The Widget Contest

Hey everyone,

I’ve got an important notice today and I hope it doesn’t cause too much grief and/or controversy.

As many of you will remember, for the last several book releases we’ve held a “widget contest” wherein readers have designed “countdown widgets” that have cool graphics and literally count down the days/hours/minutes until the new book goes on sale.

This, like all of our contests, has always been a lot of fun, but this one has also come with its own brand of drama.  Not because of anything you guys did!  It’s just that this contest requires using HTML and/or some more technical things and it just always results in extra work.

For example, in preparing for this year’s contest I tried and tried and tried to find examples of past winners, but the HTML code for all the old widgets no longer works so it’s impossible to show you an example of one that won before.

There is also behind-the-scenes drama related to getting the widgets to show up here correctly or featuring the code in a way that you guys could utilize it on your blogs and sites.

Not to mention the fact that the blog would get the comment “what is a widget” or “how do you make a widget” so frequently that I’m pretty sure this was something that was just pretty confusing.

So… after A LOT of thought and grief I’ve decided to hire a widget made this year and instead do some other kind of contest–ideally one that is a little easier to explain and facilitate.

I’m very sorry for those of you who look forward to the widget contest every year.  Who knows?  It may come back again in the future, but for Uncommon Criminals, at least, I can say that we will not be doing it.

What WILL we be doing?

Well, that largely depends on all of you!

I’m opening up the comments section for suggesions of REPLACEMENT CONTESTS!  What contest would YOU like to see?  Now’s the time to let us know!

 

Thanks again and happy reading!

Ally

 

ps:  The official widget should be ready within a week or two.  As soon as it is, I’ll, of course, post it and make sure you guys can share it on your sites if you’d like.