Hop Against Homophobia, Bi- and Transphobia 2015!

Today, May 17th, is the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Groups around the world will be celebrating the day in various ways and you can follow it all through the IDAHOT page: http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

We, 117 writers, publishers, reviewers, cover designers, and other people involved in the making of LGBT books, want to make an effort as well by sharing messages with our readers and other blog visitors. This is the hop's fourth year, and in our prior years we've had huge success in reaching a diverse group of people around the globe. We've decided to do it again, because there's no sense messing with success, right? We encourage you to visit all the hop locations. There will be an LGBT-related prize at each stop.

From the all volunteer staff here at HAHABT, we want to take a moment to extend our gratitude to all who have donated, be it in time, prizes to give away on their blogs, or simply the courage to stand up for what we here at HAHABT believe to be an invaluable message of acceptance.

Thank you,
Hop Against Homophobia, Bi- and Transphobia 2015

Hop Against Homophobia, Bi- and Transphobia 2015

The Hop Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (HAHABT) was created to spread awareness of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, and to stand together as a writer community against discrimination of our works. 

The hop is now open for sign-ups.

Dates:

Sign-ups for the HAHABT will end on May 14th.
The hop begins on May 17th and runs through May 24th. 

Participation requirements:

To sign up for the HAHABT, you must be an author, publisher, reviewer, or cover designer of LGBTQ fiction (you do not have to write, publish, review, or cover design LGBTQ works exclusively) and provide a link to your blog and active email address. That's it!

We encourage you to mention the blog in its lead-up. We'll be doing our part in promoting the event, but the more people talk about it, the bigger and better it will be.

What participating entails:

Participating requires that you post a post on your blog for the hop on May 17, 2015. The post must include:

» The HAHABT image, with a link to the official hop site: http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/

» Note that it's the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia in the post, and include a topic that relates to LGBTQ.

» An LGBTQ-related prize, such as donations in the winner's name, paperbacks or ebooks (your own or someone else's), swag, t-shirts, or anything you like that is connected to the LGBTQ community.

» Links to the other blog participants (we'll offer a code that you can put at the bottom of your post to link to multiple other participants).

We'll be sending out a reminder email with all the specifics once we get closer to the kick-off date of the hop, so watch your email in May.

Restrictions:

» Any direct links to sales pages will be removed. You must link to your blog.

» Any non LGBTQ participants will be removed.
» We expect that those who sign up will be legitimately interested in participating in a positive manner. Therefore, those who sign up to express negative views of the hop will be removed from the links.

» Your post must be up no later than one day after May 17th. If your post isn't up on the 18th, you will receive a reminder. If the post isn't up by the 19th, your link will be removed. You can pre-schedule posts in most (if not all) blog programs, and we encourage you to do so.

When you sign up:

Please provide a correct link to your blog and an active email address.

Please use the following indicators behind your names (i.e. NJ Nielsen (M/M)), whichever applies:

» Gay: (M/M) or (GAY)

» Lesbian: (F/F) or (LES) 

» Trans: (TR)

» Bi: (BI) - M/F/M and F/M/F are not bi if there's no romantic/sexual interaction between the same sexes.

» Reviewers: (REV)

» Publishers: (PUB)

» Cover designers: (DES)

» Multiple pairings: (MULTI) - or list what you do, e.g. (M/M, F/F, REV). This option is for those who write e.g. M/M and Trans stories. Please note that M/F stories are not a part of this hop yet, so if you write F/F and M/F, please only add the F/F behind your name. The LGBT character(s) must be a main character in your story.

Finally:

Those who add the HAHABT badge to the sidebar of their blog and keep it there until the hop starts will be added to our blog roll. The blog roll will stay up until next year. Please promote the event to your readers and fellow writers to help make this hop a success.

Have any questions? Please take a look at our FAQ page. If you don't find your answer there, feel free to ask us :)

Welcome to the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2014

Today, May 17th, is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (also known as IDAHO). Groups around the world will be celebrating the day in various ways and you can follow it all through the IDAHO page: http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

We, right around 130 writers, publishers, reviewers, and cover designers of LGBT books want to make an effort as well by sharing messages with our readers and other blog visitors. This is the hop's third year, and in both our prior years we've had huge success in reaching a diverse group of people around the globe. We've decided to do it again, because there's no sense messing with success, right? We encourage you to visit all the hop locations. There will be an LGBT-related prize at each stop.

From the all volunteer staff here at HAHAT, we want to take a moment to extend our gratitude to all who have donated, be it in time, prizes to give away on their blogs, or simply the courage to stand up for what we here at HAHAT believe to be an invaluable message of acceptance.

Thank you,

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2014

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia: 2014 Sign-Up!

The Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia (HAHAT) was created to spread awareness of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, and to stand together as a writer community against discrimination of our works. 

The hop is now open for sign-ups.

Dates:

Sign-ups for the HAHAT will end on May 14th.
The hop begins on May 17th and runs through May 24th. 

Participation requirements:

To participate in the HAHAT, you must be an author, publisher, reviewer, or cover designer of LGBTQ fiction (you do not have to write, publish, review, or cover design LGBTQ works exclusively) and provide a link to your blog and active email address. That's it!

We encourage you to mention the blog in its lead-up. We'll be doing our part in promoting the event, but the more people talk about it, the bigger and better it will be.

What participating entails:

Participating requires that you create a post on your blog for the hop on May 17, 2013. The post must include:

» The HAHAT image, with a link to the official hop site: http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/

» Note that it's the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in the post, and include a topic that relates to LGBTQ.

» An LGBTQ-related prize, such as donations in the winner's name, paperbacks or ebooks (your own or someone else's), swag, t-shirts, or anything you like that is connected to the LGBTQ community.

» Links to the other blog participants (we'll offer a code that you can put at the bottom of your post to link to multiple other participants).

We'll be sending out a reminder email with all the specifics once we get closer to the kick-off date of the hop, so watch your email in May.

Restrictions:

» Any direct links to sales pages will be removed. You must link to your blog.

» Any non LGBTQ participants will be removed.
» We expect that those who sign up will be legitimately interested in participating in a positive manner. Therefore, those who sign up to express negative views of the hop will be removed from the links.

» Your post must be up no later than one day after May 17th. If your post isn't up on the 18th, you will receive a reminder. If the post isn't up by the 19th, your link will be removed. You can pre-schedule posts in most (if not all) blog programs, and we encourage you to do so.

When you sign up:

Please provide a correct link to your blog and an active email address.

Please use the following indicators behind your names (i.e. NJ Nielsen (M/M)), whichever applies:

» Gay: (M/M) or (GAY)

» Lesbian: (F/F) or (LES) 

» Trans: (TR)

» Bi: (BI) - M/F/M and F/M/F are not bi if there's no romantic/sexual interaction between the same sexes.

» Reviewers: (REV)

» Publishers: (PUB)

» Cover designers: (DES)

» Multiple pairings: (MULTI) - or list what you do, e.g. (M/M, F/F, REV). This option is for those who write e.g. M/M and Trans stories. Please note that M/F stories are not a part of this hop yet, so if you write F/F and M/F, please only add the F/F behind your name.

Finally:

Those who add the HAHAT badge to the sidebar of their blog and keep it there until the hop starts will be added to our blog roll. The blog roll will stay up until next year. Please promote the event to your readers and fellow writers to help make this hop a success.
Edited: We've been having a problem with the blogroll. It won't save any links we add. We're working on trying to fix it or find an alternative.

Have any questions? Please take a look at our FAQ page. If you don't find your answer there, feel free to ask us :)

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013

Welcome to the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia (HAHAT) 2013! 

Today, May 17th, is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (also known as IDAHO). Groups around the world will be celebrating the day in various ways and you can follow it all through the IDAHO page: http://www.dayagainsthomophobia.org/

We, nearly 180 writers, publishers, reviewers, and cover designers of LGBT books want to make an effort as well by sharing messages with our readers and other blog visitors. We did this last year and decided to do it again after a huge success. We encourage you to visit all the hop locations. There will be an LGBT-related prize at each stop.

Thanks for stopping by!

After-Hop Post 2 of 2

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013

We've learned a lot from this year and we've gone back and forth on ideas for the next year. What we've decided is to change the name from Hop Against Homophobia to Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia in honor of IDAHO. Also, did anyone else wake up on Sunday with half the blogs yet to read? Well we did. Originally we decided on four days, but that was before we knew that 275 blogs were going to sign up. So for next year, we're going to increase the length of the hop. We don't have the exact number of days yet, but we're thinking maybe ten or so. It all depends on which of the below option will be chosen. The start date will be on May 17th 2013, so mark your calendars :)

There is one other thing we've been going back and forth on. We want to spread awareness of homophobia and transphobia - this includes awareness of issues facing gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, pansexuals and the whole QUILTBAG. That was what was done this year. We had experiences from gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans* - all of whom were M/M writers/publishers/reviewers. The question is: Should we restrict this hop to the M/M writing community or should we include the whole GLBTQ writing community? There are pros and cons to both.

A lot of you may be thinking that we should open this for everyone, the M/F writing community too, but we feel like we have to limit this somewhere or it will become difficult to manage. Our method of drawing visitors in and get them involved is to offer up prizes. It worked well this time around, and although many would have visited without the prizes, we doubt they would have bothered to visit so many sites in so few days without them. We feel that we have to limit the hop to a group, because if the hop will link thousands of blogs people might find it daunting to visit every blog. Supervision would be tricky - it was tricky enough with 275 blogs (making sure the links worked, checking to see if someone didn't post, hunting down emails that had been typed incorrectly, responding to everyone who needed help, our latest endeavour to link directly to the messages and pull out quotes, etc.). 

Anyway, these are the two options we've narrowed down and we'd love to get your input on this:

1. Open the hop for the whole GLBTQ writing community. The hop will get a wider exposure and this is the group we're fighting for, so it makes sense to have everybody under one hop. The "downside" is that the hop will be huge, probably with twice as many blogs signing up. Again, we fear that the visitors will find a big number daunting and will be less inclined to take part. 

2. Limit it to the M/M writing community and see if there are any F/F and Trans* writers who would be interested in hosting the same event on separate hop-blog sites. The hops will be smaller and more manageable, but the exposure of IDAHO will be just as good. We have founded a group called Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (WAHAT), and the separate hop blogs (the main hop sites) could work together under that group. We could join forces in advertising and promoting, and we could help each other to make every hop a success. There would be less links to monitor and the hops would run smoother. Each group could focus on reaching their target group with their messages. We're also toying with the idea to talk to YA writers, and horror writers, and sci-fi writers (etc.) to see if there's interest in creating YA Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (who would try to reach their target groups of YA readers), Horror Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (etc), to try to bring this out of the GLBTQ writing community. 

So what do you think? Do you know of F/F writers who might be interested in hosting this event for the F/F writing community? Or writers of Trans* fiction who might be interested in hosting a hop for the Trans* writing community? Or should we just keep it all under one hop?

We would LOVE to hear your opinions :)

Almost Time!

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It's almost time! We wanted to mention a few things before we begin. There's a yahoo group for this event and everyone is welcome, as long as they're not looking to cause trouble. We also have a facebook page and a Twitter account.

We've received a lot of emails from the participating blogs and many are all set to go and people are excited.

Registration is still open and will remain so until the end of the hop. If your blog is eligible and you'd like to join, there's a small blue sign-up button below the purple names. 

We would very much appreciate any kind of exposure during this event, so please spread the word :)

The Purpose of This Hop

It has been brought to our attention that the purpose of this hop was never actually stated in the hop info on this site. We assumed that the purpose was a given (due to the name): To bring awareness to homophobia. However, since the creation of this hop, the purpose has become twofold: To bring awareness to homophobia and to stand together as an m/m writer community to fight of discrimination against the m/m genre. We have spread this purpose in interviews, personal email recruitment and in other announcements, but it was never stated on this blog site. We hope to rectify that with this post.

The blogs taking part in this will discuss homophobia in their hop entry. Originally we thought that we wouldn't get many sign-ups, so we added this text "as little as mention it - your choice" in the info post, because we wanted good exposure to the blogs that would talk about homophobia. In our informational email message going out this week, we will emphasize this part of the hop, as it has always been the purpose: to talk about homophobia. A lot of the participants have already stated in messages to us that they know what they're going to write about, so we're confident that most will want to spread a message (and everyone will, in the following hops, as that little text won't be included in the future). Some of it will be about the real problem, some will be about people's own experiences, and some will be about how homophobia has been successfully fought.

That said, we were outraged when a chapter in the Romance Writers of America excluded m/m romances from one of their contests because it felt "icky" to the judges. It was a big part in us wanting to make this hop large-scale and make a loud splash. We're not members of RWA, so this did not affect us directly, but we were still outraged. What the chapter of RWA did was discriminate against our genre and the subject it centers around: men loving men. The RWA chapter was being homophobic. They ended up cancelling the contest after an uproar, but it was clear by their excuse that there's a lot of work to be done for people to accept m/m fiction as something just acceptable as other fiction. This is why we added the second purpose: to stand together as m/m an m/m writing community and bring about awareness of our books and their subjects. 

Is it morally wrong to use the International Day Against Homophobia in relation to this hop? We believe not. Being excluded for the sole reason that our work contains love between two men is wrong and homophobic, and we have a right to fight to make sure it doesn't happen again. This may seem trivial to some people, in comparison to other homophobic issues, but to us this is very important (and no, not for sales - if money was all we were after, we'd be writing mainstream YA).

Is it wrong to use prizes to get people to our blogs? We think not. We think it's a great way to get people to stop by in hope that they'll take interest in the issue and become more aware. We could have made a hop where there were no prizes involved - just us spreading a message - but we believe that this way, we will get more people over. A lot of people - including m/m readers - don't even know that there's such a thing as an International Day Against Homophobia. A lot of people - including m/m readers - don't even know that there's such a thing as an International Day Against Homophobia.

People may not agree with this method, but it is within their rights to disagree. People's opinions will always differ. A couple of days ago, we learned that there are people who have posted a message saying how terribly wrong this hop is - and by reading the post these people made, they were right. It did look terribly wrong. Had we not been involved in this hop ourselves, we would have been outraged. The informational post on "What is a Blog Hop" was badly written: it started off explaining in general what a book blog hop is, but then, as the post wore on, it started to get into the details of this specific hop. That has been rectified now, and only speaks of what a book blog hop is, in general. The biggest mistake, however, was that our purpose was not clearly stated in the informational post. We know that no matter what we say, we won't change the minds of most of these people. All we can do is be open, honest, and sincere in what our purpose has been all along. We can pull up links, dated back in February, to show that we've been spreading this purpose over the internet. Erica can send these links through emails, if people contact her personally.

We acknowledge these mistakes. The main purpose of this hop has never been to sell our books. People can chose to believe that or not - again, nothing we can say will change the minds of those who do think we're just here to sell our books - so all we can do is write this post and hope that most people will see that we're not doing something wrong here.

So again, in short: This hop is about spreading awareness of homophobia and to stand together as an m/m writer community against discrimination of what we write about.


Erica, K-Lee and NJ.

Hop Against Homophobia Registration!

An M/M-only blog hop!

Now that we've finally released some gay romances, we (Erica Pike, NJ Nielsen, and K-Lee Klein) have begun to take part in blog hops. They‘re great fun and we‘re very appreciative to be invited along for the ride. One thing we‘ve noticed though is the lack of M/M specific blog hops created for writers and readers of our particular genre. So we thought, why not make one?

K-Lee came up with the clever name: Hop Against Homophobia, and we've decided to use the International Day Against Homophobia, May 17th, as our official hop kickoff date. The hop will run until midnight May 20^th.

We hope to get as many authors of gay (M/M) fiction as we can to sign up and show their support. Publishers, sellers and reviewers are welcome to take part as long as your prize is M/M-related.

Here are the author participation requirements:

--- Be an author/publisher/reviewer of M/M fiction.

--- Offer a M/M-related prize (M/M book/ebook, or GLBTQ swag, t-shirt, whatever you can come up with).

--- Provide links of other blog participants to your blog visitors (will be explained in an email, but it'll be as easy as copy-paste).

--- Talk about the International Day Against Homophobia in your May 17th blog entry (as little as just a mention – your choice).

--- Add the colorful Hop Against Homophobia image to your blog/website with a link to the official hop site:

 http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/ 

We are discouraging the use of gift cards as prizes. In doing this, we hope to attract readers more specific to our M/M genre and not just readers looking to score a gift card. We want m/m fiction lovers to win our prizes!

We plan to do as much promotion on this as we can and we'd appreciate it if all participants could help by mentioning the hop once in a while. This is OUR (people of the gay fiction genre) hop, and if successful this year, it could turn into a fabulous annual event of M/M love!

What is a blog hop? Take a look at this post.

For authors/publishers/reviewers interested in taking part, specifics will be sent via email once we get closer to the date, so everyone will know what to do. But for now, please sign up and encourage others to do the same :)

What is a Blog Hop?

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What is a blog hop? 

A book blog hop is an event that usually takes place over a few days and the purpose is to get readers to a) see your name b) see your books and c) have the option to follow your blog to get to know you as an author and to be kept up to date about your future work. 

Tip! The more often you take part in events like blog hops, the quicker the readers will learn your names.

What do I need to take part?

A blog :) We also suggest you have a tool on your blog, either the "follow" button on Blogger or some other similar thing (like Google Network). If you don't want such feature you could always leave a link to your author facebook page, twitter, a newsletter or some other way for the interested readers to follow you. It's up to you if you make following mandatory to take part, but it is our experience that people don't like jumping through hoops, especially after a long day of hopping. 

You will also need a prize! Not all blog hops insist upon a prize, but a prize a great incentive for people to visit your blog and a great way for you to get your work seen.

Tip! It's a good idea to blog about the hop a few days before it takes place. It'll generate interest and get people excited. We also hope that people will spread the word through facebook and other channels.

How does it work?

Every author taking part in the hop sets up a hop-post on the hop day as early as possible. Over the hop-days, people will drop by and leave comments. Just before midnight on the last the contests close and you may draw a winner (or you can leave it until the next day). Every blog owner chooses their own winners. We recommend making a separate post to announce the winner, because people don't like searching through the blog to find out who won.

Tip! Readers don't like it when the blog owners haven't set up their hop-post when they start blog-hopping (as in jumping between blogs). It's a good idea to have written the post the night before the hop day - if you're not an early riser - and set it to auto post early on the hop day. There's a feature in most blog programs that allows this.

What do the readers get out of it?

A prize! But not only that - they might be finding their next favorite author and a whole bunch of interesting books to add to their piles of to-be-read.

Tip! Make sure your books/book links are either easily visible on your blog. It puts people off to have to search through the entire blog/website to find your books. Some won't only be looking at your giveaway-book/prize - they'll want to see what else you have out there.

What do I put in my hop-post?

Some hops have themes or events that they'll want their participants to discuss, but sometimes there are no themes (or an obligation to discuss the theme/event).*

State the rules of your giveaway. Some ask people to follow their blog, facebook page, twitter, newsletter   etc. (it's what we call "jumping through hoops", though we're in no way condemning it). Some have quizzes, or have the partakers answer a question, like "what are you reading?" or "how do you show your support to homosexuality". Some prefer a simple "leave a comment with your email address" - it's up to you :)

Say what you're offering as a prize and how the winner will be chosen. 

Finally, it's a good idea to mention the follow options in the blog hop post (whether or not you make follow mandatory).

Tip! Random drawings are best to choose a winner - but there are many ways to do them. There's a nifty tool at Random.org where you enter the numbers of contestants and it'll generate a random number for you (you'll have given everyone a number first or just count down the entries until you find the winner). Erica knows this one person who writes the names on pieces of paper, folds them and tosses them to her three cats. The first three her cats snag are the winners (Erica won a book that way once - thanks kitty!).

Who may sign up for the prizes?

Everyone (...over 18, if your prize is a steamy erotic novel). Other hop blog owners are normally also free to enter the contests of the other blogs.

There may be additional conditions to various hops, like some make it mandatory to stick the hop image to the hop entry, but these are the basic techniques. 

Have questions? Feel free to comment :)


* If you're taking part in the Hop Against Homophobia, the focus will be on the International Day Against Homophobia. It would be nice if everyone wrote a message on that. Something to show your support.