Announcing "Gift Card Sundays"

For over a year now we have held a monthly contest where followers of this blog and its social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook) have had a chance to win gift cards to several Portland area bookstores.  During that time we have given out over $1,200 worth of gift cards to the winners of those contests, and it has been a fun way to reward those who participate and interact with the blog and it’s social media siblings. Going forward though, we will be trying a new approach to giving these gift cards out in a way that we hope will open up the possibility to a wider audience, make the fact that these gift cards are available more pronounced, and make it easier to understand how they can be won.

So today we are announcing “Gift Card Sundays!” Starting this Sunday a random winner of one* of the gift cards will be chosen from among our Facebook Fans, our @readportland followers, or one of the subscribers to our daily emails.  The winner then has 48 hours to comment on the announcement post to claim their prize.  If the prize is not claimed, or is claimed to late, it will roll over to the winner of the following Gift Card Sunday, and so on and so on until properly claimed.

So to have a chance to win all you have to do is: be a Reading Local Facebook fan, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our daily email (you can do so via the little box to the right of this post), make sure and check in every Sunday to see if your name was drawn, and comment on the post if it was. That is it. Pretty simple.  Please feel free to comment below with any questions you have about the change.

I would like to send out a big thank you to the local bookstores who make Gift Card Sunday possible: Broadway Books, The Title Wave Used Bookstore, Annie Bloom’s Books, A Children’s Place Bookstore, and Second Glance Books!  Please remember to support these wonderful neighborhood indie bookstores by shopping at one of them whenever you are looking for your next book.

Remember to check in this Sunday when the first winner will be announced!  Good luck!

*Since we have five gift cards to give away each month, one “Gift Card Sunday” will feature two gift cards during months that only have four Sunday’s.

Image credit Party Wirks.