The Great Review (Contest)

Here we are on another Shadow Spinner release day. Today is "Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow."

Of course, it's FREE! today, Thursday, October 18 and tomorrow, Friday, October 19. Make sure you pick it up! Also, "Part Six: The Man with No Eyes" is also FREE! today only.

Here's something interesting:
I like the idea of switching covers every so often. I mean, when you're doing a serial book, why have the same cover all the way through, right? Why not offer the consumer some variety? Especially when you have someone as talented as Rusty Webb doing your covers! It seemed like a cool idea to me.

Evidently, it wasn't such a good idea. On Monday when I had parts 1-5 available for FREE! there were an undisclosed amount of downloads on parts 1-4 (because I think I'm not supposed to post my actual numbers or Amazon will get upset), but there were only about 25% as many downloads on part 5 as any of the other parts individually. I can think of no other reason for this than that the cover changes at part 5, and the visual recognition just wasn't there. I find it really kind of odd. I had another cover change in mind that would happen around chapter 12 or 13, but, now, I think, maybe, I shouldn't do that. The whole thing is a little disappointing, but it's a good thing to know.

This is the part where I would normally start begging for reviews. I'm growing tired of it, and, if I am, I'm pretty sure you guys are too. But, see, "The Man with No Eyes" is sitting at just one review and "The Cop" at three. I'm starting to feel like little Oliver, "Please, sir, I want some more." Because I do. It's enough to make the idea of purchasing reviews tempting, but, you know, only not, because that still steams my ears. The difficulty of getting people to leave a 20 word review makes me understand the temptation, though. Especially since begging doesn't seem to work. So here is what I'm going to do:

The Great Review Contest!

Between today and, oh, say Sunday, for every review you leave for one of my works, I will put your name in a drawing for a FREE! book. Yes, that's right, a FREE! book, and it doesn't even have to be one of mine. However, there are some qualifications:

1. It must be an independently or self-published work (this includes small publishers). No big, traditional publishers here.
2. It must be an e-book, and
3. It must be for the Kindle or Kindle app.

So go and leave some reviews on any of the Shadow Spinner parts or on The House on the Corner or even for "The Evil That Men Do" or Charter Shorts (which doesn't have a single review!). After you've done that, leave me a comment here to let me know where you've left reviews (and under what name you left them), and I'll mark you down for an entry for each and every review you leave! It's that simple! And, really, 20 words is not that many. I mean, a lot of you are writers, so 20 words should, you know, come out when you sneeze.

I'll announce the winner in Monday's post (which also has a super, secret announcement!). If you win, just let me know what book you want, and I will buy it for you and send it to you. It's as easy as that! ANY BOOK! Well, not any book, but you know what I mean. I hope you do, anyway. It can be one of my books, or it can be any of these great up and coming authors that we all want to support. And, hey, I just did a review on a great book that you could choose!

And just to be clear, I want a real review, meaning an honest review. I'm not offering to buy 5-star reviews here; I just want to get some activity going, so, you know, I'm not gonna secretly mark you off the list if you give me a bad review.

However, if offering incentives to get people to actually stop and leave a review (and click the "like" button) doesn't work, I may have to resort to coming to people's houses. And none of us want that!