If you have entered or plan to enter the iPad contest, please read this entire message.

It has come to my attention that a number of people have incorrectly received points in the iPad Contest by posting YouTube videos that did not meet the contest requirements. I at first thought this was restricted to a few videos but have since figured out that it is more widespread than I had originally thought.

The contest rules clearly state that entrants can receive “200 entries for posting a YouTube video about my books.” This was for a couple of reasons: 1) that the videos be relevant to the promotion of my books (after all, that’s why authors do contests like this), and 2) that the videos not simply be “contest spam” because I truly do abhor spam (as it also states on the contest page).

I had viewed a random sampling of videos during the contest period and found some really cool submissions about the books (thanks, Guys!) but (and this is my own fault) I did not keep up with viewing each of the videos because I got caught up in launching a new website (ReaditandLaugh.com) and taking care of a very sick three year old (The Max, who had over a 103 fever off and on for over a week but is finally now starting to feel better). I discovered yesterday that many of the posted videos did not mention the books (or even myself as an author or anything at all other than “iPad”) at all and were pretty much just very “spammy” videos.

I want to be very transparent here because I feel that everyone entering the contest deserves that. I also want to be as fair as possible, especially to those people that truly earned the 200 points each for YouTube videos that followed the contest rules. I just wish I had realized this sooner so that I could have responded more quickly. Here is what I am doing, effective immediately:

• I am going to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that anyone who posted a video that did NOT adhere to the contest guidelines (namely, talking about the books), did so through a misunderstanding of the contest rules and award them 25 points per video (NOT the 200 each that videos that *did* adhere to the guidelines get). This is also intended to acknowledge that, while the videos did not meet the contest guidelines, they did take work on the part of the person who created them.
• I have modified the automatic awarding of YouTube video points to 25 per video so that any newly submitted videos can only earn that many UNLESS YOU EMAIL ME and I manually review the video, confirm it meets the guidelines, and manually award you the remaining 175 points.
• I am extending the contest end date to November 1,2011 at 11:59 PM GMT to allow myself the time to go through all the submissions (which is no easy task, as the contest software does a lot of things automatically behind the scenes). Point totals may change during this time as I go through and adjust the points according to this new schedule.

I apologize for this misunderstanding and hope you will bear with me as I get this sorted out. If you have any questions, please email me and I will do my best to answer them. In the meantime, everyone now has an extra day to enter and qualify for the contest. Good luck to you!