March BCOTM Finals!

The semifinals are over, and that means we’ve narrowed down our vote to the final 2!  We ended with 94 votes. This pushed us to 2,618 for the month. As always, I’m grateful to everyone who came out to support these covers, their designers, and the authors who wrote these books.

Let’s talk about it:

The Closest Contest:

 

I can honestly say they were both close depending on how you look at it.  The Door Keeper by Steen Jones beat The Burning World by Isaac Marion won by 10 votes (63 percent of the total). To Brave the End by Frank Dorrian only beat Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan by 60 percent (11 votes).

Most Voted On Contest:
Dorian’s match was the more voted on of the two with 55 total votes (more on that below).

Most Votes:
Dorrian’s book cover has taken every round since the Sweet 16. He’s rolling along, but I think Jones will give him a run for his money. I’m looking forward to seeing who wins.

As always, the top runner up for the round gets the chance to try again, and, for the first time, that lucky cover is once more Age of Myth. I’ve never had a book cover appear on more than two BCOTM brackets before. But Age just keeps hanging around. Age had 22 votes to Burning Wolrd’s 14, so is why Age gets the chance to try again.

A note on the tournament itself. I’ve spoken to a few authors, and it’s pretty demanding having a round-by-round that goes on for some three weeks. I’m going to try a few things in the next few months (the next few brackets) that I hope increases participation and limits how much these authors have to work to rally the troops.  I don’t want this to be work or annoying to anyone.

Next month, the first thing we’ll try is a shorter time period. It will still be a round by round, which is something I’m a fan of. It lets me highlight covers multiple times, and usually lets a different cover shine each day I do an update blog. I’m going to try a single-vote tournament in June, just to see how it goes.  What I want is the best blend between max participation and exposure for these artists and authors.  Once I try a few things, I’ll let the one I feel is best run for a while before I change things up.

But that’s all future stuff, and the Finals have just begun!

They last until midnight of April 22. (That’s about 48 hours).

Head over here and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt