Giveaway is something I am still trying to figure out. It is a great marketing tool, yes, and I am lucky to have entered such a promotion once and won a book. I need to make it clear here that it was an ebook review writing competition, in which you buy and read the ebook and post your comments on the author’s website, hoping to win a copy of the print book simply because he likes your words. Having won the print book, I later discovered I was the only reviewer of the ebook throughout the competition.
Obviously not everybody likes reviewing books. I recently participated in a giveaway in which the author, whose newly published romance novel has a female marine biologist, will give a copy of her book to one reader randomly chosen from all those who provide comments on their favourite marine creature. Sounds fair, so I wrote about stingrays while nervously reading other people’s comments on all sorts of turtles (the marine biologist in the novel falls in love in a place with the word “turtle” in its name). I would have written about mermaids and murderous great white sharks if it were not for the want of a free love story.
As a writer, I have learned not to worry too much about readers’ response. I enjoy reading a critique much more than a praise, as the former helps me improve my writing while the latter only confirms what I already know. In this sense, if I am ever to give away a book, I will most likely ask readers to tell me what they want from it, not why they want it. I will work really hard to finish my current project and have it published, so that I can run an experiment and reports the results to you.
Perhaps the most interesting giveaway I have ever experienced is a famous author’s open call for anyone and everyone to come and receive one of his too many books. As long as these people would promise to buy a book from a small and/or independent publisher in the future six months, he would be wiling to pay for the postage for all the books he was giving away. But if they failed to do so, he warned, he would be personally going to those people’s houses and ask for his books back!
I received one of this author’s books, yes… and concealed from him the fact that I had bought half a dozen books from my favourite independent publisher to show my support. I was hoping he would think I broke my promise, become upset and really pay me a visit… Alas, he never came.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 