I’m dying to send someone one of these hardbacks from the UK. In fact, I’m thinking we need a contest. It’ll be open for a while, so don’t rush off and bang your toe on anything to get started. Just take a deep breath. This will be either the easiest or the most onerous contest you’ve ever entered. That’ll be up to you.
This is like a scavenger hunt of sorts, all based on an honor system. I saw a post recently by D.M. Andrews that listed 10 things you can do to support your favorite authors. It’s an egregious amount of work, to be sure. It involves clicking on things and writing stuff. Not much fun. In fact, it’s almost exactly like Facebook.
The contest will work like this: Do as many or as few of these ten things as you like. You don’t even have to do any! You just have to promise not to break any rules or violate common decency. Don’t write a review of a book you haven’t read. Don’t upvote a review unless you truly find it useful. Make a Listmania because you really believe it will help other readers. And don’t lie about your participation. In general, don’t be a dick. The Easter Bunny is watching.
After you’ve done as much clicking and writing as you feel like, leave a comment on this blog post with the number of crappy, awful things you suffered through for your love of free goodies. (Various other comments are welcome, but only the entries with a simple number will be considered for the contest). The number you enter should lie between 0 and 10. This is how many extra entries your name will be given. All the names will go into a virtual hat, which means each horrible little busybody task you perform will be like punching another lottery ticket. Also: depending on the level of participation, I might have to give away several of these bad boys.
The contest will run for a few weeks, so don’t strain yourself. If you’ve already written a review, that totally counts. If you do a bunch of extra credit and suck up to me, that’ll probably count in your favor as well. Again, no bitching about all the work. Just comment with a big fat zero and be done with it. That’ll get you one entry.
Okay, best of luck! Here’s a link to the list again. Yeah, it’s a bunch of sucky work. But it’s an awesome learning experience to see how easy it is to support your favorite authors. Go forth and do this for other reads you really enjoy. You have NO IDEA how much this means to us writers. It makes the blood, sweat, and tears we shed totally worthwhile.
Oh, and a reminder of what you’re gunning for!:
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