Archive for March, 2015

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

LibraryThing’s 4th Annual Edible Books Contest

Spring has finally sprung, which means it’s time for our FOURTH annual Edible Books Contest! Members cooked up a delicious batch of literary confections and concoctions last year, and we’re expecting another strong showing for 2015.

The Rules

1. Create an “edible book.” We’re defining this broadly, so entries can include dishes:

  • referencing a book’s title or characters (puns are entirely welcome)
  • inspired by a book’s plot
  • in the shape of an actual book (or eBook, or scroll, etc.)
  • takeoffs on the LibraryThing logo

2. Document your masterpiece. At right is the grand-prize winner from last year’s contest, inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You can see other submissions from last year in the EdibleBooks2014 gallery (and here’s 2013 and 2012). If your creation is super realistic, take a photo cross section of your creation as you eat it!

3. Upload the photo to your LT member gallery. Sign in, then go here and click the “Add another picture” link to add the image.

4. When adding the image, be sure to tag it “EdibleBooks2015.” Yes, those capital letters are important. This will add your image to the contest gallery, and counts as your entry. If your photo doesn’t have that tag, we won’t know that you’ve entered. You can see current entries here.

5. Tell us about your literary inspiration—and how you made it—in the “Title/description” box

DEADLINE: The contest will run for just over three weeks. Add your photos by 6pm Eastern on Sunday, April 19th.

The Prizes

From all entries in the EdibleBooks2015 gallery, LibraryThing staff will choose the following winners:

Grand Prize (1)

  • $50 worth of books from Sherman’s Bookstore*
  • Your choice of LT t-shirt OR tote bag
  • An LT library stamp (your choice of classic, mini, or “clean” stamp)
  • A CueCat
  • An LT sticker
  • Two lifetime gift memberships
  • Great honor and prestige

Runners Up (2)

  • Your choice of one LT t-shirt, tote bag, stamp, or CueCat
  • Two lifetime gift memberships

As always, we will pick a few Honorable Mentions from the batch of entries. The more entries we receive, the more Honorable Mentions we can make—and all of them will get lifetime gift memberships, too.

Have fun, and good luck!

Fine Print: You can enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one prize. Your dish must be made of edible ingredients (no hats, lost-wax sculptures, performance art), and by entering the contest you certify that it is your own creation. Entries submitted to previous LibraryThing Edible Books contests will not be considered. All decisions as to winners and book prize slections will be made by LibraryThing staff, and our decisions are final. LibraryThing staff and family can enter, but can only be honored as prize-less runners-up. Any images you load stay yours, or you can release them under a copyleft license, but we get a standard “non-exclusive, perpetual” right to use them.

Questions? Comments? Post them over on Talk.


*Surprise books will be chosen by LibraryThing staff from Portland, ME’s indie bookstore, Sherman’s! We’ll make our selections based on the winner’s library/wishlist.

Labels: contest, contests, fun

Friday, March 20th, 2015

New Drag and Drop Catalog Style Editing

We’ve updated how you can arrange the fields in your catalog. What was formerly a collection of drop-down menus has been converted to a drag and drop method. Questions or comments? Tell us all about it on Talk.

Test it out and update your catalog styles here!

Here’s what it looks like now:

Details

You’ll still have up to five customizable display styles, A-E as pictured, with a maximum of 14 fields in each style. Now, instead of having to adjust five or six drop-down menus in order to add a field to the middle of a style, or completely rearrange the order in which the fields appear, all you have to do is drag and drop!

You can drag fields over to a style from the collapsible menu on the right side of the page. This menu categorizes various fields according to type/function: “Physical” contains all the options for dimensions of the book, “Classification” features call numbers, Lexile measures, and so on. You can even drag fields from one display style into another, although doing so will remove that field from the original style.

You can reach your Display Style Settings from either the handy little “Settings” button at the top of Your Books, or by clicking the “Settings” that appears in the upper-right corner, just below the site search bar, when you’re signed in and on the LibraryThing home page, or your profile.

Go see it in action and come tell us what you think on Talk!

Labels: new feature, new features, Uncategorized

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015

March Early Reviewers batch is live!

The March 2015 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We’ve got 131 titles this month, and a grand total of 3,545 copies to give out. It’s a big batch, and a great month for non-fiction, in particular. Which books are you hoping to snag this month? Come tell us on Talk!

If you haven’t already, sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing/email address and make sure they’re correct.

ยป Then request away!

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, March 30th at 6pm Eastern.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France, and many more. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

MSI Press Henry Holt and Company Crown Publishing
Taylor Trade Publishing CarTech Books Tundra Books
Lion Fiction Beacon Press Apex Publications
Booktrope Ashland Creek Press Wave Books
Open Books Prospect Park Books Five Rivers Publishing
Cool Gus Publishing Information Today, Inc. EsKape Press
Sunrise River Press William Morrow Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Candlewick Press Post Mortem Press Chronicle Books
Bookkus Publishing Ballantine Books Akashic Books
Medallion Press Harper 360 NewCon Press
Blacksmith Books PublicAffairs Bantam Dell
Bellevue Literary Press Human Kinetics Books to Go Now
Plume BookViewCafe Rippple Books
Recorded Books HighBridge Audio McFarland
Avery Random House Gotham Books
JournalStone Symmetry Press LLC Plough Publishing House
Applegate Valley Publishing Telemachus Press, LLC Oculus Print

Labels: early reviewers, LTER