Strange Happenings on Goodreads

In an effort to improve my online presence for my books, I participated in a Goodreads Giveaway.

Here's how it works...

If you have a newly published or soon-to-be published book, you can give away a number of books (your choice on the number) to randomly selected Goodreads members.  I chose to giveaway ten signed copies of my latest book, Workshop Til You Drop.  I allowed readers from Canada to participate, which wound up costing much more than I expected and was also a challenge to get through the customs paperwork.  The latter was mostly because of a grumpy postal worker, but that's another post...

Once the books arrived, I was pleasantly surprised that I received some very positive reviews from people that I wasn't related to!  Awesome!  Unfortunately, only 3 of the ten chose to leave a review, but I'll take what I can get and thank you very much!

Fast forward to last night.  I'm trying to drum up support for my entry in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Contest and I notice that there's a brand new, signed copy of my book for sale on Amazon for half price.  I contacted the buyer with righteous indignation oozing from every pore.

Me: "How dare you, you cad!  I never authorized this!  Are you cheating my trusting, adoring public?"
Or something like that.  Whereupon I received a much calmer and somewhat contrite reply from an Extremely Nice Seller (ENS).
ENS: "Sorry if this upsets you, but I buy boxes of books from Goodreads and it just happened to be in there.  Have you heard of the site?"

Huh.

In a weird way, I felt betrayed, disappointed and cheated.  I can just picture the 'super' members on Goodreads (if you have a certain number of reviewed/shared books on your bookshelf, you're given preference in the Giveaways) signing up for all the Giveaways willy-nilly.  Once they receive a certain number of free books, they box them up and sell them to whomever wants them.

As long as they read the book and review it, I don't really care what they do with them after that.  But I have a feeling they don't take the time to do their due diligence.  And, as far as I can tell, there's no attempt and, really, no way to get them to actually read the books.  That's what disappoints me the most.

I have two takeaways from this.

1. I probably won't ever do another Goodreads Giveaway.
2. The ENS wrote me a lovely review on my ABNA entry.