Did you know that Goodreads does giveaways? Authors and publishers offer their wares to 'generate buzz', and Goodreads distributes them to requesters using a complicated algorithm based on how active you are on the site, what else is on your bookshelves, and pulling names out of a hat.I've been entering for years with no success, but this changed with a notification over the weekend. Furthermore, what I received in the post yesterday was a new hardback from a popular author with a major publishing house - Jacqueline Wilson's The Butterfly Club - rather than a self-published gay cowboy werewolf romance. Not that there's anything wrong with those.
(I do feel, guiltily, that some little girl would be more thrilled with the Wilson than I was, though I devour her work avidly. But few little girls have Goodreads accounts, and I can always pass it on.)
Elsewhere in freebie news, one of the leisure centres in my employer's portfolio is running a Slush Puppie promotion with a free bone-shaped cup at the end of it. I reacted with such excitement to the bone-shaped cup that my colleague promised to obtain one for me, and I found it on my desk this morning.
