Who wants a prize like that?

MJ Rose points us to 150thrillers.com.

The deal is straightforward. Sign up for the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers and get entered to win 150 signed thrillers by famous thriller authors.

There are some real insights here. The first is that having 'competitors' band together to gain attention is really smart and really rare. Lee Child doesn't compete with David Morrell. Lee Child competes with TV or boredom. As Tim O'Reilly says, his enemy is obscurity. By using the Net to coordinate their audiences, they all win.

The second brilliancy is that the only people who want to win the prize are the people who'd like to get the newsletter... an iPhone would be a lousy prize, because it would be an irrelevant bribe. Instead, what they've done is created an easy way for one thriller reader to introduce the newsletter to another... "hey, I know you like Stuart Woods, check this out..."

Wanna bet that newsletter subscribers end up buying more books?