Subscriber Book Giveaway

I'm mailing seven signed copies of "Blood Feud", so get in the lottery drawing

First off, I wish I could send each and every one of you a signed copy of my books. Those who want one, that is. But I have some extras of my 2006 book “Blood Feud: Detroit Red Wings v. Colorado Avalanche - The Inside Story of Pro Sports’ Nastiest and Best Rivalry of its Era” and I thought I’d do something I sometimes do: give them away for free, to those who have supported me.

I can give away seven of them right now. Unfortunately, that won’t come remotely close to equaling the number of paid subscribers here already (humblebrag). I try to give back as much as I can, because I truly am grateful for the support I’ve gotten, through thick and thin.

I always give lifetime, free subscriptions to all active and former military, first responders and medical personnel. Just email me: adater@comcast.net, and I’ll add you to the free list, no questions asked. I know many of you got free ones at my former site. I want you all to come over to my new one, so hit me up.

Here’s the deal on this book giveaway: It’ll be on the honor system. I ask that only those who have paid to subscribe enter. This is for them/you. I also have to add this unfortunate restriction on the random lottery: it’s only open to those with a U.S. mailing address.

The postal services have just gotten too outrageous in price to mail stuff outside the U.S. It costs as much as $67 just to mail a damn book to Canada now. You also have to spend about 15 minutes of time filling out paperwork to do so. I know a lot of subscribers hail from Canada, so it sucks to limit things here. But it’s just not economical anymore.

Here’s how I’ve done this stuff before and how I’ll do it again: If you’re a paid subscriber, just chime in on the comments here and say “I’m in.”

I will tally up the number of “I’m ins” and you’ll each get a number based on the order of entry. So, the first commenter of “I’m in” is No. 1, and so on. I will then plug in the total number of entries into my handy “lottery ping pong ball” app and tell it to spit out seven random numbers.

Those seven numbers will then be cross-checked to the corresponding number in the pecking order. I will then notify the winners via email, and we will make shipping arrangements from there. All postage will be paid by me. All the books will be signed any way you want.

If you already have one? I won’t stop you from entering. Maybe it’ll make a nice gift for a friend or loved one. The book has sold close to 20,000 copies by now (humblebrag), so I’ve signed a lot of them and am always happy to sign more.

I’ll let this ride for two or three days, then do the drawing. If you haven’t already subscribed to this here site, here’s how:

Am I doing this as some kind of gimmick to build more subscriptions? I mean, you’re always trying to sell your product in this world. I learned many tricks of the sales trade when I was an honest-to-god timeshare salesman as a young man in summers on Cape Cod in the 1980s. I would approach people cold, on the street, with a sales pitch and I made a relative fortune for a college kid from my commissions. At one time, hidden in an envelope deep inside a dorm room drawer, I had more than $10,000 in cash from my earnings. While my Keene State College classmates were eating PB&J sandwiches from the mess hall, I would just peel off a couple of 20s from the stack in the envelope and have lobster and champagne out on the town with a lady friend or two. (Yes, that’s me sighing over the “good old days”).

But, I think my heart is in the right place here, and it’s not much about selling other product. It’s just some kind of little way, maybe, that I can say thanks to some of you. I will do other things like this at times, like treasure hunts (something I’ve done since my Denver Post days, where I take some Avs memorabilia and hide it somewhere random in the Denver area and leave clues to where it can be found, and then it’s finders keepers) and anything else I can think of.

So, thanks, and if you want in on this contest, just say “I’m in” and we’ll go from there.