A Couple Changes

So I've decided to make just a couple of minor changes to my blog. The first is relatively innocuous: I'm going to keep the Ban Factor in my reviews. I liked doing them and I've gotten some good feedback on them. Plus it's a nice quick little rundown of what kind of icky (or not) stuff to expect in the title lumped into one neat little area. So that stays.

The other is a bit bigger and somewhat of a point of contention amongst book bloggers: requiring a giveaway entrant to follow my blog. Yes, I'm doing it. Originally I was staunchly against it. I thought it was a shameless way to up your follower numbers without having to provide genuine content. And for some I still think that's true, especially if your number of giveaways greatly overshadow actual content.

But after reading Reading with Tequila's rant about it, I found myself nodding my head (yes, I've been thinking about this for that long). I'd never looked at it any other way than as a shill for followers. But this makes sense and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind. Basically, if you can't be bothered to even look like you read my blog on a nominally regular schedule, why should I give you anything? I am not obligated to open my giveaways to any and all people. I am not required to give the people that are just passing by my blog, probably because they saw a giveaway link somewhere and are only there for the giveaway and of which I will probably never hear from again, the same opportunity to win something as I do my seemingly regular readers. I can't tell you how irritating I found it when I'd see 'No' selected on my giveaway forms for followers. Holy crap, really? I'm giving you an extra chance to win the book just by becoming a follower and you can't even do that? Nuh uh. No more.

From now on it is a REQUIREMENT to be a follower of mine in order to enter any of my giveaways from here on out. I really don't give a flying monkey's ass about my follower numbers. What I care about is that what I'm giving away, what, for the most part, comes out of my pocket, is going to someone that at least appears to give a modicum of a shit about my blog and isn't so obviously using me for my free stuff. It's tiresome.

So that's it. Feel free to piss and moan and complain about yet another book blogger requiring follows to enter into giveaways. Hi and welcome to my caring face.