Twice over the past few weeks, publishers have asked if I run contests and if I want free stuff to giveaway. My first response is “Of course I want free stuff to give away,” but I don’t want to keep doing the “Link to me someplace” thing, either . That gets boring. If anybody’s got some contest ideas they’ve seen on other blogs, that they’d participate in (and think others would, too!), I’m all ears. Who knows, maybe that’ll be my first contest — best contest idea gets a book :).
Hey Duane – Love the blog. I'm a Shakespeare nerd myself (& theatre history teacher), and I write a music blog, as well. Right now I'm sort of mixing the two and working on a Hamlet playlist. I've seen contests like that elsewhere – make playlists for literature – but maybe that's something your readers could do? Create playlists for Shakespeare plays? –Tim
I’ve had contests where people submitted answers to questions or interview questions on my blogs schadenfreude-baby.blogspot.com and lantratov.blogspot.com. The problem is that people don’t seem to be willing to put in the effort for the most part to actually stop and think about something. I had to beg people to PLEASE submit questions for the ballet dancer interview. One contest which asked for topic suggestions for the Schadenfreude page I finally abandoned because none of the entrants actually followed the instructions, they just kept sending me e-mail with their address. They briefly drove traffic to the sites, but I am not sure they were any benefit at all in terms of selling books.