Happy Thanksgiving

We Are Thankful For....
What makes Thanksgiving a great holiday? Stopping and thinking about all those "glass is half full" moments in our lives. In truth, most of our glasses flow well over the brim. Sometimes we walk through our lives not seeing ever-present magic and grace. Sometimes we treat our partners, lovers and friends with indifference. We take them for granted.

Thanksgiving is our national day of atonement. The pilgrims survived hardships we can't conceive much less find our way through. They fought for a toe-hold in a hostile new world. They sat down together to breathe a collective sigh of relief and give thanks. Thankful for the abundance of their lives, full lives with challenges at every turn, they gathered to hold a moment, to be thankful, to share and love.

Times and challenges change, but a day to hold, share and be thankful is a valuable tradition. If you are reading this on Thursday we are home with our families and friends being thankful for things such as:

• our customer's support, intelligence and involvement in our business
• the opportunity to help people find each other
• the privilege of service our chosen profession affords
• great employers and employees
• the honor to do what we love and get paid for it

A bullet list seems a little impersonal but it is past 3:00 and I have to go gather things to re-heat for my Thanksgiving meal with my brother Drew tomorrow. I don't cook as much as I heat up since that is the safer thing to do (by far). Cooking is an art and one I've never mastered. If you are cooking tomorrow I salute you.

I am not going to proselytize too much in my Thanksgiving message, but there are a few things going on right now you should know about:

• 25% off Sale Ends on December 2nd (we are also calling this our Better Sex Black Friday Sale) and it ends on Tuesday morning December 2nd.
  
  
• Testing Lower Free Shipping - Got permission to test a $39.00 "trigger" on our free shipping during Thanksgiving. This too will end on December 2nd.
  


• How Free Standard Shipping Works - When you place $39.00 or more in your cart standard shipping is on us. The cool part, and something 50% of our customers do, is you can upgrade to 2 Day Air for $6.00. This upgrade gives you a tracking number, gets your purchase picked faster and cuts shipping time (especially to the west coast) down to almost nothing. Best $6.00 you will spend.
  


• Erotic Fiction Voting - One of my favorite authors has 3 stories in our contest this week. Vote counts matter, so please read K. Pratt's stories and pick your favorite here: http://www.bettersex.com/t-erotic-fiction-contest-story1.aspx.
  


• Save Your Love Life, Save The World - We received great feedback on our desire to share our bounty around the world. Many people have asked to help by selecting donate to DKT International as one of their "free gifts" at check out. Don't know about you, but I love the idea there is a little girl or boy somewhere in the world who is alive today because DKT helped protect their family. Save Your Love Life TO Save The World, and thanks.
  


• 5 New "Helping Hands" product videos - Our customers love what we call our "helping hands product videos" because they show how our toys actually work. In our latest videos, done by some true Pros From Dover, you can HEAR how powerful the vibration is and get a real sense of every product feature. Here is where you can find our new product vids:
  
  We-Vibe (yes we do)
  16 Function Rabbit (finally back in stock!!!)
  Silicone Triple Orgasm Cock Ring (become part of the cock ring revolution)
  Lucid Dreams #14 (14 different levels of cool pleasure here)
  B3 Tuyo (this little ball will rock your world)
  


• We lost our "Tweet" coupon there for a few days, but it is back now and don't forget to follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/bettersexweb. I am about to post what using Tweet in our secret code area will get you now that it is fixed.

Lots more cool stuff coming soon. We've been working almost nonstop, think Santa's exhausted helpers, so stay tuned and have a GREAT THANKSGIVING.

Martin
msmith(at)BetterSex(dot)com

Call Center Holiday Hours

The Better Sex Customer Service Call Center is closed from 3:00-6:00pm (EST) on Thanksgiving Day (November 27th) so that representatives may observe the holiday.

Rabbit Super Finally In-Stock!

The Story of the 16-Function Rabbit Super...

We sent out several of the 16-Function Rabbit Super to our Better Sex Buzz Team this June. It was such a hit with them, it's no wonder why it was a huge success. Within a couple months, the 16-Function Rabbit Super was consistently on back-order.

Finally we were able to catch up and the 16-Function Rabbit Super is back in stock and ready to complete your collection. Click Here to check out the new demo video!

Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest - Week 2

Erotic Fiction Week 2: Touching broken rules.
This week's contest features stories from returning writers with A Rule Worth Breaking building a lead. Here is how this week's race looks as of Friday around noon:



Vote for your favorite story this weekend:

Story 1: Touch Me by Madison Paige

Story 2: A Rule Worth Breaking by Heather Lin

Story 3: Oh What Fun It Is to Ride by L R Stewart & F Norman

Better Sex Erotic Fiction Contest - Update

Fiction Contest Schedule - Through Week 5
Our original plan was to be through all stories by this time. That has not happened due to the number of stories received and other factors (nasty flu). We are scheduled now through week 5, so there are 30 more stories to be selected. Guess what we are doing this weekend? Reading your stories. Notifications have gone out to authors selected through week 5. Our goal is to have all notifications out by the end of next week.

Thanks for your patience,

Martin
msmith(at)BetterSex (dot) com

UP TO 50% OFF 50 NEW PRODUCTS

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Save Your Love Life, Save The World

We are having a few early bumps on our Better Sex Save Your Love Life, Save The World campaign. The DKT donation is not working at check out yet. We are working on this as I write this and it should be available tomorrow. If you would like to know more about Save Your Love Life, To Save The World use the links below:

Save Your Love Life, To Save The World Main Page

Save Your Love Life Page

Save The World Page

Enter our Save Your Love Life, Save The World Contest:

Take our poll

IVoted Special

$5.00 or $10.00 Off Today
Type "ivoted" in our shopping cart, click "update cart" and we will reward your waiting in line to do your civic duty with $5.00 off orders below $50 and $10 off orders of $50 or more. Today only and thanks for voting.

Better Sex Fall Fiction Contest - Story Schedule

Better Sex Fiction Contest - What is happening now.
The deadline for story submission was Saturday. We are going through all submissions now and confirming their receipt. This is going to take until Wednesday the 5th (at least). We are working our way through stories and should be done with notification next week. *** Note, we are up to week 5, so we are now 1/3 done. More notifications are going out the week of 11.17. ***

Vote Now
Every week 3 new stories will need your support, so please use the link below to cast your vote. Somewhere in Iowa, Los Angeles, Boston, Canada, Great Britain or New Zealand there is an author who needs your support. Help support a writer this holiday season by casting your vote in the contest with the largest award for an amateur writer. Here is where you can find all 3 stories every week:

http://www.bettersex.com/t-erotic-fiction-contest.aspx

When will my story run?
If your story is selected, we will move it into a "publication slot". We are working on our publication schedule now. Our plan is to notify all authors by 11.21 (we are behind) but it may take a little bit more time based on the number of late entries received. Only the first five weeks of stories are determined as of today. The rest of the contest is being scheduled now based on our reading.

Where should I link to send my voters?
We are using the main fiction page as the hub this time around. This prevents any incorrect links, so all stories will be staged from this link:

http://www.bettersex.com/t-erotic-fiction-contest.aspx

Can I use your logo on my blog?
Yes, in fact we are creating a new version of our logo that writers whose stories have been selected may use since being selected is itself an award. We will also have special logos for Weekly Winning stories, semifinalists and the Grand Prize winning story. We will post those new logos to the main page: http://www.bettersex.com/t-erotic-fiction-contest.aspx

How will you make sure voting is fair?
We've developed a voting algorithm that detects unnatural voting patterns. This algorithm successfully determine there was an attempt at fraud in the summer and we removed the story and disqualified the author once fraud was proved.

How many votes can I cast?
We have blocks on the system that prevent anyone from voting more than once with the same computer. We do allow authors to vote for themselves twice figuring most of us have more than one computer these days, but please do not go to the library and vote on every computer there (this actually happened in the summer). Our safety measures pick up artificial patterns like this and we will be forced to remove your story.

What if My Story is Second?
Vote count is very important. Last year we had to remove a story. When we did that we went to total vote count to determine what story would become the replacement. If your story is second on a week with a very high vote count the contest may not be over for you or your story. This year we've also instituted a "judges wild card" pick for a story that did not win its week but we feel should be in the semifinals. Votes matter, so even if your story is not winning encourage your friends to vote as you never know what will happen.

What Happens now?
3 stories go online every week from now until Valentine's Day 2009. Each week the story with the most votes wins $100, will be included in our 2009 book and gains entry to the semifinals. Every weekly winner is then run off to determine finalists. Finalists go to 3 judge panel to determine the Grand Prize Winner. Our goal is to announce the winner on Valentine's Day 2009.

Erotic Fiction Contest Updates
You may want bookmark our Better Sex Blog http://better-sex-buzz-team.blogspot.com/ since this is where we will post helpful information and contest updates. We will also post updates to our Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/bettersexweb .

Good luck to all authors & keep writing.

Martin

msmith (at) BetterSex (dot) com