Dear winways,
Welcome to the June 2014 State of the Thing! This month, we have a special bonus batch of titles for Early Reviewers, Matt is moving on and moving up, we kicked off another round of One LibraryThing, One Book, and we've added the ability to rate recommendations for your books.
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Early Reviewers Bonus Batch: Hachette
This month, we have a special bonus batch of Early Reviewers titles, all from Hachette Book Group's imprints (Little, Brown, Grand Central, and Orbit among them), with 47 titles, and a total of 825 copies available. These are all in addition to the regular June Early Reviewers batch! Hachette wanted to participate in a big way this month, so we decided to put together this bonus batch to showcase all the great stuff they have coming up, like the titles below.
You are eligible to win books from both batches—winning from one won't affect your chances of winning from another. Unfortunately, due to distribution rights issues, we're only able to offer books from this bonus batch to US members, though we hope to expand future bonus batches to all members.
See details about this bonus batch on the LibraryThing blog, or check out the list and request copies! The bonus batch will be open for requests until Tuesday, July 1st at 6pm Eastern.
Happy trails, Matt!
Back in late September, Matt (Member Support and Social Media, LT member matthewmason) joined the LibraryThing team. This past Friday, we had to say farewell, as Matt is off to graduate school! He'll be moving all the way across the country to start an MA/PhD program in Italian at Berkeley this fall. We're sad to see him go, but very excited for him. We sent him off with a copy a book from one of his favorite authors: a Latin/English edition of Boccaccio's Famous Women. Thanks for all your hard work, Matt, and good luck! We'll miss you!
Group Read: The Penelopiad
Earlier this month, we kicked off our latest installment of One LibraryThing, One Book pick. Official discussion for The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is already underway, but it's not too late to join us! Head on over to the One LibraryThing, One Book group to chime in.
If you're unfamiliar with One LibraryThing, One Book, be sure to check out the blog post that started it all.
ALA Las Vegas
Headed to the ALA Annual Conference next week? So are we! Tim and KJ will be at Booth #1247 in the exhibit hall. Be sure to stop by and say hello.
Additionally, there's still room in Tim's crash course, Enough PHP to Be Dangerous, Friday, June 27th. If you're interested in attending, send Tim an email at tim@librarything.com, introduce yourself, and put "Enough PHP to Be Dangerous" in the subject line.
New Features
Rate Recommendations. Similar to rating author recommendations, you can now rate LibraryThing's automatic recommendations according to work. See a crummy recommendation for a book in your library, or a book that's too low on the list? Now you can do something about it. You can find the Rate Recommendations feature as part of the "LibraryThing Recommendations" section on any work page. See the blog post for full details, or come tell us what you think on Talk.
Talk of the Thing
A New Milestone. As of late May, LibraryThing members have collectively cataloged over 90 million books! Amazing! Thanks, everyone, and keep up the good work. You can see the exact total number of books—and other fun stats—over on the Zeitgeist page.
Which Authors Bring Out Your Inner Completionist? Every reader has their own favorite authors, but who makes you feel like you simply must read everything they've written? Join the discussion and add yours here.
Chain of Book Titles. This game has been running for quite some time now, but it just keeps on going! The object is to chain together three book titles, using the first word of the first title to build off of the previous comment's list of three, in which the first word of the first title you post much match the last word of the third title posted previously. For example, a comment ending with Thistles & Barley must be followed by another title starting with the word "barley." Check it out!
Free Books: Early Reviewers
You are not currently signed up for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. You are missing out!
Early Reviewers offers free books to members—about 100 titles a month! Since 2007, we've given out over 160,000 books. The catch? Publishes want your honest review. How you review a book won't help or hurt your chances of winning books in the future, but not reviewing your winning will.
» Sign up for Early Reviewers
The June batch of Early Reviewers books contains 4,150 copies of 131 different titles. The deadline to request a free book is June 30th at 6pm Eastern. Look for the July batch around the 7th.
As mentioned above, we also have a bonus batch of Hachette titles running this month, on top of June's offerings, for a grand total of 178 titles, and 4,975 copies! Check out details about the bonus batch on the blog.
The most requested books so far from the June batch:
More free books: Member Giveaways
At any given time, there are hundreds of books available from our Member Giveaways program. It's like Early Reviewers, but isn't limited to select publishers—any author or member can post books. Request books, or offer your own!
Hot titles this month
- Allegiant by Veronica Roth
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
- Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
- The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
- The Circle by Dave Eggers
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
- Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
That's it for this month! I'll see you in July.
Questions, comments, ideas? Send them my way.
—Loranne (loranne@librarything.com)
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