Category: The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge
Announcing the 2014 Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge Winners
Well, I officially created the draw for the 2014 Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge winners. I won’t keep you guys in suspense, so here are the names of the winners as well as the challenge levels they completed:
Grand Prize: Camille of Girl Meets Books; Mad Reviewer
1st Runner Up: Naila of Reading Authors; Crazy Reviewer
2nd Runner Up: Jemima Pett; Crazy Reviewer
The only person who won for the second year running is Jemima Pett, so congratulations to her! And a huge congratulations goes to our winner, Camille, for both completing the Mad Reviewer level and for winning the draw. Those extra entries you get for the higher levels certainly do count. As well, congratulations are in order for Naila, who completed the Crazy Reviewer level of 52 books.
You guys all worked so hard and even if you didn’t win, you can look back on the fact that the challenge gave you extra motivation to write more reviews for your blogs.
Congratulations again to the winners! For your prizes, contact me via email (if you have my address) or through my Contact page. Then we can organize prize distribution.
The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge 2015 Sign Up
Well, last year’s reading challenge is over so now it’s time for the 2015 Mad Reviewer Reading & Reviewing Challenge. A huge thank you goes to the amazing Diantha Jones for designing the lovely challenge button you see above for the third year in a row. If you’re participating in the challenge, you can grab the button above. Here is the HTML for it:
<a href=”//themadreviewer.com/2015/01/02/the-mad-reviewer-reading-and-reviewing-challenge-2015-sign-up/” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q574/DianthaJones/MRRC2015Final.png” border=”0″ alt=” photo MRRC2015Final.png”/></a>
Once again, the challenge is the same as last year:
The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge is to read and review (either on Goodreads, Amazon or your own blog) 104 books in one year starting January 1, 2014 and ending December 31, 2014.
I’m fully aware that not everyone has time to read 104 books which is why I’ve created different levels of the challenge that you can aspire to:
1. Mad Reviewer: 104 books in one year. (2 books a week all year.)
2. Crazy Reviewer: 52 books in one year. (1 book a week all year.)
3. Slightly Sane Reviewer: 26 books in one year. (1 book every fortnight all year.)
4. Sane Reviewer: 12 books in one year. (1 book every month all year.)
RULES
1. Self-published, independently published and traditionally published books are all completely acceptable. Whether you read print copies or ebook copies makes no difference at all.
2. No audiobooks. I’d prefer people to read the books themselves, not have someone reading to them. Audiobooks can absolutely be a valuable tool for busy readers but they’re not really in the spirit of this challenge.
3. I don’t have a sign up form but if you intend to do this challenge you must post a comment below so that you’re officially signed up.
4. You can review your books on any site. Your own blog, Goodreads, someone else’s blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. The point is just to review the books you read!
5. The last day you can sign up is July 31st of 2015. I’m not taking any more entries after that, sorry.
6. The draw for the 2015 prizes will take place in the first few days of January 2016. This will give everyone time to tell me they’ve finished their chosen level and I’ll have time to actually verify the reviews. I’m not chasing people around like I did in 2013; especially not now that my challenge includes 50+ people. So at the end of the year, in December, head on back to my blog and tell me through the Contact Page or my submissions post I’ll have up on December 30th.
If you have a blog it would be great if you could use the button at the top of the post designed by the lovely Diantha Jones for me. (She also designed the 2014 version and my banner.) If you would like to keep track of your progress using a side bar, I find that this one worked well for me in 2014:
<div id=”progressbar” style=”background-color:black;border-radius:13px;padding:3px;width:104px;”>
<div style=”background-color:orange;border-radius:10px;height:20px;width:0px;”>
</div>
</div>
0/104 books read
In order to use this sidebar, all you have to do is change the first bolded px length to however many books you’re reviewing that year (104, 52, 26 or 12) and when you review a book, you change the second bolded px length to indicate it. So if you’re amazing for 26 books and you’ve reviewed 13, your bar would look like this:
<div id=”progressbar” style=”background-color:black;border-radius:13px;padding:3px;width:26px;”>
<div style=”background-color:orange;border-radius:10px;height:20px;width:13px;”>
</div>
</div>
13/26 books read
If you need anymore help with the progress bar, let me know via my Contact page. I’m not the most tech savvy (which is why credit goes to Mark Lee of The Masquerade Crew for designing this bar) but I will try my best to help.
PRIZE SELECTION
Anyone who completes the level they stated as their goal will be entered into a draw. How many entries you get will be determined by what level you’ve achieved:
Mad Reviewer (104 books): 4 entries
Crazy Reviewer (52 books): 3 entries
Slightly Sane Reviewer (26 books): 2 entries
Sane Reviewer (12 books): 1 entry
I know life gets in the way of reading and reviewing frequently, so what I offer to people who don’t complete their goal is a second chance of a sort. Say you aimed for Crazy Reviewer and only reviewed 30 books. Since you reviewed a minimum of 26 books you can still enter the draw as a Slightly Sane Reviewer. That way you’ve at least achieved a level of the challenge as well as had your name entered in the grand prize draw where I’ll be choosing a winner and three runners up. (This second chance applies to any level.)
HOW TO SIGN UP
Just post your name, the link to where you’ll be reviewing your books and the level at which you want to participate in the comments below! I’ll be posting a separate list of all the challenge participants (and their goals) as the comments flow in. If you could also publicize the challenge using Twitter, Facebook, your own blogs, etc. that would be great. The more the merrier!
Have You Finished The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge 2014? Tell Me Here!
Yes, it’s the end of 2014 already and so the end of my reading challenge is also nigh. That means it’s also time to announce how I’ll be verifying the challenge entries as well as what the winners of the draw will receive. I’ll start with the latter.
Here are the prizes for this year since last year’s prize distribution was really an unmitigated disaster (and I really do apologize to the winners last year for all of that):
- Grand prize winner: a $35 book shopping spree on The Book Depository.
- First Runner Up: a $15 book shopping spree on The Book Depository
- Second Runner Up: a couple of free ebooks donated by some close author friends.
If you have finished The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge 2014, comment below with a link to your reviews or email me through my Contact page. Even if you didn’t reach your goal, as long as you reached at least 12 books (the lowest level) you can still get entered. The rules are here if you want to look. And unlike last year, I am not chasing people around to see if they finished the challenge. If you finished the challenge, please take the time to comment or contact me in some way or you won’t be entered into the draw for 12:00am MT on SUNDAY, JANUARY 4.
If you need a refresher, here are the different levels and the number of entries they get you:
1. Mad Reviewer: 104 books in one year. (4 entries.)
2. Crazy Reviewer: 52 books in one year. (3 entries.)
3. Slightly Sane Reviewer: 26 books in one year. (2 entries.)
4. Sane Reviewer: 12 books in one year. (1 entry.)
And yes, as I said at the beginning of the challenge, they all have to be reviewed! Continue reading
The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge Halfway Check-In
Yes, folks, it’s June already. And you know what that means! The Mad Reviewer Reading and Reviewing Challenge is already halfway done, which means that your book count should be about halfway by now.
I’m personally ahead of the game at around 64 books read and reviewed at this time so like last year I’m going to be a little more picky about which books I choose to count for the challenge. That way I can up my pages read count and sound more impressive.
So, if you’re participating in the challenge how far are you along? Do you think you’ll reach your goal? Do you need to upgrade your goal? Let me know in the comments section! If you have any questions about the challenge I’ll respond to them tonight after work.
Thank You to the Following Authors and Publishers
For my reading challenge prizes I initiated an open call for author donations. They could be ebook or paperback, one book or multiple books, traditionally published or self-published. I just needed donations so I could have a prize pack for the year end draw for The Mad Reviewer Reading & Reviewing Challenge of 2013. I was shocked by the end of the call because I then had 76 prize packs to hand out. So a lot of thanks are in order.
Here are the awesome authors that have generously provided my readers with prizes. Special thanks are in order for the ten very awesome people who donated either large prize packs or paperbacks (or both). All names are linked to the sites where you can check out the books of these great authors and where more than one book was donated I’ve indicated in the bold brackets and listed the books below the author’s name.
(Below all of the names listed is another special little surprise for the authors that donated their books to my challenge.)
Diantha Jones/A. Star (6 ebooks)
- Book One: Prophecy of the Most Beautiful
- Book Two: Prophecy of the Setting Sunrise
- Book Three: Prophecy of Solstice’s End
- Novella 2.5: Solar, Defeated
- Novella 3.5: Hero, Cursed (not yet released but will be added upon release)
- Invasion by A. Star
Jemima Pett (3 paperbacks)
- The Princelings of the East
- The Princelings and the Pirates
- The Princelings and the Lost City
J. F. Ridgley (2 paperbacks)
- Vows of Revenge
- Threatened Loyalties
S.H. Roddey (one paperback)
- Lost in the Shadows
Riley Graham (one paperback)
- Accidents & Incidents
E-Lit Books (3 ebooks)
- A Touch of Darkness by Tina Moss and Yelena Casale
- The Art of Being Rebekkah by Karoline Barrett
- The Seduction of Miriam Cross by W. A. Tyson
Zachary Bonelli (2 ebooks)
- The Winter by A. Ka
- Voyage Embarkation by Zachary Bonelli
Alana Woods (2 ebooks)
- Imbroglio
- Automaton
Paula Hrbacek (2 ebooks)
- On Higher Ground
- Stars Shine After Dark
Jami Gray (2 ebooks)
- Shadow’s Edge
- Shadow’s Soul Continue reading