I’m not sure if this is the right forum, but it involves my book and my fiction website, so I’m taking a stab that CS is the proper home. There’s no money or purchases involved, so it’s not an ad or anything like that.
I recently had a book published – it’s a novelty item that runs about $50 including postage. (Not my pricing, by the way! I don’t value my work that dearly. :D) Anyway, I have the publisher’s permission to give away a copy of this book to one of the readers of/visitors to my website, which is home to a free serialized work of fiction. Anyone on my mailing list would be able to enter by emailing me their entry.
Since I’d like to use this contest to promote / encourage reader participation and feedback, I was thinking of instituting some “point” system or other method so that anyone can send in an entry by email, but a reader can submit additional entries by doing stuff like posting on my message board, posting on the mailing list, writing a review on varioius fiction directories, and so on. Then I’d add up the entries and pick randomly. Obviously, people who have multiple entries will have a better shot of winning.
I’m not sure if this is a good idea, or even exactly how this would work. What do you guys think, is this too convoluted? I also need a way to pick random numbers; if anyone knows of a script or website that might be good for this purpose, please let me know!