Contest time! I'm sitting over here, reading, so here's Ruthie Knox to tell you about the contest we're hosting this week!
The Contest!
Pimp My Read is your chance to win one of four fantastic e-readers, as well as best-selling, super-sexy, fun contemporary romances by authors Ruthie Knox, Sarah Mayberry, Shannon Stacey, and Molly O’Keefe. This week, we four authors bedeck ourselves in (virtual) feathers and gold chains, climb on top of our Pimp Caddies, and sing the praises of e-readers and digital books at four fantastic romance review sites: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Smexybooks, Dear Author, and The Season for Romance. At every site, one of us is giving away an e-reader, as well as prizes for runners-up. If you’ve been on the fence about which e-reader to get, or even why you would get one—or if you love your e-reader to bits and are dying to convert a friend or family member to the digital side—this is the contest you’ve been waiting for!
The Prizes!
Sarah Mayberry is giving away a Kindle Touch 3G at Smexybooks,
Shannon Stacey is giving away a Nook SimpleTouch with Glowlight at Dear Author,
Ruthie Knox is giving away a Kindle Keyboard 3G at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books,
and Molly O’Keefe is giving away a Kobo Touch at The Season for Romance.
The winner of each e-reader and two runners-up at each site will also receive Exclusively Yours, Undeniably Yours, and Yours to Keep by Shannon Stacey, Her Best Worst Mistake and Within Reach by Sarah Mayberry, About Last Night and Ride With Me by Ruthie Knox, and Can’t Buy Me Love by Molly O’Keefe.
Make It So: Ruthie’s Conversion Story
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that everybody on the Enterprise has a Kindle Fire. Or possibly an iPad. Same size, same shape, same ability to pull up amazing amounts of information with the tap of a finger. Whenever Captain Picard needed to find out the specs on a mission or read about some obscure eighteenth-century French composer and Data wasn’t around, he always had his Unnamed Awesome Device (UAD) at hand to poke and frown at.
The Next Generation debuted in 1987, so that means that I wanted a UAD of my own for … *squinches forehead, crunches numbers* … twenty-one years before I got one. But once I got one, I gave up print books altogether.
Precipitous? Perhaps. But I had my reasons. First, I hate having things. I prefer to have the bare minimum number of things. Like, in the ideal world, I would be a bachelor with cinderblock bookshelves and two cans of soup in the pantry. But I read so much. And as you probably all know, when you read a lot, there’s this constant stream of books into the house. Sure, some of them are library books, but even library junkies end up with dozens of new books every year that have to be coped with. I don’t want to shelve them or keep them or pass them along to friends or send them to the paperback exchange. I want them to disappear!
Now that I have an e-reader, they do. I read the last line, I smile, I delete. Off to the archive the book goes, and I never have to think about it again unless I want to. I love living in the future!
The other extenuating factor is that books are heavy, cumbersome things. I think I strained my wrists holding the Twilight books above my head as I read them on the couch. Worse, sometimes I want to read and do other stuff at the same time, and that’s even harder. I figured out how to walk and read as a kid, no problem. Later, when I became an obsessive knitter, I learned to knit and read. I read the last Harry Potter book spread open on my lap, pages held by a book weight so I’d have my hands free to knit. But sometimes the book slid off and hit the floor, which was a bummer.
Then I had a baby, and the whole system went to hell. You know, it’s really hard to read and breast-feed at the same time. Sure, yes, yes, at first I thought I’d just want to stare at my baby and appreciate the miracle of life while I breast-fed him and bonded at some deep, cosmic level, but in fact that phase only lasted about two days. Babies eat slow, y’all. I needed a book. And it’s very hard to hold a book with one hand while you hold a baby with the other. You have to do that thing where you spread the book open with your thumb and your pinky, and my pinkies soon wearied of their new job.
Then one day in the hazy winter of 2008, my husband—who’s a bit of a computer nerd—walked into the living room and said, “Come in my office. You have to see this.”
“This” was the movie-ad-thing for the Kindle 2. Small! White! Attractive! Lightweight! Four bazillion dollars! “Order it,” I said. “Order it right now.” And God bless him, he did.
Some things about living in the future are not as exciting as I had hoped they would be. Transportation, for instance, seems much less cool than it did seventy-five years ago. (Have you ever seen the trains of the 1950s? They were awesome!) Cooking is still a lot of work. Strange men still show up at my door trying to sell me magazines, and I don’t know how to make them stop. But I can now buy a book in my living room, read it immediately, and discard it—all without actually having to move my butt off my couch or strain my delicate girl-wrists. Guys, this is EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED.
Or almost everything. I think the e-reader designers of the future should make readers that beep when you lose them, because I’m always leaving mine somewhere random, like on top of the refrigerator or beside the bathroom sink, and then not being able to find it later. I bet Picard’s UAD had a beeper.
But enough about me—let’s talk about you! Were you an early convert to the e-reader or a reluctant late adopter? Or are you still holding out, waiting for somebody to talk you into this madness? Do you love your e-reader with a devotion bordering on the manic and wish you could talk your mom/grandma/best friend/husband into getting one? I’m giving away a Kindle Keyboard 3G (my device of choice) to the commenter who convinces me she (or he) has the best reason for wanting it for themselves or someone else, so let’s hear your stories. Two runners-up will get books, books, books!
The Fine Print (From Ruthie)
1. Feel free to increase your chances of winning by entering once at each of the four sites! But please, only one entry per site. Deliberate multiple comments on any individual e-reader giveaway post will get you disqualified.
2. The contest opens on each site when the post goes live and closes at 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, July 20.
3. Ruthie, Sarah (Mayberry), Shannon, and Molly will choose the winners from among the comments on the site where each posts. Feel free to entertain us or tug at our heartstrings — we’ll pick the winners whose comments most effectively sway us!
4. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
5. This contest is open internationally. The e-readers on offer will work in many, but not all, countries. Please be aware that geographical restrictions may affect your ability to use/enjoy your prize.
The Disclaimers (from SB Sarah)
1. I'm not being compensated for this giveaway. I mean, I got to look at Jean Luc Picard, which is never a bad thing, but otherwise, no compensation.
2. Void where prohibited.
3. Must be over 18, as stated above, plus wearing a riding habit, preferably with a jaunty feather.
4. Call before you dig. Call after you downward dog. Adding a comma makes that sentence even more fun!
How To Enter
To enter, leave a comment explaining either (a) why you want to win this e-reader for yourself or (b) why you want to win it for someone else. (Please include your e-mail address in the appropriate comment field so we have a way of contacting you if you win. Your e-mail address will not be visible to the general commenting public.)
So, let's hear it – you want it for yourself, or as a gift? Bring on the entries!
