Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Cookin' Up a Contest!

I have been noticing a couple of issues here at Debbie's Book Bag! And I have thought of a way to impact them that will be fun and possibly earn my readers a box or two of books!

1.) I actually have a room in my house the is completely devoted to books. We call it our library though it isn't anything fancy. Just a room that has lately become jam packed with so many books that it's hard to walk. As a blogger, I receive all kinds of books, finished copies, bound copies, galleys and ARC's. Considering I receive probably 30 to 40 a month, that adds up fast and I have a ton of extra ARC copies of books that I want to use for this contest. They don't have all of the corrections done, and they don't have the covers that end up on the finished books, but they are still wonderful reads and a great way to see if you want to buy the real thing.

2.) The other issue that I have noticed of late has to do with the publisher sponsored giveaways that I provide for just about every book I review. I have earned a pretty good reputation in the publishing community for promoting and getting authors noticed. I love to review and to get an authors work out there so people can see it. Now, I have always padded my schedule heavily with cozy mysteries because these are some of my favorite reads, but I also have other interests including paranormal romance, romantic suspense, erotic romance, historical romance and contemporary romance. When I start to look at the responses and the amount of giveaway entries for cozies vs. everything else it becomes very apparent that I am not reaching all of the readers I want and need to reach. So I have designed this contest with that in mind.

Here is how it is going to work. 

Starting tomorrow, September 17th there will be a new question on each form you fill out for each giveaway. It will say "Referred by" and there will be a place for a response. The contest is going to run from Sept. 17th - November 17th. 

I need you guys to beat the bushes. Call your friends, post on your blogs, tweet and facebook, google+ or whatever other form of social media you use to drum up some folks to enter giveaways, especially giveaways other than cozies. Don't get me wrong, you'll get points for new cozy entries as well, just not as many as everything else. All they have to do is put your name in the "referred by" space on the form. 

I also want to encourage you to sign up for books you might not have considered before, genre's you have explored and author's you might never choose otherwise. And I want to give points for that as well. Believe me I know who signs up for what and I have it all recorded. So if you branch out and try something new you will get a extra entry for that as well.

Here is the scale I will be using.

YOU will get 1 entry for every giveaway you enter during the contest time period.

If YOU enter a giveaway for a type of book that you don't usually try, you will get 1 extra entry.

If a new person signs up for a cozy mystery giveaway and marks you as a referral, you will get 1 extra entry.

If a new person signs up for a giveaway other than a cozy giveaway and marks you as a referral, you will get 5 extra entries.

All entries will be recorded (yep tons of work for me) and calculated before the random number draw on Nov. 18th. A winner will be chosen from my blog followers. That winner will win a box of ARC's containing 10 books, mostly cozy, because I have more of those than anything else. Also a winner will be chosen from the new followers and they will receive a box of 10 books as well. 

You will still be trying to win each book in the individual giveaways, but this will be an added bonus giveaway!

If this is successful we may do it again!

I hope all that made sense. If you have any questions please post in the comments and I will try to reply as soon as possible or you can e-mail as well. 

I think this will be a lot of fun and it's good prize pack. I love ARC's I just have a couple hundred extra right now, LOL!

Let me know in the comments what you think of this. Do you think it will work or is it just too hard? I need to reach more readers  and I have tons of extra ARC's and I thought this might be a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

4 comments:

holdenj said...

Clear as mud the first read thru, makes more sense now! May as well give it a try--I'm up for participating. :)

justpeachy36 said...

It's just a way to drive a little bit more traffic to the blog, pick up some new readers who are interested in more than just cozies. I love cozies! But I like other stuff too and want to share to a bigger audience I suppose.

Texas Book Lover said...

I tweeted and posted on Facebook for ya...hopefully you will get some activity but I can't say it will be much. Most people don't see my post or they skip right over them. But I tried!

Anonymous said...

It sounds like a good thing you are doing and you are really are keeping good records and working hard to get this to work. Kudos.

However, too much work for me but I wish you much luck in achieving your goals.

patoct