Happy 1st Birthday #COYER!!! #giveaway

You probably had no idea, but COYER – Clean Out Your E-Reader – is a year old today! Sure the first event wasn’t until November of last year, but the planning for it started 1 year ago today. I can’t even believe it! Make sure you enter the giveaway we can’t let a birthday pass by without giving away some prizes 🙂

Happy 1st Birthday COYER!

Can you believe one year ago today COYER was born? Do you know it all started from a single email? Did you know that we never spoke before that email and I am pretty sure I meet one of my favorite people that day? Not only was COYER born but a really good friendship. After a year we can still talk on the phone for a good 3 hours and not run out of stuff to talk about. (we actually have to set time aside to chat because we can talk for a VERY long time) I love that we can talk about personal and bookish stuff…See she’s my favorite person 🙂

Ok so lets get to the email…

BTW~If you want to see what Berls said about our emails head on over to her blog HERE…It’s hilarious 🙂

How it all started

It was Tue, Aug 20, 2013, I just put the kids to bed and finally was able to sit down and look over my email. I usually search for junk mail first when I noticed a subject line “Would you be interested in co-hosting a reading challenge with me?” The first thing yI thought was that’s totally spam but something made me click on it. The first sentence of the letter I realized it was from a blogger who wanted me to co-host a challenge with her…ME…the girl who NEVER did a challenge before…EVER…I didn’t even know how they worked and I was going to co-host one but this person was asking me to co-host with her. I read the first paragraph are thought OMG someone actually likes my blog (I was stuck on that for a few minutes lol) this is my ONE follower and she wants to do a challenge with me. …..This is the email from Berls

Her Email

Hi Michelle,

How are you? It’s Berls over at Fantasy is More Fun. I wanted to see if you’d be at all interested in co-hosting a reading challenge I’ve been working on putting together. I enjoy your blog and I think you read a slightly different variety of genres than I do (with some cross over), so I thought we might be a good fit. Not to mention that our blog names are embracing a similar idea 🙂

Anyway if you’re at all interested, here’s what I’ve put together (open to changes of course):

• the name of the challenge, as I’ve conceived it: Clean out your E-Readers. The idea is to get people reading those free ebooks we download and then forget about. I know I’ve found some of my favorite books/authors that way. Plus, I think authors sell their books for free because they’re hoping people will like them and actually buy others written by them. And as bloggers, we’re in a unique position to help them realize that through our reviews and other promotional activities.

• I was thinking this could be a challenge that runs, at least at the start, from September – December. If it’s really successful maybe we could consider making it a yearly thing.

• as far as participation, I was thinking everyone could put up sign-up posts and link back to them on our challenge pages (although non-bloggers could also participate, just by tracking progress on goodreads/shelfari, and commenting). At the start of the month they can put up posts with their goal of how many free ebooks they want to read for the month. The post, if they link it back to our monthly post, can put them into a drawing for a monthly giveaway. Everytime they post a review of a free ebook and link it back (or non-bloggers, by posting reviews on goodreads/shelfari), they also win an entry. Finally at the end of the month they post how they did and link it back, earning a final entry. I haven’t decided on the giveaway yet – but I was thinking something like the purchase of another eBook from their favorite free eBook author from the month. or just an amazon gift card of like $10. I was also thinking we could maintain a twitter party with some sort of hashtag – maybe #COYER?

• I also was considering levels/titles for how many Free Ebooks a person reads by end of December, something playing on the cleaning theme… like:
  1 to 5 reads – Light Cleaning
  5 to 10 reads – Spring Cleaning
  10+ reads – Deep Cleaning

Something else I was considering but haven’t thought out fully, was contacting authors who do free promotions and having them do guest posts about their books and advertising their current free books. In fact, I was thinking I would do regular posts about free books that are available in the genres I read.

I also already have a logo designed (my brother is a graphic design student), if you’d like to see it, I can send it over.

I know this was a long email, but I wanted to let you know everything I was thinking. Don’t worry if you’re not interested 🙂

Best ,
Berls @ Fantasy is More Fun

So I read the entire letter 3 times and I started to think maybe her day job was selling stuff door to door because she’s laying it on thick but was pretty good at it because I was totally sold… I loved the idea but could I host something with someone I never meet? She could be a lunatic…but I just had to say yes…I didn’t want to pass this up it could be fun and a great way to meet people but I was really nervous sending her the email back.

 

I left the email as is so you can read it the way I wrote it. IT’S AWFUL…. I did it from my iPad and I pretty much was a nervous wreck because I honestly didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to sound stupid (even though I did). Reading this now I realize I don’t know why she asked me but now I realize its for my design skills not my writing 🙂 lol

My Email

I have never co-hosted before this sounds interesting. can it be free downloads and netgalley reads. I have so many to get to for netgalley.

I like the levels that give people that have review tours to do a chance to at least “clean” a couple
if they can’t do a lot.

As a matter of fact I have never done a challenge before either. I just want to make sure I can give enough of my time. What would I have to do? Would I have to post stuff often? besides the reviews I write.

I’m excited to hear more about it.

I am a graphic designer so I can make up some stuff as well. I have been one for 17 years 🙂 WOW thats a long time, Never thought about it LOL

I will read through the email a couple more times just to make sure I have no other questions

I just want to make sure I have the time to be able to do what Is required of me as a host before I say yes. I would love to do it with you but I want to be able to give it my FULL attention

Talk to you soon
Michelle

We exchanged a few emails back and forth but this my friends is the birth of COYER. I am so glad I wrote her back and said yes. She did turn out to be a lunatic but in a very creative and extremely fun way. Besides putting the pieces of COYER together we became really good friends. I can honestly say she is one of my Best Friends and I adore her. I am hoping to one day finally meet but for now we will continue to text and chat for 3 hours and be the best hosts we can for all of you.

Oh wait, a Giveaway! (yay!!)

So we thought, what better way to celebrate COYER than with a little giveaway? We’re doing (2) $5 gift cards to Amazon or B&N and this giveaway will stay open for a week. See the Rafflecopter for all the terms and conditions.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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A big THANK YOU to all of you

This challenge wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for all of you!

We can’t thank you enough for joining us and for loving COYER as much as we do.

We plan to do this as long as we can and hope you will continue to join us!

Have an Amazing Day and Happy Reading!!!

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