I know of several authors who run contests on their websites. I’ve thought about doing this for quite some time, but haven’t been able to decide what kind of contest to have. I liked the idea of some sort of writing contest, but it would be so hard to judge something like that. I’d want to give everyone a prize. So then I thought I could just do a random drawing, but where’s the fun in that?
Preteen told me that Eoin Colfer (author of Artemis Fowl) had a contest to guess his middle name. I thought that was interesting, but considering my middle name is on my books, that wasn’t going to work for me. Though I COULD maybe do a “guess the middle name that’s on my birth certificate?” (I changed my middle name to my maiden name when I got married.) But that would involve people finding out what that name is…my family knows (though my younger son DIDN’T know until it came up in conversation)…and a good friend of mine from high school probably remembers because she and I had the same middle name (though I’m not sure she hated it as much as I did). But not too many other people know that…and I’d kind of like to keep it that way. So anyway…I decided on a combination write something/random drawing.
I’ve had a lot of e-mail and snail mail from kids who are writing book reports on one of my books. So I decided to invite kids who write a book report on one of my books to send me the report by Jan. 31, 2007 (then I actually get to read the reports, too!) and I will enter their names into a drawing. On February 1, 2007, my younger son will draw the winner, who will receive an autographed copy of whatever book they want. (Well, it has to be one of MY books…) It’ll be interesting to see whether there are any takers…