Feedback Solicited: Digital ER Giveaways to Be Posted on Members' Profile Pages?

Hi All: As you know, we have been brainstorming ideas to help us improve fulfillment rates, when it comes to the delivery of Early Reviewer titles to our winners. This is a particular problem with digital giveaways. We often get reports from publishers of emails bouncing back, and from winners that they never received their books.

We are working on a redesign of ER, and are considering a change to the delivery method, when it comes to digital titles. How would people feel about having a link to a site where they can download their ER titles posted directly to their profile pages? This would cut out email altogether, and all the associated problems. The posts would be private, of course, so that only the winner would be able to follow the link, and download the book.

What do members think about this idea?

I'm not a big user of eBooks, but I am a regular LTER participant. I have won a couple eBooks, though, and fortunately they worked smoothly for me.

Clarifying question, by "posts would be private" is meant both that the post would only be seen by the LT member who won, and that the link was individual to the winner (each winner would get a unique URL)?

If it's a generic link in a private message, that link could be shared indiscriminately by winners and publishers wouldn't know when a winner was using it, and when non-winners were. Maybe not an issue given that's it's marketing and many publishers would welcome any amount of traffic from anyone interested.

If it's a private link, suggest that winners are permitted at least a few "downloads" to prevent problems when a single download fails and they can't download again because the link is restricted to one-time use.

>2 elenchus: Well, with the current system, nothing stops someone from sharing a link they receive via mail anyway if it is a public or semi-public address. And the number of downloads on a private link can always be restricted. What is sent really depends on what distribution model the publisher has. So moving to messages does not really change that.

How will that work for users who had disabled messages on their walls? Last time I checked (it had been years), you could do that and still participate in ER.

As long as I get my book, I don't care whether the download link comes in an email or a profile message :)

As a recipient, I wouldn't mind at all. From the publishers' side, it seems like it would require a more "manual" approach than (presumably) plugging a list of emails into whatever distribution service they currently use.

Sounds good to me. This way, if there WAS a problem, you'd at least know about it (link fails for one reason or another). Currently, there's no way to tell if a notification has not been sent yet, or if it's been sent, but you never received it.

A link posted to my profile page would be fine with me or an emailed link—whatever works best for the publisher.

IIRC, I've missed a couple books either because my spam filter ate the notification, or missed the email until the download link expired. So yeah, getting those notifications out of my email might help me.

I would love this! It would make it much keep it from getting lost/blocked and I check LT almost everyday. I would be much more likely to request an Ebook if this was to happen.

Works for me

Pretty much what tardis said; as long as I get the book, I don't care how it arrives.

yes that would be fine for me - I get LTwall posts as emails anyway, and if publishers prefer that then I don't forsee any particular issues.

Most ebooks do come as email attachments though, only a few as re-directs to specific download pages. I wouldn't like to have to go through creating accounts and having details sold on, for ever ebook I get sent for review. Perhaps LT could recommend/mandate a single platform - bookfunnel seems to work well, I'm sure there are others.

I've had far more issues with pbooks not being sent, than ebooks bouncing in email.

I would actually prefer this proposed approach.
It would also be nice if we could indicate our prefered ebook formats; that may save out a few e-mails.

I like this idea as well, since the email I have attached to my LT isn't one I check daily. I also seem to have wound up on a mailing list at one point and hopefully this would prevent that.

As long as I get the book, I don't have a preference as to how I receive it.

I could see how if someone was not a regular visitor to LT (I know some users only hop on to sign up for the free books, and don't really do much else on here) the post with the link would work well.

If it makes distribution easier, I'm all for it, but who creates the post? Is AbigailAdams26 expected to create all those posts manually and send them out? That seems like a lot of extra work to put on someone who is already flooded with messages (and does an awesome job handling them!). Hopefully there's some way to automate it, I don't know exactly how the ER page's code handles that on the backend so maybe it can't.(?)

I've actually stopped requesting ER books that are digital because the times I won them I never received them. I'd love to see an alternate method of delivery. I agree, though, that it would need to be done in a way that is not a burden for the human LT team.

I stopped using ER because the last several ebooks I won I never received. So any way of making sure we get what we win, would be good.

I usually only request books, but on the occasions I have won an ebook I have received the email with the link. I don't really have a preference.

As tardis said, as long as I get the book, I am open to any method. As a couple of other people commented, I hope it doesn't mean creating a lot more work for LT staff.