Hi all, I hope that you had a wonderful 2013 and that all the nice things you wanted to happen happened for you! This is a note just to explain a change I’m going to have to institute for my upcoming giveaways. In the near future (at least the year 2014 if our calculations are right) we’re (the wife and I) going to have to limit the scope of our Goodreads giveaways to the UK only. Our first giveaway, for Admin Is Hell attracted some good natured complaints from users not in the UK that we had excluded them from entering by not expanding the entry criteria beyond readers in the UK, and so, although we couldn’t really afford it, we did expand the scope of the giveaways after that. The trouble is though, that as a self-published author with no other means of supporting myself (I can’t work a regular job thanks to my disability), I simply cannot afford the postage any longer on competition prizes to winners outside of the UK. Every book that we send to the US, for example, costs us around £13 in postage – that’s enough to wipe us out for the month (I currently actually make a steady financial loss as an author and so my wife’s salary is what we live on) and so, unfortunately, and although I would very much like it to be otherwise, in the foreseeable future, I will have to limit my giveaways to the UK only. I realise that this will be unwelcome news to the many competition entrants that we get from outside of the UK, Canada especially (you Canadians LOVE your books, which is great!!) but for the present, I have no choice but to limit my giveaways to just the UK.
I will of course reverse this decision as and when funds allow, as I don’t like having to ring fence my giveaways to the UK.

Anyway, thank you all for reading this. I hope that 2014 sees us all getting to where we want to be! :)