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Is there any way EYB can convince publishers that EYB is an international site? I've given up even looking at giveaways as 90% of them are US or UK only.

Jenny, our Cookbook Promotions Manager, works really hard to get publishers to extend the territories beyond the USA. Unfortunately the publishers who are most keen to work with us are American and they don't want to pay for overseas shipping when they only have the rights to sell the book in the USA. Jenny has been trying to get the publishers who publish the books in other territories to join in on the promotions but they generally have not been as open, though that is starting to change due to her extreme persistence. Even if they do agree they will often only ship to their own territory so France would still not be covered. For that reason we have started occasionally to buy copies ourselves so we can offer prizes worldwide. Out of 20 currently active contests, 4 have worldwide prizes (20%) and several more are available in Canada and Australia as well as the USA and UK.

Two Kitchens by Rachel Roddy - 1 copy worldwide

So Good by Richard Blais - 1 copy worldwide

The Adriatic Kitchen by Barbara Unković - 3 copies worldwide 

Lizzie Loves Healthy Family Food by Lizzie King - 3 copies worldwide

Thanks Jane, that's very thoughtful of you. And aha -- I could have sworn the Rachel Roddy one was UK-only when I looked at it. I love her Guardian recipes.

I didn't notice the worldwide copy for Rachel Roddy either - I saw "UK only" and didn't read further.

I agree that it's frustrating to look at giveaways for books you really want and then find you can't enter. But it definitely is possible to live in Europe and win EYB books. I can testify.

You're SO right, frustrating. Never won a book ..

I don't know what the ratio of US members to non-US members is. If there are ten times as much US as non-US members, it's still a good deal for us non-US members if they get five times as many books. If there are only three times as many US members it's a bad deal.

Can someone from the staff enlighten me about this ratio? 

The issue is not the number of members in each country but whether the publishers in that country are prepared to offer prizes. We cannot afford to buy and ship cookbooks ourselves (there have been more than 1,000 cookbooks sent out as prizes since we started giveaways in 2013) so we rely on the book publicists who see there is a promotional benefit to EYB running promotions for their books. To date it has predominantly been US publishers who see this benefit though Jenny, our Cookbook Promotions Manager, has been working hard to get other territories involved. You will see more non-USA prizes being offered but publishers (understandably) are not prepared to offer prizes to territories where they do not sell their books. So it is likely that the majority of territories will still be the English-speaking countries from which 90% of EYB members come - USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. The remaining 10% of members are from almost 200 different countries.

We can occasionally persuade publishers to offer worldwide prizes and we have also been paying for books to be shipped internationally. I appreciate that it can be frustrating not to win any prizes but these are contests - there is never a guarantee of winning. You just have to keep trying and hope you get lucky. Wester, who is in Europe, has won two cookbook prizes. So the opportunities are there.

The cookbook contests are nice perks, but hardly the main reason for being an EYB member.  I speak as someone who has lived in a non-English-speaking country during my EYB membership and doubtless will again when we move next year; it doesn't bother me one bit that I might not be eligible to enter one of the giveaways.

I completely see the problem from EYB's point of view and can appreciate why publishers don't support worldwide giveaways. It's thoughtful of EYB to provide some copies for other countries. And of course, the giveaways are far from the main reason for being an EYB member!

I meant to say, could you add blog (sub)categories for,say, worldwide giveaways, US only, UK only etc? Then it would be easy to identify which giveaways we are eligible for.

We have added tags to all the contests that show the countries eligible to enter. So you would click the Worldwide tag at the bottom of the giveaway post and you can then see all those contests that are open to all. This is the link for that selection which you can bookmark - https://www.eatyourbooks.com/blog?tag=%23worldwide Ditto for the main territories that we have contests for - they are now tagged as US, CA, UK, AU, and NZ.

Jenny has another 4 worldwide giveaways going up in the next two weeks.

Thanks for adding the tags. It's nice to not have to click on all contests to see if you can join them, which was a substantial part of the frustration about this.

That was quick! Thanks Jane :)

Make that three. My chicken cookbook arrived today. *Happy dance*

Thank you for the contests!

It's a nice idea but the issue isn't the lack of contact with the those publishers but that they don't see EYB as a priority. Hard to understand why when our members are all people who love and buy cookbooks.

There can be other issues that stop them from working with us:

• they have their own cookbook recipe subscription site (with only their cookbooks, unlike EYB which covers all publishers)


• their promotions budget does not stretch to providing books for contests


• they can't be bothered to spend time understanding what EYB does. Because we are unique in the world it can initially be hard to grasp. I can't tell you how many times we have had publicists ask "And do you show the full recipe?". This is after repeated contacts and 8 years in operation!

Jane is correct - I spend a great deal of time emailing and even speaking with the publishers - the international publishers don't have the budget that US publishers have. I myself have spent over 100.00 to order 3 books so that I could review them and do a promotion just for New Zealand members. Shipping is outrageous - 30.00 to 40.00 a book - just to ship - to Canada and other countries. Many publishers have a contract with UPS, FedEx and can ship cheaply - not to mention media mail in the states where we can mail a book for around 4.50. 

Since I have started working with EYB - I try to post 5 to 7 giveaways a week and I try to balance them out to include worldwide and other countries. Even EYB (Jane) will donate a worldwide title and I have donated books. Prior to my doing promotions, we didn't have nearly this amount of giveaways - so I know it must seem like some countries are left out but there are many more giveaways in the mix. 

I keep negotiating with international publishers and hopefully, the market will turn around. Jenny, Cookbook Promotions Manager

Note: Be sure to use the tags to search - worldwide, NZ, UK, AU etc.