It’s almost 12:01 here. Any moment now, the first copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will come available, and LibraryThing members across the US will start reading. (Some other parts of the world have already begun.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the first reviews were posted by noon tomorrow. Sounds like a good excuse for a contest, right?

We already have a Harry Potter Book Pile photo contest (one entry shown on the right). Well, how about a review contest too? The deal:

• Five reviewers get a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, Abebooks, Booksense or any independent bookseller.
• Fifty get a free membership (for them or as a gift), a handy CueCat barcode scanner, for entering more of their books, and eternal glory.
• We end it Monday, August 6.

LibraryThing is a gloriously supportive community. So we’re going to do it a little differently:

• We’re going to use the new review-rating feature.
  

  Liam Weasley, with Scabbers

  As many know, this only allows “thumbs-up” ratings.

• The five reviews with the most thumbs-ups will win the bigger prize.
• The rest will be randomly picked from all members who both wrote a review and voted for others’ reviews.

That is, we’re rewarding participation and generosity most of all.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.* We’re going to have anti-abuse measures in place, and we think the top five will be clean.** The interest level will be very high. After all, the Harry Potter group on LibraryThing has seen some 11,532 messages.

Have fun tonight. Me? I’m watching over the littlest Weasley, while my wife and niece party with the wizards.

*If we get a lot of sock-puppet votes, we may make the top-five part of the contest only count votes from established members.
**But I won’t be reading the reviews myself. I am stuck in book five, recently restarted. Arg.