Book March Madness 2019

Welcome to our March Madness Challenge page! Our March Madness challenge is a reading challenge that is linked to the college basketball tournament. Books are selected and matched to specific basketball teams based on your nominations.

The core task of the challenge is to use your skills, knowledge, and/or luck to try and predict which basketball teams will win various rounds of march madness tournament and then read the books that are matched with those teams. How many books you choose to read is up to you.

The bracket is posted here.

How to play the game: All books will be paired with basketball teams. The fate of your book will be determined by how each basketball team performs. Here is what you’ll need to do.

Step 1: Create a CBS sports account. We’ll be keeping track of prediction scores on this site. It is free to join and you will need to set up an account in order to join our league. To start the process and join our pool you can click here. If you have any difficulties, send me a quick email.

Step 2: Fill out your bracket before the games start (March 21 at noon). Simply pick your predicted winner from each matchup until you are left with only one overall winner. Submit your brackets on the site before the start of games or you will get locked out.

Step 3: Reading period. Day you submit your bracket on the CBS site. During this period you will try to read as many books you picked as possible. Only books you picked to advance will count for points. Since all books will be matched to basketball teams, the outcome of each basketball game will determine which book moves on.

Be strategic. You won’t have to time to read every single book you picked so you should prioritize books that make it into later rounds since you will get more points for later rounds. You can read 0 books and up to 32 (although I doubt this is possible in the time frame). Your score will be your prediction score (on the CBS site) plus your reading score. It is possible to do very well by only reading 1-2 books.

Step 4: Post your review. Once you have finished a book for the challenge you need to post a review. You can do that in 3 ways: 1) post a 1-4 sentence review on this page in the comments section, 2) post a link to your blog review or GoodReads review of the book in the comments section here, or 3) Post a review on Litsy but make sure to tag me: JenP and use hashtag #marchmadnesschallenge.

Step 5: Keep score. Use this score card to track your reading points. CBS sports site will keep track of overall picking points. Your final score for the challenge will be CBS sports site score + reading score.

Exceptions:

1. If you have already read a book on the list but want to pick it for your bracket, you may make a reading substitution. You may read another book by the same author,  if it is a debut  novel, you may pick a similar book (same genre) of approximately the same length, or you can pick one of the 4 books that dropped out after the first 4 games.
2. If a book on the bracket is part of a series, you may read a different volume of the series as a substitution.

Winners will be announced before May 31.

Prizes
Grand Prize: $100 Amazon gift card
Best coach (for the person who nominated the winning book): $25 Amazon gift card & your choice of book from a stack we post.