My slobbering love affair with Rafflecopter and a giveaway!

Yes, I have recently changed my Facebook status to 'in a relationship' with the giveaway gurus at Rafflecopter. How did I survive before I knew you? You wonderful website that is so easy to use a circus dog wearing a tutu could do it and you create lovely Facebook apps that make my giveaway FB policy legit. *swoon*

A few months ago Facebook put the hammer down on people doing giveaways on facebook via their posts. I, the queen of giving stuff away online, got-well not quite busted but at least a stern warning and explination of their policies. It was suggested that I convert over to a fan page (which was a miserable experience that cost me 400 friends/likes in the transfer) and run my giveaways via an app.

Now, I'm pretty much a lame duck in the whole app creation area. Seriously. So I was like, "Wha?" and "Wha?" and scratching my head. Then, I saw a fellow author using this thing called Rafflecopter to host her giveaway. I assumed, like many of the services I looked into, that it would be pricey. And I'm cheap. And never the twain shall meet.

But it's free.

Before I start sounding like a spam-bot who has hijacked the blog to promote shamelessly an online company, I just want to say this.

It's hard being an author. Marketing and promotion is tough and time consuming and even sometimes expensive (I'm looking at you, Facebook Promotions) but it's also 100% nessessary. If you want a book to do well, then this is part of the game. And when I find something that makes that easier, well, I tend to shout it from the rooftops. I have lots of new and aspiring writers that follow me here so finding these little nuggets of awesome is, well, awesome!

So, if you'd like to see how it works, my new book series The Lost Imperials recently hit 100 likes on Facebook and we are giving away some goodies. You can enter to win here and there is also a little tab on the bottom of the form where you can click and it will take you to the wonderous place that is Rafflecopter. Be sure to say thank you to them because now that they have made giving stuff away so easy, I'm sure I'm going to be doing it a lot more! Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway