Winners of the 2011 Book Blast Contest
Monday April 11th 2011Northwest Riders Book Blast 2011
Back in March of 2009 we were inspired by the cover of a book we saw. We decided then to create a contest based around the idea of awesome book covers and titles. We started collecting these books and now have an ongoing library of randomness at our Northwest Riders office.
We re-launched this contest for 2011 with the top 3 contestants able to take home Northwest Riders gear and other prizes.
The simple goal of each contestant was to pick out a book cover that was funny. Let's recap the contest a bit.
...there were multiple rounds:
THE CONTEST:
Search the web, your Grandma's attic, the library, or wherever you think book cover greatness exists. Find something funny. If you know our humor then you have a good starting point. The funnier the better. The weirder the better.
ROUND 1
Pick the book and paste the cover to our Northwest Riders Facebook Page.
ROUND 2
We collected all of the images and posted them in a Book Blast Gallery on our page and tagged the contestant. It was then up to each contestant to get their friends to visit their submission and "LIKE" the image. The top three books with the most "LIKES" reached the finals.
ROUND 3
Greg and I (Zack) here at Northwest Riders judge the final three and declare the overall winner.
...something for each contestant to consider:
THE TWIST:
The kicker here is that we were looking to add to our collection. So books submitted that we could purchase (for cheap) or the contestants sent us got bonus points in the final judging. Also...the books needed to cater to our brand of humor.
...some general rules to follow:
THE RULES WERE:
- No profane or inappropriate submissions
- If we receive duplicate entries, we will accept the first submitted
- If we receive a book we already own the entry does NOT count
- Submit AS MANY entries as you want until the contest ends. If you have multiple entries that sit atop the standings at the end of Round 2, we will choose our favorite one to move to the finals.
- The contest will run until March 22nd for the 1st round. The 2nd round will run until March 30th and then we will declare the winners the first week of April.We retain the right to extend the dates if the competition makes it worthwhile.
- When the contest ends we will contact the winners on Facebook
THE PRIZES:
- 1st Place: Hat + Basic T-Shirt + Stickers
- 2nd Place: Choice of Hat or Basic T-Shirt + Stickers
- 3rd Place: NWR Sticker Pack
So...
The Final three came down to Travis Parker for "Extreme Ironing," AJ Rehn for "Scouts in Bondage," and Carter Wilson for "All that the Rain Promises and More."
3rd Place -
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Contestant: AJ Rehn Total Round 2 "LIKES" = 45 Judges Comments: This book had the most Round 2 "LIKES" on Facebook. What that means, is AJ did a great job of getting his friends to vote. It may or may not also mean that a lot of people found this book cover to be funny as well. However, it ultimately comes down to us here at Northwest Riders Clothing Co...and this book just didn't have the "random" factor that the other two books had. A dude on a massive rock ironing his clothes, a guy in the woods wearing a tuxedo with mushrooms in one hand and a trumpet in the other...we just felt like this wasn't even on the same playing field. This is where us having the final say can definitely be to the contestants disadvantage. Sorry AJ, hope you don't take it personally. Final verdict - This book had the "shock" humor angle, which is not our brand of laughs...but kudos to AJ for lobbying his friends to vote. He still gets some goods. Prize - NWR Sticker Pack |
2nd Place -
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Contestant: Travis Parker Total Round 2 "LIKES" = 35 Judges Comments: Travis had multiple submissions that received a lot of Facebook "LIKES." Similar to AJ, he did a good job getting his friends to vote. This was almost our winning pick. The cover itself is pretty awesome. A random dude on top of a huge rock ironing his duds...good stuff. The even better part was that upon further investigation this has its own website along with a fairly large following of people actually out in the world participating in extreme ironing. Stupid? Yeah, sure. But that is right up our alley in the humor department. Final verdict - Great cover. Great back story. We had a fair amount of laughs. Prize - Choice of Hat or Basic T-Shirt + Stickers |
1st Place -
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Contestant: Carter Wilson Total Round 2 "LIKES" = 29 Judges Comments: Carter's Book Blast submission had us laughing instantly. The cover is our humor "to a T" as they say. Weird looking dude, odd clothing, random trumpet, and large mushroom. All there. That is a recipe for a Book Blast 2011 winner! The original Book Blast winner was a book on stray shopping carts. It won because it was witty, random, had a great cover, and the actual book itself proved to be hysterical. This book has that same golden makeup. Final verdict - Laughing every time we look at it. Prize - Hat + Basic T-Shirt + Stickers |
