Contest Guidelines

Who can enter/win?
Anyone who visits my blog and fulfills the entry requirements is eligible to win, except my immediate family. Friends, authors, book bloggers, readers, librarians, grown-ups, teens–all eligible! Don’t be shy. I love giving things away.

One thing–if you are under 13, please let your parents know you are entering online contests. And if you win, please ASK THEM before giving me your address. I will be happy to supply credentials to show your parents I’m not a creepy stalker. Everyone, regardless of age, should be careful about sharing their address online. Your parents might prefer that you have me ship to their work address or a P.O. Box, which is totally fine with me.

If you are the winner, by sending me your address, you are confirming that your parents are fine with you getting mail from authors. If an angry parent emails me, I will refer him or her to this post.

Also, unless multiple members of your household are regular visitors/commenters to my website and blog, there is only one entry per household/IP address.

Do I have to live in the USA?
I will ship, unless otherwise stated, to the U.S. and Canada. If you’re international, go ahead and enter–if you win, just choose a lucky North American friend to receive your prize! Or if there’s someone who can hold/ship your prize (for instance, if someone is coming to visit you), I will be happy to send it to that person.

How do you choose the winner?
My contest winners, unless otherwise specified, are chosen using a random number generator.

When the contest ends, I create an Excel spreadsheet and input entries based on how many “points” a person got. So if you earn one entry one point, I put your name in once. If you earn four points, I put your name in four times. Then when the contest is over, I look at the range of numbers my list covers and enter that range into a random generator to get the winner.

So just say I ran a contest and Jane got four points and Jim got two and Tina got three and Joe got one, for a total of ten total entry points. My list would look like this:

1. Jane
2. Jane
3. Jane
4. Jane
5. Jim
6. Jim
7. Tina
8. Tina
9. Tina
10. Joe

Then I would enter “1-10″ into the random number selector. It could turn out to be #10, and Joe could win with his one entry–but the odds go up as you get more entry points.

You can do as many or as few of the entry requirements as you like! Doing more will get your name on the list more times and increase your chances of winning.

(In a contest with no points system, I just number each comment according to the order in which they were left.)

How often can I enter/win?
You can win one “big” (non-mini) contest every six months.

MiNI-CONTESTS: You can win one mini-contest every three months. BUT you can still enter (since entering mini-contests is basically just commenting)–all I ask is that, if you win, you gift the prize to somebody else.

Winning a mini-contest does not affect your eligibility for big contests and vice versa.

Thanks and good luck!

Related posts:

1. Cry for help, non-betrayal pledge, circus dogs.
2. Only connect…
3. I should not be this excited.
4. Stop and smell the shurploz.

January 1st, 2009 Katie Alender

Tags: contest