Winner! (And brightly colored stats.)

First, let me say that I am stunned by the response to the If I Die ARC giveaway. There were 822 individual entries (I tried my best to catch and delete duplicate entries as they came in, and I believe I got them all.) and I really wish I had more than one ARC to give away. And truthfully, I do, but I’m going to give it away closer to the release date, I think. And later on, when my author copies come in, I’ll be giving away at least one full set of Soul Screamers novels.

But for now, the winner! And some stats in graph form, for those who like transparency and data. Or pretty colored graphs. You can click any of the images to see larger versions.

The winning number, as chosen by a random number generator:

The winning entry, as shown in the Google Docs form:

Crystal, please check your inbox for an email from me.

And, the stats. This first chart shows which books in the series have already been read by those who entered the giveaway. The categories are truncated on the left, but the full details are on the right. (Only a handful of entries did not provide this information.) The vast majority of those who entered have already read everything available in the series, which is great. And it doesn’t really surprise me, because as several of you pointed out, most people won’t enter a contest for the fifth book in a series if they haven’t read any of the others.

This second (blue) chart (pie charts, FTW!) shows the age ranges of those who entered the contest. Most of those who entered are between 20 and 35 years of age, and I love my adult readers, but I am very pleased to see that nearly a quarter of the entries came from teens. The actual target audience. Especially considering that in my experience, fewer teens enter online contests for a variety of reasons including restricted time online, parental permission, and the generally smaller percentage of teens who follow authors online.

This last (red) chart shows where those who entered said they originally discovered me/my work. (Only a handful of entries did not provide this information.) As you can see, the number of people who found my books in a traditional book store rallied dramatically after the first day of data. Not sure why that is, but I’m very pleased by it. And this chart fascinates me most of all, I think.

To be fair, many of those who checked the “other” box actually found me through one of the listed means, but evidently wanted to elaborate. Which is kind of awesome. There were tons of “I found you through the Shifters series” comments and a bunch of “I found you through [specific friend/family member/blogger name]. There were also several who found me on Goodreads, on sale at Audible, at a conference, at a signing, and one who found me through an ad in People Magazine! (I suspect many more found me through print ads, but those aren’t necessarily the ones hanging out online and entering internet contests.)

Thanks so much to everyone who entered, and check back next week if you’re interested in an ARC of Blood Bound, the first in my new adult series!