Congratulations to the winners of the last two giveaways:
Daniel Kalla's Rising Sun, Falling Shadow has gone out to Lynn P.
Jenny Barden's The Lost Duchess will be going out to Katherine G.
Hope you'll enjoy the books!
Also: for the last few contests I've run, at least, it appears there's been some cheating going on. Someone who uses multiple names and owns multiple email addresses and uses them to game the system has gotten careless, entering one of my giveaways with the same email but three different names. I don't get such a huge number of entries that this isn't immediately obvious. I also noticed these same names showing up with different emails for previous contests I've run. Then when I googled one of those emails and found confirmation of the multiple aliases plus a heads-up from another blogger, well, it adds weight to the conclusions I've already drawn. This is irritating, not to mention unfair to the other entrants. Accordingly, I've removed the offender's names from the pool and will be watching closely for others in future contests.
That's all for this public service announcement; back to more book reviews tomorrow.
About Me
- Sarah Johnson
- Collection management librarian, readers' advisor, avid historical fiction reader, NBCC member. Book review editor for the Historical Novels Review and Booklist reviewer. Recipient of ALA's Louis Shores Award for book reviewing (2012). Blogging since 2006.
!! -- I see from that blog you link to that I've given prizes to all those names/email addresses at least once. So embarrassed -- and so disheartening.
ReplyDeleteLooking back as far as I can, nearly all of my contests have entries from more than one of those names/emails, and there's no consistency about which names are matched with which emails. Seeing this, it's not surprising this person won so many prizes. The whole business is super annoying, but unless they slip up like they did here, not sure how you're supposed to know.
DeleteCongrats to the winners!
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing the cheating to our attention, Sarah. I also read the post in the attached link and realize my giveaways have also been subject to cheating. Sadly, like you, I'm now going to have to pay much closer attention to giveaway entrant's names and email addresses in future.
I had figured I wasn't the only one this was happening to. Before having Random.org pick a winner, I've been sorting the spreadsheet of entries alphabetically. There are sometimes duplicates, which I can see happening when someone forgets they've already entered, and I remove the extras before picking a winner - but this seems more calculated than that. I'm definitely going to be paying close attention from now on, too; it's not fair to everyone else otherwise.
DeleteI feel fortunate that no one from that list has ever cheated into my giveaways, or, if they have, they haven't won.
ReplyDeleteThat's good to hear. If they've won anything from me, it's been a while since I have no record of it.
DeleteWow. Cheating just to get a free book? That seems so... uncivil. I'm sorry to hear that you've had to deal with this, and to hear that it's been happening elsewhere. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteYes - I find it pretty sad how pervasive it is. The blog post I linked to is from 2008, so it's been going on for quite a while.
DeleteWow. People will lie and cheat for any reason, won't they? SMH. Thanks for the heads up.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know - why not just buy the books?
DeleteMany thanks for flagging this, Sarah. Tweeted this post.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping get the word out, Elaine. I've been hearing publicly and privately from quite a few bloggers who were affected by this.
DeleteSending this to Mel....I help review for her at Bookworm2bookworm and I wonder if she knows this? We're in the middle of a month long daily giveaway right now. :(
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to the winners above!
I sometimes have encountered duplicate entries - but it has been the occasional rather than the rule - and none of those listed on the linked post. I always delete duplicate entries that shouldn't be there and I review email addresses/name pairs etc. So far so good, but thanks for the post.
ReplyDelete