him. He said that even at that he might have been able to live with the lack of reviews (which was really the point of the whole thing, to advertise his book), but what hurt him the most was that no one even bothered to thank him. Three hundred dollars & all he got was 2 thank yous & one review & that one review came from one of the people who thanked him, so in reality he only heard from 2, only 2 people out of the $300's worth of people he contacted. Imagine, putting all your blood, sweat, tears, & money into something & getting that kind of response in return. It would hurt, no matter how thick skinned you are. While you may not cry, I'm sure you'd at least want to throw something.

  So, do you see why we came to the conclusion that if you get a book for free & don't post a review that it's pretty much like stealing? I hope so. So, please do me a favor, if you ever do one of these giveaways that you will first & foremost find a way to thank the author for their kindness & then take the time to rate & review their book no matter how long it takes you to finish it. This is their livelihood & they chose to do us a kindness (which, granted benefits them too) by sending us a free book, some of these books running $15-$30 a piece. I don't know, let me know what you think, I am always happily open to intelligent discussion about what I talk about here so feel free to post a comment if you want to weigh in or if you have a question about something I said, but was unclear about.

  Thant Should conclude today's post. For anyone interested, I have an interview with an author who has written a wonderful childrens book that appeals to not just young but any interested age coming soon. His name is Paul G. Day & he wrote The Black Fairy & The Dragonfly & has promised to have my interview questions answered & back to me hopefully by the end of the weekend. So, please stop back by & hopefully at the beginning of next week you will see my first interview. I realize I failed to mention in my earlier posts that one of the other genre's I enjoy reading is YA / Childrens Fantasy, not just adult. This blog will be covering a wide range of books from adult Paranormal Romance, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Animal & Insect related books, Historical Fiction , occasional Non Fiction, & YA / Childrens Fantasy. So, if you have an open mind for various book genres please keep stopping by my blog & I promise to try & keep you on your toes. So, as Tigger would say, TTFN.