Yeah, that's right. It's time for another book giveaway.

This time I'm making it simple. I'm giving away a copy of Beginning Game Programming: A Gamedev.net Collection (the orange book) AND Business and Production: A Gamedev.net Collection (the blue book). There'll be two winners, one blue and one orange.

This contest is inspired by my lack of heartening that our books have been burning up the sales charts for a month now, and they've thus-far garnered exactly ZERO Amazon reviews. I've gotten some very positive emailed reviews from the book's chapter-contributors, both on the quality of their own material as well as the selection and editing of material that Drew and I did for the rest of the book.

But without reviews, you don't get eyeballs.

And the upshot of that is that the books aren't achieving the great heights of "Joe The Plumber's" ghostwritten masterpiece I Have Nothing To Say, So Please Point Cameras At Me. And I know the gamedev books deserve a better fate than that, so I'm handing out two copies to people willing to abide by the following two rules. . .

1. Please have a US address. I know this upsets you non-US readers, but it costs $2 to send a book in the US. Outside the US, it generally costs the price of the book itself, I have to fill out a customs form at the post office, and it can take weeks to arrive.

2. You agree to read and review the book on Amazon. I'm not requiring you to give it five stars because that would be unethical. Just remember who your buddy is :)

If you fit the following two prerequisites, just post a haiku in the comments (on gamedev or blogspot). The haiku should contain the word "blue" or "orange" so I know which book you're trying to win. If I like your haiku best, I'll send the book to you.

If you don't remember haiku, it's a three line poem consisting of five, seven, and five syllables, like the following. . .

I like to write games,
while juggling oranges.
Send me a danged book.


Something like this would be an attempt to get the orange book, as it has the word "orange" in the haiku. Get it?

So if you're in the US, you wanna review a book for Amazon, and you know what a "syllable" is, post a haiku in the comments. One entry per person please.

And keep an eye on the comments. I suspect more people will be voting orange than blue, so blue entries will have a better chance. Hint hint.



I'll pick a winner on Friday sometime after Drew's gamedev blog roundup. So now get writing!


(disclaimer: This contest isn't sponsored by the publisher but by me personally. That should be obvious, but you never know.)

while IAmWaiting():
    for blueBook in myMailBox:
        print "Yippee!!"; exit()