2014 BigAl's Books and Pals Readers' Choice Awards

In the twelve months ending February 28th, 2014, BigAl and the Pals will have received over 1,400 books to consider for review and published 368 book reviews. From those, we chose the books we felt stood out from the pack as exceptional examples of Indie (self-published and small press) writing and divided them into thirteen categories.

For the next 10 days you'll have the chance to vote on your favorite books to pick a winner in each of thirteen categories. We're also having a giveaway with the following prizes:

• Grand Prize: $50 Amazon Gift Card (Your choice of Amazon.com or Amazon UK)
• First Prize: Your choice of any six of the nominated books gifted to you in Kindle format.
• Second Prize: The latest book from three of our Pals. Pete Barber's Allah's Revenge, Keith Nixon's The Fix, and Michael Thal's Koolura and the Mystery at Camp Saddleback, gifted to you in Kindle format.

For each category you vote in you'll receive one entry in the giveaway raffle. You'll also note there are many other ways to enter the giveaway including signing up for our newsletter which can be done using the form on the right hand side partway down the page. This new newsletter will be a weekly email that will consist of a list (with links) of the reviews and posts (excluding free book listings) we've had along with author and reviewer interviews at The IndieView from the prior week, plus occasional special announcements. It's ideal for those who want to keep track of what we're doing, but find a daily email or visit to be too much.

Since many of these books may be unfamiliar, you can find our review of any of them using the index by author or index by title pages (links on the top right of any page on the site). For the next several days our posts will be focused on these awards, with multiple posts each day spotlighting the nominees in the various categories with an occasional new review thrown in.


Might we suggest that if you aren't familiar with the books in categories you enjoy, now would be a great time to sample them using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature,  and please encourage all your book loving friends to drop by and participate.

Award winners will be announced on a special post 3/15/2014.

BigAl's Books and Pals was recently selected as the Best Review Site

By Indies Unlimited

If you aren't familiar with the Rafflecopter application/form, here are a few quick hints. 

First, If you see a sign-in page below, you'll have to either sign-on using your Facebook login or by giving a name and email address by clicking the appropriate button. No, we won't use your email address or any information gathered to start spamming you. The Rafflecopter application picks winners for the giveaway randomly and provides us with the email address for the winners. Otherwise we'd have no way to reach the winners to award the prizes. It also helps to limit a person voting more than once. (If it is discovered someone voted multiple times their votes and giveaway entries will will be invalidated.)

Second, you'll see thirteen boxes with down arrows and the verbiage "Your vote in the ________ category". Click the down arrow, make your choice, then click enter.


Third, as I mentioned above, there are other ways you can get additional entries to the giveaway, which are each of the boxes with down arrows below the voting boxes. Click the down arrow on each of these and it instructs you on what to do for each.


a Rafflecopter giveaway