Hello, Pixel Project supporters and donors:

We are excited to announce that we have smashed our initial $5,000 (5,000 pixels) fundraising goal for the Read For Pixels campaign within the first 18 days of the campaign! Thanks to 27 generous donors to date, we are currently at $5,215 (5,215 pixels) raised. With just 2 weeks of the campaign left, we’re now working towards our $10,000 (10,000 pixels) stretch goal. This is a first attempt for us because we have never reached the $10,000 fundraising mark in any of the previous Read For Pixels campaign.

Here are three (3) ways you can help us get to the $10,000 golden goal by the closing date of October 19^th 2015:

Option #1: The Great Jim C. Hines Cover Pose Voting Contest of 2015

In January 2012, Hugo Award-winning Fantasy author Jim C. Hines wanted to tackle the issue of how women are portrayed on book covers and “how saturated we were with imagery that emphasized women as sexual objects at the expense of power, agency, realism, and so on.” To provoke discussion in a positive way, Jim, with the help of his wife, took pictures of himself hilariously contorting his body to recreate some of the female book cover poses. Here are 2 examples:

His efforts went viral and he decided to put the popularity of his posing to a good cause by doing custom cover poses to raise over $15,000 for a charity of his choice.

To encourage the Science Fiction & Fantasy community to support the Read For Pixels campaign and the cause to end violence against women, Jim will do one (1) custom gender-flipping cover pose when we reach our $10,000 stretch goal. Here’s the twist:

All donors who contribute to the campaign between now and October 19^th 2015 will be emailed a link to vote for one of three book cover poses for Jim to recreate. The cover with the most votes will be the one that Jim will duplicate “no matter what the cost in pain or chiropractic bills” once $10,000 has been reached.

Added bonus: If we gallop past $10,000 and reach $15,000 by or before October 19th 2015, we’ll open the remaining two cover poses for voting and Jim will do a SECOND custom gender-flipped cover pose.

Option #2: The Kimberly Derting “Minor Character” Referral Contest

The Pixel Project and international bestselling YA author Kimberly Derting will be holding an Indiegogo referral contest with the grand prize of becoming a minor character in Kimberly’s next book.

All fans and supporters have to do is:

• Create an Indiegogo account (it’s free!)
• Donate at least $5.00 (the cost of a fancy cup of coffee) to the campaign by clicking on the special perk listing that we’ve set up so we know they have entered the contest.
• Share the Read For Pixels (Fall 2015) fundraising page with their social media networks using the unique custom link to the page that Indiegogo generates for each Indiegogo registered donor.
• Encourage as many friends and family as possible to donate at least $5.00 when they visit the Read For Pixels Indiegogo page using the custom link.

The contestant whose referrals amass the biggest amount of donations by the time the fundraiser closes at 11.59pm PST, October 19^th 2015 will be immortalised as a minor character in Kimberly’s next book.

For more details on how to take part, visit the contest page here.

Option #3: Donate For Goodies!

We still have plenty of fabulous goodies available including:

• New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot has generously released a bonus goodie bundle featuring a signed set of her MEDIATOR series and an exclusive excerpt from the upcoming MEDIATOR book, REMEMBRANCE.
• Special Steampunk YA book bundles featuring signed books by New York Times bestselling authors Andrea Cremer and Colleen Gleason.
• Original handwritten drabbles and flash fiction written by acclaimed Fantasy author Kate Elliott
• Goodie bundles from New York Times bestselling Horror/Thriller author Scott Sigler

Give generously and the authors will send you your goodies directly!

Whether you want to see Jim’s latest custom cover pose or become a minor character in Kimberly’s next book or just to get some really cool goodies, visit http://is.gd/R4PIndiegogo2015 and donate to help us get to $10,000.

Please give generously because in the fight to end violence against women: Every dollar counts. Every pixel counts. Every voice counts.

It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.

With peace and love,

Regina Yau, Founder and President – The Pixel Project

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About the Read For Pixels campaign (http://is.gd/Read4Pixels):

The Pixel Project’s “Read For Pixels” campaign features live Google Hangouts with award-winning bestselling authors in support of the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign (http://reveal.thepixelproject.net), which aims to raise US$1 million in aid of The Pixel Project and the USA’s National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (www.ncadv.org). Over 40 authors have participated in the campaign including Charlaine Harris, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Jonathan Maberry, Joe Hill, Jasper Fforde, Lauren Beukes, Leigh Bardugo, Meg Cabot, Rick Yancey, and Tad Williams.

About The Pixel Project (www.thepixelproject.net)

The Pixel Project is a complete virtual, volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organisation whose mission is to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women using  a combination of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. Their flagship initiative is the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign which aims to turbo-charge global awareness about VAW using social media while raising US$1 million by getting a global audience to collectively unveil a million-pixel mystery collage of Celebrity Male Role Models at US$1 per pixel.