Just entered Unbinding the Stone into SPFBO 6, the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. 300 titles get entered, 10 highly respected bloggers get 30 each to read, and they choose one to move on, so the odds of winning are very low. Basically the first reader for the first blog can kill you, which is kind of unpleasant. There’s no requirement that everyone on the blog reads all the books, either. The winning isn’t so much the issue as the network-building that goes on during, and you get at least one mention in a blog somewhere. It’s publicity of a sort.
And who knows, I might win.