Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Early Reviewer Books You’ve Won

We’ve* added an easy way to keep track of all the books you’ve won from Early Reviewers. This new page shows you all the books you’ve won and whether you’ve written your reviews yet. You can also mark if you haven’t received a book yet, so that the lack of a review won’t count against you. Once your LTER book comes in the mail, you can mark it received and then add it to your library right from this page.

Books you’ve won

As we say in the Rules and Conditions for Early Reviewers:

You are not legally obligated to review books you receive through LTER. But subsequent LTER dispersal decisions may take your number of reviewed and unreviewed books into account. A book will be considered “reviewed” if a review is posted to LibraryThing and is comprised of at least 25 words and not obviously nonsense. Reviews may include but not solely consist of a URL.

So write those reviews!

Talk about it in this Talk thread.

Note: You’re not required to actually mark whether or not you’ve received the book. If you’ve reviewed it, we’re going to assume you got your copy. The received data is mainly so we can keep track of books that have gone missing in the mail.

Update: The next step is to add a similar page for Member Giveaway books. We’re doing it as a separate page since the requirements are somewhat different between Early Reviewers and Member Giveaways. But the MG page will also let you see what you’ve won, mark books as received or not, and (importantly) remind you whether or not the member requested a review with the giveaway.

*Credit goes to Luke—thanks for building this!

Labels: early reviewers, LTER

24 Comments:

  1. Anonymous says:

    Awesome! I have two feature requests, one simple, one maybe not.

    On the 'Books you've won' page, I'd like a link to the actual reviews I've written.

    Also, since I only win a small fraction of the books I request, I'd like an 'add this book to your library' or some such button, from which I could add the book directly to my wishlist collection. That way, I can keep track of the books I've requested, didn't win, but still want to read.

    craigim

  2. Abby says:

    For request 1, try clicking a book cover. That should bring you to your review for that book, if it's written. If it's not written, it'll bring you to the empty box that you should put your review into…

  3. Erika says:

    Very cool!

    It looks like there's a small glitch somewhere, though… there's one early reviewer book that I won that's not showing up on my list. The book is Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, and it looks like I got it in January 2008.

  4. susana says:

    humm cool

    if they sent books to Portugal…

  5. Abby says:

    Erika – email me (abby at librarything.com) with your user name? I'll fix it!

  6. Anonymous says:

    Like Erika, I am missing a book, but in my case, it is still not reviewed. Nice to have the list!

  7. -Tim says:

    Oh dear… I really do suck at writing these reviews on time. My apologies. But in my defense, one of the books shown (The Book From The Sky by Robert Kelly) was indeed read and reviewed last summer. It shows up in my reviews from my profile link but not on the new summary page.

    Will do my best to clean up and write the rest of those reviews. Most of them are read, I just didn't feel much about the books one way or the other and had difficulties coming up with something relevant to say. I'll figure something.

    ~thegreattim on LT.

  8. patrish says:

    How much of a lag time will there be from when you're notified you're getting a book from the monthly batch and it shows up on your page?? I ask because it doesn't show the book I'm getting from the June batch.

  9. Tina says:

    Thanks so much for this feature…it will make it much easier for us and I'm sure way more convenient for you all. Great job as always.

  10. librarythingluke says:

    We've been pulling data from some older and varied sources, so if you are missing a book or feel like you're not getting proper review credit hope over to the Talk thread and let me know. I'll be monitoring it closely and getting the gaps filled in. Thanks!

  11. Keesh says:

    Nice feature…definitely inspired me to finish up my 2 reviews that I have been procrastinating to complete.

  12. Victor Mowery says:

    Hi, I love this feature. I have a question / issue:

    Is there / will there be a link to this from somewhere on my LT home page or profile? After looking around for it, I can't find the link anywhere but in your post.

    BTW, the word verification I must type in below is "ranter." Should I take that as a sign????

    Thanks,
    VicMowery

  13. Amanda (the librarian) says:

    Great new feature! Thanks so much for this.

  14. deb says:

    It seems that by the time I get the email about the Early Reviewers books available, there are already way more requests than there are books available. What's the secret to actually getting a book?

  15. Amanda (the librarian) says:

    I think actually writing reviews helps – not only of ALL your Early Reviewer books, but of many others as well. My LibraryThing account is just for the books I have read over the past two years – and I have written reviews for about 80% of them.

  16. Tim says:

    Deb: It's not first-come, first-serve. So it doesn't matter if come late.

  17. cmm1library says:

    Someone asked this, but I did not see an answer: Where do I find the link to the terrific feature of seeing the Books I Won and the status on them? (I am afraid to delete the announcement email since I can't find the link on a menu or page anywhere.)

    Also, Is it possible to continually update that a book has NOT been received? (e.g. I marked a book as not received in July but it still has not come in late August and I want to indicate that the book has still not arrived rather than someone thinking I forgot to update the status.)

    Thank you for this terrific feature. I love it!

  18. librarythingluke says:

    cmm1library: From the main ER page
    http://www.librarything.com/er/list
    there is a link called "Books You've Won" if you are an ER group member.

  19. Smilee306 says:

    So I received a book, marked it as received, added it to my library, read it, then reviewed it. I looked at my page again today and it didn't know I had received it. I redid that, but now it wants me to add it to my library again, so I imagine that my review is going unnoticed. Is this a momentary glitch or do I need to do something to fix it?

  20. avaughn says:

    I seem to be having a problem with my review. I have written the review, and it shows up when I check it in my library, but I still have the message telling me I need to write .This is my first book through Early Reviewers and I want to make sure I do this right. What do you suggest? I just don't want it to count against me. Thanks!

  21. libraryThingLuke says:

    Smilee306: looks like there is a combining issue, I'm looking at it. Thanks.

    avaughn, is that your LT name also? I don't see you as an ER winner. Send me a profile message from http://www.librarything.com/profile/LibraryThingLuke with your account name and the name of the book and Il'l sort it out for you.

  22. Beverly says:

    I love this feature! I try to get all my books reviewed quickly, but it is great to see which ones I may have missed in the "To be read" stack. Nice Work!!!

  23. Gloria says:

    I just joined a couple of days ago. Reguested maybe ten or so of the August books. Is there a limit to how many I can request? Is there any chance I'd get several? If I got 10 that would be pretty difficult to read all of them and review all of them in a timely manner. I picked several hoping that would increase my chances of getting one anyway.

  24. Abby says:

    Gloria — there's no limit to how many you request, but you'll never win more than 1 per batch.

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