The 2017 M.L.S. Weech Book Cover of the Year Bracket Starts Now!

Hello all and Happy New Year!

I’ve been building to this for quite some time, and I’m so excited to kick things off. This is it! Twelve Book Covers of the Month join four Wild Card Book Covers to comprise a sixteen-book tournament to determine which one will rule them all!

If you like, you can take a look at each book cover’s winning announcement: December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and The Wild Cards.

346 book covers. 43,724 votes. All leading to this tournament! The covers were ranked 1-16 by the number of total votes each received. That means the cover that received the most votes (Loveless) is going up against the Wild Card that received the fewest votes. (The Girl Who Could See), and so on and so forth.

You can vote all the way through the tournament, supporting the covers you like best through each round. I like to make sure people get the credit they deserve, so please show your support. Please vote and share as much as possible to get people a chance to pick their favorite.

As always, I’d appreciate it if you tag the authors and artists if you know them. I try to tag or friend every author I can, but sometimes it’s hard to track someone down. Max participation is a huge deal to me. The more people who vote, the more recognition these authors and artists receive, and I want this to be as legitimate as possible.

Image taken from Pixabay.

If you are the author, let’s remember to be good sports! 1) Please feel free to message or contact me at any time. 2) Please feel free to like, share, text, ask for support, and call everyone you know. I absolutely want max participation. However, if you’re going to offer giveaways or prizes, please offer them for voting, not just voting for you.

Also, while your summoning your army of voting soldiers, please make sure you ask them to vote in every match. Part of the idea of this is to get exposure to as many artists and authors as possible. By all means, if you can get 1,000 people to vote for your book, do it. Just please also send some eyeballs to the other matches.

A final note to authors and artists: I currently have links to the books’ Amazon pages. If you’d prefer I switch that link to sign up for your newsletter or like your social media page or whatever, just send me the link and let me know. I want this to help you. I want this to be as helpful as possible, so whatever you need me to do to facilitate that, just let me know.

It’s been fun, but, as I mentioned when I announced the Wild Card Winners, I’d like to end this tournament on a high note. I’m trying to get 10,000 total votes. Please, tell everyone. Get people to vote. I want this trophy to mean something, and it’ll frankly mean more as more people vote.

Also, if you’re wondering where the 2018 December’s Book Cover of the Month bracket is, worry not. That bracket will kick off RIGHT after the BCOTY ends. So this month will be pretty full and by the time we get to Feb. 1, people might be pretty tired of it. I’m not sure what else to do about it, so I’m open to ideas, but this is what I got right now.

I hope you keep having fun. Please, vote, share, and discuss as much as possible.

All you have to do now is head over here to vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

The Results Are In! The M.L.S. Weech Book Cover of the Year Wild Card Round Winners!

Greetings all,

Five days of voting have come and gone, and that means it’s time to announce the last four seeds of the 2017 M.L.S. Weech Book Cover of the Year entries!

To say it was close doesn’t begin to give the statement justice. Three out of four of the elimination matches were decided by just one vote. I certainly hope everyone had a chance to vote and share. The fact is, I need a few days to get the tournament set up. I’m already concerned with how much I’m asking of people to vote on essentially four tournaments in two months. I’ve tried to walk the line between getting word out and pestering authors and followers. I hope I’ve done that.

Whatever success I’ve had, we now how the field of sixteen.  These are the four who moved on:

The Dragon Rider Vol. 1 by T.J. Weekes: Right from the start it looked like Weekes wasn’t going to be denied. She took the lead and never let it go. She ended with 13 people voting her all the way through to the winners’ circle and 52 votes overall. This is now the 13th seed.

Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund: This cover earned the 14th seed with three voters calling it the best of all eight and 24 votes total.

The Other One by Amanda Jay earned the 15th seed with 20 total votes.

The Girl Who Could See by Kara Swanson: Swanson took the 16th seed with 20 total votes.

So it comes to this. Sixteen covers have been chosen, but only one will be named the 2017 M.L.S. Weech Book Cover of the Year.  Voting will start Jan. 1 and last two weeks.

My goal: I’m a fan of this sort of stuff, but I want it to actually mean something to the people involved. The best way to do this is to get as many votes as possible.  The Most votes we ever had in one bracket was 6,102 (May’s bracket). I want to shatter that record. My dream is 10,000 total votes. This is a (perhaps overly) ambitious goal.  First, there’s one less round.  In order to meet this goal, I’d need 2,500 people to vote all the way through. I can’t do this without all of your help plus that of the authors and artists.  I only have 400 or so followers here on my Blog, so I’d need all of you and seven of your friends to vote. I’d need half of my Twitter followers or three times my Facebook followers.  In short, I need help.

I expect (and hope) the authors call on their readers. But in order for this to be more about the quality of the book than the following of any one author, word needs to get out. Please help me make this as meaningful as possible. Even if it’s just 16 authors bringing their readers to the table, it’s enough, but it can be more with your help.

I look forward to seeing who will win.  I hope you are, too.

Thanks for reading,

V/R
Matt

Four Days Left: A May Book Cover of the Month Update

It’s that time again folks.  I’m flying on a plan back to the place of residence, so my laziness combined with the fact that I actually sort of skipped an update lead me to post one now.

Usually with four days left, we’d be doing  the final four, so I’ll update you on how that’s going.  But first, this announcement:

I’m happy to report we’ve shattered the record for most votes in a bracket.  We’re currently at 5,524 votes.  I thank you all for your participation, and hope you’ll continue to support the Book Cover of the Month each time it kicks off.

Let’s get down to business.

As it stands right now, your final four are:

Dawn of War by Robbie MacNiven,

The Lost Travencal by C.M. Jobe,

The Other One by Amanda Jay, and

Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund.

The current top dog in terms of total votes is Dawn of War with a massive 528 votes.

The lowest vote-earner is The Empire’s Ghost by Isabella Steiger.

That being said, what matters most is that Dawn of War is in the lead because it won 72 total brackets, so you don’t need 500 votes. You just need 73 more supporters to choose the next four days to vote!

If the tournament stays this way, The Lost Travencal and The Other One would receive auto-bids into the June Book Cover of the Month, but Fate and The Acquisition of Swords by X can leap right over them if they can get their following to support them for one final push, but that’s true of all 32 books.  Anyone of these covers can have a final big day and steal the title for the month.

All you need to do is head over this website and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

A May Book Cover of the Month Update

Greetings all!

Usually about this time (three days) would be when the Sweet 16 begins.  While we’re not doing a round-by-round bracket, I still think this is a nice time to update everyone on how things are shaking out so far.

First, another explanation on how this structure works.  Brackify says, “Rank results are calculated by how far an entry advances in the bracket based on match results, not total vote count.”

What’s that mean? Well, You can have a million votes, but they do you no good if you only get them in one round. What matters is how many voters vote for a certain cover to move on.

What I like about this format: This structure really does make it easy on voters. One vote and done. Also, we’re getting close to breaking the all-time voting record after less than three days. That’s wonderful! The best thing about this format is that no one is ever out of it until the very end.

What I don’t like about this format: It’s possible for a book that lost a round to still win the bracket. Let me try to explain.  Say Book 1 lost to Book 2 in the first round. However, if more voters selected Book 1 to go to the finals, Book 1 would actually move on unless Book 2 had a more dominant win in the first round. I’ve actually been monitoring that situation in this bracket. Tangled Echoes has a solid number of finalist votes, but it wasn’t until City of Miracles finally managed to over take it that Echoes fell from #1 all the way to #18 (as things stand as I type this).

Echoes doesn’t need a bunch of first round votes (though at this stage that would do the trick), it actually only needs one or two people to vote it back to the finals. I’m not sure what I think about a book being able to advance when it didn’t win a round. In this format, what matters is how far a book goes per bracket, not how many votes it gets. In my opinion, round-by-round is more demanding on participants, but way easier to understand. Please don’t misunderstand, I like all these covers. That’s why I featured them on this blog. If Echoes beat five other covers to win the day, then I’d have no problem with that. My problem would be if someone one the bracket after losing a round. To put your mind at ease, I’ve checked, and the current Sweet 16 all on their first round. So the current covers would have moved on in the original format. What are your thoughts?

Now that we’ve explained the process, let’s look at how things stand after three full days of voting.

The current top four are:

Dawn of War by Robbie MacNiven, The Lost Travencal by C.M. Jobe, The Other One by Amanda Jay, and Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund.

The next four contenders are:

Reaper Reborn by Bryan Davis, The Acquisition of Swords by Timothy Ray, and City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Lead Cover:

As you saw above, MacNiven’s Dawn of War is currently in the lead.

Top Vote Earner:

It’s important to know that this bracket was never a popular vote. The top vote earner for each round always moved on, but there have been plenty of times one cover received a ton of votes in one round, but fell short in the following round. Winning a round still means more than getting more votes.  That said, it’s still cool to know who’s getting support.

The top vote earner so far is The Other One by .

Least voted on cover:

We have a tie in this regard. They are: The Wizard Killer Season Two by Adam Dreece and Immortals by . They each have 79 total votes, but they haven’t gotten enough votes to get them out of that first round.

There’s still 10 days left to show your support for your favorite cover. If you’ve already voted, but your favorite isn’t winning, please feel free to share the bracket on your respective social media platforms. The more people who vote, the better.

Vote by clicking this link.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

 

 

The May Book Cover of the Month Bracket Starts Now!

Happy first everyone! It’s time to kick off a new bracket.  If you’re curios or new, check out the Book Covers for December, January, February, March, and April.

May’s bracket has 31 new covers and last month’s runner up, Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund, has another chance to take the title home.

We’re doing things differently this month. In previous months, we had a round-by-round competition, which I loved. But it’s demanding on readers and fans. They have to keep coming back to vote each week, and I want this to be fun, with as much participation as possible. So this round is a one shot bracket. What this means is each person will only have to vote once for his or her own bracket. Instead of waiting a few days between rounds, you can vote all the way through the tournament. If this works better for people, and increases participation, we’ll keep this format going forward. It’ll still last for two weeks, and I’ll still do updates every so often, but no one will be out of the fight until the last day of the tournament.

As always, I’d appreciate it if you tag the authors and artists if you know them. I try to tag or friend every author I can, but sometimes it’s hard to track someone down. Max participation is a huge deal to me. The more people who vote, the more recognition these authors and artists receive, and I want this to be as legitimate as possible.

Image taken from Pixabay.

If you are the author, let’s remember to be good sports! 1) Please feel free to message or contact me at any time. 2) Please feel free to like, share, text, ask for support, and call everyone you know. I absolutely want max participation. However, if you’re going to offer giveaways or prizes, please offer them for voting, not just voting for you.

Also, while your summoning your army of voting soldiers, please make sure you ask them to vote in every match. Part of the idea of this is to get exposure to as many artists and authors as possible. By all means, if you can get 1,000 people to vote for your book, do it. Just please also send some eyeballs to the other matches.

A final note to authors and artists: I currently have links to the books’ Amazon pages. If you’d prefer I switch that link to sign up for your newsletter or like your social media page or whatever, just send me the link and let me know. I want this to help you. I want this to be as helpful as possible, so whatever you need me to do to facilitate that, just let me know.

 

I hope you keep having fun. Please, vote, share, and discuss as much as possible.

All you have to do now is head over here to vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Announcing the April Book Cover of the Month!

The April Book Cover of the Month bracket has just wrapped up. Every author and designer should be stoked. This was the second-most voted on bracket in the history of this young competition. It had a total of 4,281 votes.

The April Book Cover of the Month is…

This image is used under fair use doctrine for the purpose of bringing awareness and assisting the notoriety of this book.

Singular by Zack Hubert! If you’re curious about how I felt about the book, check out the Facebook post that I posted when this book first landed on the bracket, here.

Let’s look at the stats!

This book averaged about 78 votes a round, but it had some of the stiffest competition possible.  Hubert always seemed to get the number of votes he needed, which includes a dominant win in the finals.

Neo Edmund can hold his head up for a number of reasons. One such reason is that he’s automatically entered in to the May Book Cover of the Month scheduled to begin June 1. So his fans and readers can still get him into the Book Cover of the Year bracket.

We’re on a streak of first-time authors here. Singular is Hubert’s first novel as well.  Here’s the Amazon blurb.

Amazon:

(START BLURB)

Milo Bell is not an ordinary teenager.

While the rest of the students at Bright Futures #127 spend a majority of their time in the virtual world of their SeeSees, Milo spends every waking moment with his eccentric grandfather playing with the vintage computers which fill his house.

That is, every computer except for the mysterious machine with the name “LISA” scrawled on its side. An artifact from his days as an Artificial Intelligence researcher, Milo is afraid that his grandfather might be hiding something or be in some kind of trouble.

Milo’s worst fear is realized when his grandfather suddenly disappears, and he finds the unusual computer in his own bedroom. Milo begins to learn its deadly secret when it’s snatched from his hands, leading him on the most dangerous quest of his life.

Peril turns to disaster as the world begins to crumble around him. With few friends and powerful enemies, can Milo unlock the secrets of the machine before time runs out?

(END BLURB)

I’ve purchased the book and added it to my TBR. (For those who are new to the deal, I buy the Book Cover of the Month to read and review in the future. I bought Manning’s cover, Howard’s cover, Deyo’s cover, and Steen Jones’s cover, and they are also on my TBR. In fact, my review for Betrayer’s Bane, Manning’s cover, is going to appear on this blog on Wednesday. I’m also happy to announce Mr. Manning was kind enough to grant me an interview, which you should all see on Saturday.

Here’s Ms. Hubert’s Twitter page. Head on over and follow him to see what he’s up to.

The artist for this cover is Gabe Rodriquez.  I’ll reach out to him and see if he’d like to have an interview.  I have his twitter handle (@gaber008 if you’d like to follow him as well). We’ll see if we can get an interview done for him.

The May bracket is shaping up and will launch on June 1. One more time, that will be a different sort of bracket. Instead of people voting one time per round, voters will vote all the way through the bracket. We’ll see how that goes, and I’ll ask you all your thoughts when that month wraps up.

I will continue to identify and select covers for each day from Amazon’s New Release section for fantasy and science fiction. If you follow and like my Facebook page, you can see what covers will make the bracket.

Thanks for reading

Matt

April BCOTM Finals!

We’ve had a great bracket so far this month, and we have two great covers to show for it.  We ended this round with 158 votes, which gives us 4,164. We’d need more than 600 votes to get the record for most votes in a tournament, but I don’t think second most contested bracket ever is anything to shake a finger at. 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:

The closest match was (yet again) Michael J. Sullivan’s.  I feel the need to give this cover special recognition. No book cover has had a run like this. We’ve seen Age of Myth in every round for the past two months. Since Feb. 1, Sulivan’s book has fought to stay in the hunt, but each time it came just a few votes away. At last, another novel has been able to knock Sullivan both out of this bracket and out of the next. I personally think that sort of staying power is a testament to how great the cover is.  However, Singular by Zack Hubert managed to best Myth by a mere eight votes. This match was also the most voted on contest.

Most Votes:
Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund is the current leader. He’s shown the ability to garner support from more than 100 people, so it looks like whoever wins this final is going to have to get at least that many votes. This was the least voted on contest this round (75 votes).

While only one cover can win every month, this month’s runner up is at least assured a second chance in the May bracket next month.

A quick reminder: Next month will be a complete bracket, meaning readers will only have to vote 1 time. They’ll have their own bracket, and the winner will be chosen from the total of those votes rather than the usual round-by-round format.  This will allow readers to vote once for all the covers they want all the way through the bracket instead of have to come back again and again each new round.  It has some advantages. I personally prefer the round by round structure, but if it makes it easier for authors to gain support and readers to vote, that’s what I’ll do.

For now, readers just have to focus voting on this match. You have until the strike of twelve on the 14th to pick a winner from these two covers.  My best of luck to both!

Head over here and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

April Final 4!

This round had 960 votes, which murdered the old record for the elite 8 (formerly 457). Our total for the month so far is 4,006, which already makes this the second-most voted on bracket so far! Thank you all for your participation and support. With that said, someone had to leave, and someone had to move on.

Let’s look at how this round broke down:

The Closest Contest:
Gods and Monsters by Janie Marie vs Flash Tales by Chess DeSalls was a nail biter. While not one match this round was decided by more than a 4% swing, Flash Tales only managed to take the win by two votes (50.EEP% of the total votes). You’ll see why that’s even more impressive in a minute.

The Largest Victor:
I don’t really know if this momentum is going to continue, but I do think each match is going to remain ultimately close. So no one here really pulled away. The largest winning cover was Singular by Zack Hubert, and he only won by 14 votes. That’s not normally what a “largest victor” entry looks like, but it speaks to how close this round was.

Most Voted On Contest:
Remember how I said that two-vote victory for DeSalls was impressive? Well the reason why is she won the most voted on match by two votes. Every single one of the match’s 262 total votes was critical.

Least Voted On Contest:
The other reason I’m stoked is that every match received more than 220 votes. That’s just amazing. So far, this bracket has been one of the most voted on. It was also one of the most evenly voted on brackets I can remember. I feel I owe the authors and readers a debt for this. It’s great to see more than 220 people showed up to support not just their favorite covers, but all the covers on the bracket. Thank you!The least voted on contest was Fate of the Big Bad Wolf by Neo Edmund vs A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab. That contest received 221 votes (see, I told you, everyone got a TON of votes).

Most Votes:
Flash Tales had the most votes for the round (132). It’ll be interesting to see who wins between DeSalls and Neo Edmund.

The Final 4 ends at Midnight, May 12. That’s only 2 days, so call your friends, share my posts, get your readers engaged!

It’s more important this month to get the victory because only the runner up for this month gets free admission into next month’s bracket if they can’t take the victory this month.

Get out there and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

April Elite 8!

This month has been quantifiably competitive! We’re kicking off the Elite 8, and each person in this bracket has a dedicated following! The Sweet 16 had 771 votes (just short of a record), which puts us at 3,046 votes so far.

Let’s go over some numbers:

The Closest Contest:

Michael J. Sullivan just won’t go down. His cover for Age of Myth is the only book to have to rematches. It seems like every match he’s in is a close one. This match with The First City by Joe Hart was no different.  Sullivan edged out Hart by 1 vote (51 percent of the 97 votes the match received). The Day the Sky Fell by Adam Dreece also narrowly beat Brimstone by Cherie Priest. (I mean the last vote tipped the tie at 11:54 p.m.).

The Largest Victor:
Neo Edmund’s readers helped the cover for Fate of the Big Bad Wolf earn a decisive 28-vote victory (66 percent of 86 votes) over J.N. Chaney’s Hope Everlasting.

Least Voted On Contest:

We didn’t have quite the same max participation as we did in the last round, but everyone still got plenty of votes.  Chaney and Edmund’s match was the low-vote earner this round.

 

Most Voted On Contest:
The most voted on contest was Gods and Monsters by Janie Marie vs The Bone Tree by T.A. Miles. They both received more than 50 votes, but Marie took the round with 72 out of a total of 123 votes.

Most Votes:
Gods and Monsters has surged to the front of this bracket. Marie’s received the most votes of the round as well as the most votes so far (164). It’s going to take at least 75 votes to beat her.

The Elite Eight lasts until May 10, which is another three days to show your support for the cover you like best!

Head over here and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt

April’s Sweet 16!

I’m always amazed at the support these authors generate. This month is no different.  I’m getting used to each month’s first round outdoing the month before it, but I’m more impressed this month.  In about half the time, your readers helped shatter the record for first round votes. You generated 2,250 votes, which is 502 more than ever before.  What makes me happiest is that every match had more than 110 votes. So all your readers came out to show support, and they were kind enough to show that support to all of you.  Please thank them for me.

This month didn’t have a lot of close calls, but the votes were coming in so fast and furious (really hate that term these days) that I had to wait for the next round to start before I could finalize this post. One match had a lead change just while I was typing this post out. (Well fought Michael J. Sullivan and Frank Dorrain!)

Let’s go over some numbers:

The Closest Contest:

The above shoutout should have been the hint. Michael J. Sullivan had a late (like 11:30 p.m. late) surge and took the match by three votes (just 51% of the total votes).  That makes Age of Myth vs To Brave the End the closest contest no matter how you slice it. Sullivan just won’t go away. He consistently finds a way to win (except for that pesky final match).

The Largest Victor:
World, meet Neo Edmund and his outstanding cover Fate of the Big Bad Wolf. He beat Malevolent Mind by Misty Harvey by 64 total votes, which is 74 percent of the matches’ 132 total votes (No, it’s not the most voted on contest. Like I said, you all had a TON of support!)

Most Voted On Contest:
For my money, the most voted on match was the most fun match to watch. It had a lot of lead changes and was always close.  Waters of Salt and Sin by Alisha Klapheke managed to beat Restitution by Kristen Martin by just 8 votes (one of the three closest matches). This match dominated in terms of total votes with 188. I saw both authors tweeting and sharing away.  It was great to see their participation and touching to see how many readers showed up to vote for them.

Least Voted On Contest:
For the first time since I started this, I really think we had max participation in that every match had a significant number of votes.  Yes, the above match had some 20 votes more than the others, but everyone got some love.  However, someone usually gets the fewest.  This round, the match between by Darkborn by Carrie Summers  vs The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski received the fewest votes (120).  Summers took the match pretty handedly though (by 46 votes).

Most Votes:
Usually, the winner of the most voted on contest also earns this distinction.  Not so this month. Joe Hart’s The First City received 100 votes. There were a lot of books that received more than 90 votes, so it’s just a testimony to how much love voters showed all of the contests.

So now it’s on to the Sweet 16!  This round will last until May 7. That’s 3 days to pick which 8 will move on.

Head over here and vote!

Thanks for reading,

Matt