… when it’s an illegal lottery.
This post is a revision and update of a 2018 post, How to Conduct an Online Giveaway.
Note: This is not legal advice. I am not lawyer and am not qualified or licenced to give legal advice in New Zealand or anywhere else. If you want legal advice, you pay a qualified lawyer who is licenced to practice law in your location. You don’t get legal advice from websites or from anyone who isn’t a qualified and licenced lawyer.
I just received an email which included a “game”: answer three simple questions from the author’s newly released novel, email your answers to the author, and go in the draw to receive a $50 Amazon gift voucher.
The author refers to it as a game, but that’s not technically correct.
It’s actually a lottery. Why? Because the author says all the answers are in the first quarter of their new release … which means you, the reader, have to buy their new release to enter.
That makes it an illegal giveaway, because raffles and lotteries fall under a whole different set of laws. For example, many states and countries require you to provide a way for people to enter without purchasing. This author does not.
(If you want to give readers an incentive to purchase, offer a limited-time sale, or offer bonus content to purchasers.)
It’s also a contest, because the implication is that only correct answers will go into the draw, which introduces an element of skill … which is not legal in certain places.
If you want to better understand the laws surrounding online giveaways, click here to read How to Run A Website Contest (without going to jail) by lawyer and author Courtney Milan.
Many authors run online giveaways. Some are aimed at encouraging people to sign up to the author’s newsletter list. Some are aimed at encouraging people to buy the author’s book.
In my experience, the authors offering illegal giveaways are generally authors who are self-publishing (although some have previously been published by major traditional publishers.
I suspect this is because books that are published through major traditional publishers have marketing specialists and legal teams behind them, so when someone suggests a game or giveaway that’s actually a raffle or lottery, the legal eagles point out the error of their ways.
Keeping your giveaway legal
There are laws governing how people run giveaways, which can be categorised as sweepstakes, contests, and lotteries.
- Sweepstakes choose winners at random, and are least likely to be unlawful in the USA.
- Contests choose winners based on answering a question (as in the email I received), and are common in Canada and Europe.
- Lotteries (or raffles) are heavily regulated in all jurisdictions and usually require the entrant to pay money to enter e.g. by buying a ticket … or a book.
If you are running any kind of giveaway, you need to ensure you comply with the relevant laws … which is difficult, because the laws are different in every state and country. No giveaway can comply with all international laws (or even all the different state laws in the USA).
Here are some principles for running an online giveaway:
Limit Participation by Geography
For example, limit entrants to USA only, or Australia only. At the very least, say “void where prohibited” (although this means you need to know where your giveaway is prohibited).
Be Fair
If you say one random commenter will win the prize, the prize has to go to a random commenter. Not the person you like most.
Don’t Require a Purchase
Many states and countries require you to provide a way for people to enter without purchasing.
Make Your Giveaway Easy to Enter
Don’t require entrants to jump through hoops or answer hard questions, especially not questions they could only answer by having already bought and read your book (because that again turns your giveaway into a raffle).
State the Prize
State the exact prize up front, and the value of that prize. I’d also suggest you keep the value of your prize relatively small. A $4.99 ebook or $20 Amazon gift card is unlikely to attract attention. A Tesla will.
Provide the Odds of Winning
This can be as simple as “the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants”.
Use an online giveaway tool
Giveaway tools encourage social sharing and/or email list signups while enabling you to keep your giveaway fair and comply with relevant laws (well, not all laws, as laws vary by location. But giveaway tools do follow local laws—where ever “local” is for them).
Popular tools include:
- BookFunnel
- Gleam
- KingSumo
- ProlificWorks
- Rafflecopter
- StoryOrigin
These tools can be used for:
- Group contest-type giveaways, where there are many entrants but only a few winners (maybe only one). A group of authors each contribute toward the prize/s, and readers gain entries by signing up for email newsletter lists, or by following authors on sites such as Amazon, BookBub, or Facebook.
- Group newsletter promotions, where groups of authors band together to promote their free books in order to get people to sign up to their email newsletters.
- Group sales promotions, where groups of authors band together to advertise their books. For example, I’m currently participating in the Take Me to the Beach Sweet/Christian romance promotion. The books aren’t free or even on sale, but it’s an opportunity to get my title in front of new readers (and it was free for me to join, so why not?).
Thank you for running this post again! Some very interesting information, and also thanks for the link to the ‘Take Me to the Beach.’ I’ve already read and enjoyed your story, but I found one or two other authors I thought interesting.
I’m glad you found the post useful, and I’m happy you’ve found some more authors to check out 🙂
Very interesting and I was planning my next article in about 2 weeks to be about running giveaways. So I’ll be able to link to yours.