A New Obsession?

Well, a new obsession for you, I hope.

With a bunch of friends, I've launched a new blog. It's an easy blog (I hope!), in that it's devoted to nothing but contests for books. Giveaways. You know: enter here and win a book. That's why I called it Win a Book.

There are other book contest bloggers out there. I'm not trying to knock them out of a readership or anything. Rather, I keep seeing many, many contests that otherwise go unreported. Maybe the contests' creators want it that way. I don't know; I've never thought to ask.

But one thing I've always wanted to do is more to help promote my fellow writers. Talking about books I've read isn't good enough. I read slowly these days, what with a blog to maintain (and write for), a book to market, another book to write, a family to raise, and other hobbies to give face time not nearly often enough. Yes indeed, I wanted to do more.

This seemed like an easy way to do it. To collect all the blogs and websites I can find that are holding contests and throw 'em up there on another blog. Dangle the name of a book, the name of an author, in front of your face and hope you'll see it enough times that you'll remember it. Hope that you'll win and be exposed to a great new author. Hope that if you don't win, you'll be interested enough in the book to buy it anyway.

There's not a lot of glory in it for me, to be honest. Sure, it bears the West of Mars name, but that's about it. I don't get extra entries in contests for mentioning it (I hope). Heck, I hope I don't get any entries, but if I wind up winning, I'll share the prizes with my co-authors. This isn't about personal glory.

It's about getting the names of fellow authors out there. Of helping them in their careers.

I firmly believe that getting people excited about books is good for every single person who writes books. It's good for everyone who reads books. It's good for the person who rarely reads but decides to see what the fuss is about, even if they don't get hooked on reading from the experience.

And I firmly believe in promoting literacy of all sorts.

This new blog is about putting my money where my mouth is.

I hope you'll add it to your reader and let the contests pop up and surprise you with how varied they already are. I hope you'll stop by and check out the contest-hosting sites that get a link in our sidebar. I hope you'll win a book or ten. I hope you'll support my friends who are helping me post these contests, and mostly, I hope you'll have fun with it.

Come on by.

WestofMars-WinaBook.