Loving Literacy Blogfest: Win a Kindle

Remember how I told you September was going to be bigger than weekly book giveaways?

September 8 is International Literacy Day (and my Daddy's birthday, which is why I remember it). Books and literacy have done so much for me, that I felt like I needed to do something big to celebrate.

BUT FIRST THE KINDLE

Model: 3G + WiFi Kindle.

I was tempted to go the cheap route (because I need to be less of a spendthrift), but I didn't for two reasons.

1. The least expensive Kindle route includes ads on your Kindle. I don't want ads in my books. There are ads every-dang-where else.

2. This Kindle (and the DX- the one I have) provide free Wireless and 3G coverage worldwide* (check Amazon for caveats). And you know how important "internationality" is to me.

If it's not good enough for me, why should it be good enough for anybody else?

WHAT TO DO?

In honour of International Literacy Day I'm hosting the Loving Literacy Blogfest.

BLOGGERS, enter by adding your blog to the linky thing and posting 400-600 words on any topic to do with literacy.

NON-BLOGGERS, email me your 400-600 words on any topic to do with literacy, along with your desired "display name" and your state/city/country.

(Anything you tie back to literacy is ok as a topic: Why I love books more than movies, Why there should be more literacy programs in 3rd world countries, How popular books are a great way to convert "non-readers", How books are the least expensive avenue to different worlds, etc.)

WHO WINS?

I will select my five favourite posts and, YOU, the awesom-est of the awesome, will select our winner by a vote. :)

Voting is also open to everyone, but there'll be a scale in favour of pre-contest followers.

Voters can only vote for one of the five entries.

And if you enter, and you want to campaign your friends, that's totally kosher.

TIMELINE:

SEP 1-8: Enter your link on this post.

SEP 8: Post or email your Literacy Day entry

SEP 12-16: The entries go up, one a day on my blog.

SEP 19-23: Voting

SEP 26: KINDLE WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT

ELIGIBILITY:

This contest is open to everyone, everywhere Amazon will ship Kindles. (Pakistan crew, I'm sorry they don't ship there.) If you're in an exempt country, you're welcome to use a friend's address in another country, but you might want to make sure the shipping thing isn't your country's restriction as opposed to Amazon.



Looking forward to reading the posts. :)

How do I Kindle? Let me count the ways!

Don't forget to enter this week's giveaway.

Also 100 Books Every Writer Should Read now has a .jpg ------->>>>>>>
YAY! Clearly self-made. What? This is why I'm a writer, and not an illustrator.

I've promised myself to do a post on the awesome that is my Kindle. I love my Kindle to peeeecies! His name is RB (after a character in my first novel and the two awesome real-life people that character's based on) and I'm tempted to marry it. I mean, they let a guy here marry a video game character last year, they'd probably let me marry RB...

5. Travel

It's so easy to travel with RB. He's a Kindle DX, which is like B5 size, almost like your regular printer paper. It's heavier and bigger than most electronic readers. But it's still lighter and less bulky than 3 or 4 books, which is what I normally travel with.

4. Free books
If the copyright for a book is out, then it's available for anywhere between free and $2.00 from Amazon or Project Gutenberg. That's how I ended up reading The Secret Garden and What Katy Did. I also got A Christmas Carol and Wind in the Willows for free. And I've just added The Scarlet Letter.

3. Japan

As you know, I live in Japan. I don't read enough kanji for Japanese books to be anything but study material. The bookstores here have tiny English sections. And the nearest of the big chains is an hour away by train. It all adds up to my pretty much HAVING TO buy all my books online.

Even since I discovered the free-shipping site, Book Depository, I still face a couple of issues. Firstly, Book Depository doesn't always have the books I want. It's rare, but when it happens, I order from Amazon and have to pay almost twice as much when you factor in shipping. Secondly, I am not a permanent fixture in Japan. This program has a 5 year max. Eventually, I'm going to have to take all my crap home. Every time I buy something, I must keep in mind that I will either have to pay to ship it home or throw it out in the next year or two.

2. Emergency Internet

I've mentioned this before. After the earthquake, all the infrastructure was down in the 2 epicentre prefectures. I couldn't use the phone, there was no power. Heck, I only got my home internet back 2 weeks later. If it weren't for the Kindle, friends and family would probably have worried themselves into a few more gray hairs.

Even in smaller emergencies, RB comes through. When I was home for my secondary school reunion in December, I misplaced a poem I was supposed to perform, and I was able to pull it up on Kindle.

I will concede that Kindle internet is some of the slowest, molasses-running-uphill internet in the world, but it comes through in a pinch.

1. Revisions

I don't hear this mentioned a lot among writers, but it's a big perk for me. I can't seem to re-read my entire novel on the computer. Most of us don't read entire novels on backlit LCD screens. And printing 250 pages is giving a tree somewhere a heart attack.

These days I simply save my novel as a .doc file, and email it to RB. And I can re-read the whole thing just as easy as anything else.

The other intrinsic perk of this is that my novel is now sharing a space alongside books by Beth Revis, Stephanie Perkins, Kiersten White, and Louise Rennison. Kindle makes it feel like I've written an actual book.

So, it's still Monday (Finally, I'm finishing a Monday post on a Monday- except it's Tuesday in Japan, but whatever) and that's what's on my mind.

Do you use an e-reader? What do you like about it?

Also stop by Amazon and check out the Cloud Drive. 5 gigs of FREE online storage- sounds like a great way to back up completed MSs.