Tips and Tricks - How to make sure you're eligible for the Grand Prize

HELLO, EVERYONE!

Over the next couple weeks, Amanda and I (I being Kelly, in case you didn't know) will be working on posting a few tips and tricks to help make your next Bout of Books absolutely fabulous.

Sounds great, Kelly, you say to yourself, but what does that MEAN?

Well, my darling Bout of Books-ers, it means we're going to touch on a few issues we've seen arise over the course of this read-a-thon. Unfortunately, a few of the issues have led to people being disqualified from winning the grand prize (among other things).

Frankly, that sucks.

So we're here to get the word out.

Are you ready?

The first subject we're going to touch on for our Tips and Tricks feature is what "Actively Participating" means and how you can make sure you're doing what you need to do.

What do we consider an active participant?

Simply put, you have to be properly signed up (aka, have a direct link in our sign-up linky) AND have at least two updates directly linked in our daily link-ups.

That's it.

THAT'S IT.

Sign up and participate on at least two different days. NOT HARD, RIGHT? Yet, invariably, we run into issues with this almost every read-a-thon.

Okay, that's great, but I missed a day on updates!

GUYS, that's fine! We're a seven day read-a-thon. You only have to update two of the seven days to be considered an active participant. TWO. Out of SEVEN.

YOU GOT THIS!

But I'm not interested in doing the challenges, why update?

The daily challenges are completely separate from the updates themselves. You can choose to include your challenge response in your update, but it's not required.

Heck, between hosting Bout of Books and reading, I don't always have the chance to get the challenges done either. But I do update every day. For me, it's a way to track what I accomplished (or didn't accomplish) and plan out what I'm going to do the next day.

Updates don't even have to be all that complex. A simple tweet saying "Today I read XX" or "Today I did XX" is enough. Grab the direct link, toss it in the daily linky and you're GOLDEN!

Remember what I said before? YOU GOT THIS!

Are updates required to participate in Bout of Books? 

No. Absolutely not. If you prefer to read, chat, and read some more without the hassle of updating, that's fine. But we have to put down some guidelines to we can administer the giveaway fairly. So there's that little "actively participating" rule.

And, in case you're wondering, yes, we do run into people who sign up and never do anything beyond that. Again, THAT'S FINE if that's the way you choose to do your Bout of Books thing. We want you to be comfortable doing it your way.

But if you want to be eligible for the Bout of Books Grand Prize, you need to sign up properly and update at least twice.

One last time... YOU GOT THIS!