Week of Book Love Contest WINNERS!

Was that fun or what! I just finished running my first contest for six straight days. Whew! I had a good time posting pictures, quotes, and fun facts about my book, and I hope you were enticed to want to read it. Thanks to all who participated.


And the winners of a signed copy of Secrets of the King's Daughter are:

Sharlene Bitter
and surprise, surprise--two bonus winners!
 Sarah Marchant Montanares and
Jamie Braegger!
Congrats! Please message me with your address.

CONTEST TIPS: Things I learned from/liked about this experience:
1. Yes, you can do it yourself! It takes planning ahead and managing the scope of things. I decided to do one question a day in an 'open house' type of environment so friends and fans could participate on their own time, and I wouldn't feel overwhelmed by keeping up on a frenzy of getting my info out in a short time block. It's not over as quickly, but it's easier in some ways. Posts can be scheduled ahead on both Blogs and Facebook Pages.
2. Be aware of Facebook rules. Business-related contests need to be run from a business page, not a personal profile. I did not post directly to my personal profile page, but my blog is linked to it as a shared post, so it still made a legal appearance in my status, which helped get the word out.
3. I'm trying to widen my following on my author page and one requirement of the contest was to "Like" my page. There was some success there, but this contest was geared more to people who already were my Facebook friends and family. I didn't want to require participants to "Share" the contest, though at least one person did, which garnered a few new "Likes". Shared posts get wider participation, but sometimes you want to reward those who are already fans.
4. As a debut author, I figured participation would be small. (My publisher already did a bigger scale contest.) That suited me fine, especially for experimenting. I learned that not all participants will follow the rules, but they think they did. For example, maybe they liked a photo or post instead of the author page. You have to decide the purpose of your contest and how strict you will be on the rules before the names go into the drawing. I also had to search for comments from three different places, but that wasn't too hard. It was fun and a good learning experience.