Author Archive

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

SantaThing 2010: Secret Santa for Booklovers!

It’s time to announce the fourth annual SantaThing!

What is SantaThing, you ask?* SantaThing is Secret Santa for LibraryThing members.

The idea is simple. Pay $25. You play Santa to a LibraryThing member we pick for you**, and choose up $25 worth of books for them, based on their LibraryThing library or using their short description. Someone (secret!) else does the same for you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, and you get the joy of giving AND receiving books!

You can sign up for yourself, and you can also buy in for anyone else–LibraryThing member or not. If the person doesn’t have a LibraryThing account, make sure to mention what kinds of books they’d like, so their Secret Santa can choose wisely.

Even if you don’t want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others.

A peppermint twist to the plot:
This year, we’re ordering all books from BookDepository.com. After three years of tinkering with how we order, we decided this is by far the easiest solution.*** BookDepository ships to the most number of countries (see the full list), and they have free shipping on orders of any size****! After years of spending hours and hours manually ordering for each Santa, their bulk upload of orders is going to leave us enough time to decorate the LibraryThing tree (otherwise known as “the stick in the corner of the office” in previous years).

Here are the important notes:

The sign-up will close Monday, November 29th at 8pm Eastern time. Once the sign-up closes, you’ll be able to use the same page to pick for your Santa.

Picking closes Wednesday, December 8th at 10pm Eastern time. Once the picking ends, the ordering begins, and we’ll get all the books out to you as soon as we can. There’s no guarantee that we’ll have books out by December 25th, but we’re going to try our darnedest.

Go sign up to become a Secret Santa now!

Questions? Ask them in this Talk topic.

*I feel like I should break into a holiday-sounding song to describe it. I found a Christmastime flash-mob in Cincinnati for you instead.
**We match members based on the contents of their catalog, thereby matching you with a Secret Santa you share tastes with.
*** Two years ago Amazon let us use Amazon Prime. Last year they ended up nixing it, so we had to eat all the shipping charges. As for independents—which we were an option last time—while we’d like to support them, less than 5% of members chose them last year, and the orders were spread out. Book Depository has agreed to give us free shipping, and a special spreadsheet that will cut down on all the manual labor.
****All the time! Go check them out—their prices are often as low as other online booksellers, and the free worldwide shipping with no minimum order is the absolute icing on the cake.

Labels: santathing, secret santa

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Three thousand free books: the November Early Reviewer batch is up!

The November 2010 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We’ve got 100 books this month, and a grand total of 3,088 copies to give out. (The number was 99, but satisfyingly we had a late addition, pushing us into the triple digits of titles!)

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it’s correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Friday, November 26th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to nearly all of them! 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!

W.W. Norton Canongate Books MSI Press
Hachette Book Group Bromera Bell Bridge Books
Del Rey Kregel Publications HarperCollins Childrens Books
Clerisy Press Menasha Ridge Press Doubleday Books
Signet Idea Men Productions St. Martin’s Griffin
B&H Publishing Group Hyperion and Voice WaterBrook Press
Little, Brown and Company 12 Spectra
Double Day Religion Kensington Publishing Dafina
BookViewCafe Ballantine Books Nolo
Zed Books Harper Paperbacks Rovira i Virgili University Press
Zondervan William Morrow Bethany House
Penn State University Press Putnam Books ROI Marketing
L&L Dreamspell Riverhead Books Ulysses Press
Peak Performance Press EOS Systems Eos
Pink Narcissus Press Penguin Young Readers Group PublicAffairs
St. Martin’s Minotaur Human Kinetics Tor Books
Bloomsbury St. Martin’s Press Open Road
Bull Publishing Random House Silver Oak

Labels: early reviewers

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

October State of the Thing

State of the Thing logoWe’ve just sent out this month’s State of the Thing, LibraryThing’s monthly newsletter of features, author interviews and various forms of bookish delight.

This month we have over 2,000 free Early Reviewer books available, interviews with Kristin Hersh and Sara Gruen, a new feature and a list of the popular books this month.

Check your inbox or read it online.

I got to interview Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses fame, about her memoir Rat Girl. Kristin talks about bipolar disorder, synesthesia, getting to look back on her life 25 years later — and how Colum McCann should totally be a band.

We also have an interview with Sara Gruen, about her latest novel, Ape House, which features bonobos, the media circus and a well-meaning journalist in the middle. Sara talks about meeting the real bonobos at the Great Ape Trust that inspired her simian characters and cheerfully admits to being an animal person. She also lists her favorite ape resources for anyone who’s read Ape House and wants to learn more about them. Last but not least, the interview features a photo of Sara at the Great Ape Trust giving kisses to one of the bonobos!

Read previous State of the Thing newsletters:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/State_of_the_Thing

If you don’t get State of the Thing, you can add it in your email preferences. You also have to have an email address listed.

Labels: early reviewers

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

National Book Festival wrap-up

National Book Festival goersBy all accounts the 2010 National Book Festival went of without a hitch or typo. There was good weather, ample food options and the LibraryThing members managed to find each other!

Here are the LTers who got together to hang out IRL*. You can read about their experiences meeting up and seeing authors here.

Thanks to squeakychu (in her awesome custom LibraryThing teeshirt) for organizing!

Back row: gilroy, Tanneitha (peeking over gilroy’s shoulder), drneutron, VoraciousReader, carlym

Front row: SqueakyChu, jmaloney17, veborder

*IRL =  in real life

Labels: meet up, members, National Book Festival

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

TOR Early Reviewer books!

Wow! Added to the already expanded batch of Early Reviewer books for this month, we have three books from the publisher Tor! That means we’re up to 87 different titles and like a bazillion copies available to you, for free, to review.

See, what happened was I asked the Early Reviewers what publishers they’d like to see in Early Reviewers. They gave me their wish lists, and at the top of lots of them was Tor! Tor! Tor! So, I asked Tor to ask if they had any books they’d like to offer. They said “Sure!”

So, if you enjoy reviewing books,  like free books (if you read this blog, I bet you do) and dig awesome sci-fi/fantasy, you might want to request one of these books.

See all of the Early Reviewers books

Labels: early reviewers

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

MORE Early Reviewer books!

I had just blogged yesterday about the newest batch of Early Reviewer books, which featured 1,906 copies of 72 different titles. For whatever reason*, a number of publishers asked if they could add book to the October batch after it had opened. Of course I let them. Who am I to stand between voracious readers and a big pile of books? We’re now have 84 different books, with 2,086 copies!

If you are one of those folks who jumped in and did your requesting yesterday, you might want to go back and see if there are any other books you’d be interested in reviewing.

Oh no! New books?! Take me back to the Early Reviewer page directly!

*My guess is they were all outside jumping in piles of autumn leaves, at least those located in the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere else, I’m going to say it was a case of the Mondays.

Labels: early reviewers

Monday, October 4th, 2010

New Early Reviewers books are here!

The October 2010 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We’ve got 72 books this month, and a grand total of 1906 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it’s correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Friday, October 29th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the many, many countries. 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!

Kregel Publications W.W. Norton WaterBrook Press
New American Library New York Review Books Human Kinetics
Avon Books Harper Paperbacks Hachette Book Group
Hyperion and Voice Ballantine Books Wilderness Press
Scholastic Bascom Hill Books Sovereign
Menasha Ridge Press Tatra Press Penguin
Bromera Bantam Dell The Permanent Press
Beacon Press Fernwood Publishing Hyperion Books
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers St. Martin’s Press South Dakota State Historical Society Press
Second Story Press Henry Holt and Company Bell Bridge Books
Nolo Toybox Books HarperCollins Childrens Books
Chin Music Press BookViewCafe Demos Medical Publishing
Zondervan Echelon Press Bloomsbury
DK Publishing Sasquach Books St. Martin’s Griffin
Rovira i Virgili University Press Harper Navigator Press

Labels: early reviewers

Friday, September 24th, 2010

All US Libraries in LibraryThing Local, we think

Thanks to some serious work on the part of volunteers, all libraries (and branches) in the United States have a page in LibraryThing Local. Volunteer members took information for each library from publiclibraries.com, and created or added it to Local. The last bazillion entries were done by lemontwist, to whom we are very grateful.

Since we also added the ability to upload more than one venue photo, I suggest we start an official LibraryThing sport, the goal being to take a photo of yourself in front of as many public libraries as you can visit, and add them to each library’s page. Here, I’ll start.

You can read the thread about adding all the libraries here.

This also means that you should be able to find any US library when you’re out and about with your iPhone, with the Local Books app.

Do we really have them all?
The volunteers were as thorough as possible, but if you find a library or branch that isn’t listed, go ahead and add it (here’s the help page). If you live outside the US and find a list of your country’s libraries, let us know, and we can work on adding all your libraries into Local as well.


Cambridge Public Library photo by Nicole Hennig, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic. Seattle Public Library photo by the Seattle Municipal Archives, Copyright: Item No. 147779 Use with attribution allowed. Permission info here.

Labels: librarything local

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

September State of the Thing

State of the Thing logoIn your inbox, you should be getting this month’s State of the Thing, LibraryThing’s monthly newsletter of features, author interviews and various forms of bookish delight.

This month we have 2,708 free books, a meetup, our fifth birthday, an exclusive interview with Jane Smiley, a podcast with Mary Roach and a list of the popular books this month.

Check your inbox or read it online.

I got to chat with Mary Roach, about her new book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. We discuss her tenacity in getting interesting details out of astronaut interviews, her zero-gravity experience, a couple of marriage proposals from LibraryThing members, cross-stitched fly swatters and more. You can hear the podcast here.

We also have an interview with Jane Smiley, about her latest novel, Private Life, a study on choosing a mate who turns out to be an ill fit. Jane talks about her characters and their foibles (a polite term–extreme eccentricity would also work), navigating marriage, and about her writing process. She muses on the Nobel prize for literature and the books that were a special writing experience. As a bonus, she told me what she’s knitting!

Read previous State of the Thing newsletters:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/State_of_the_Thing

If you don’t get State of the Thing, you can add it in your email preferences. You also have to have an email address listed.

Labels: state of the thing

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

LibraryThing meetup at the National Book Festival

Book Festival posterIt’s actually the 5th Annual BookCrossing/LibraryThing Meet-Up at The National Book Festival, 2010, in Washington, DC but that makes for a long blog post title. If you’re interested in socializing with other LibraryThing and Bookcrossing members while you’re at the National Book Festival, this is your chance. The festival is free, and there will be many many authors to see.

Read more about the meet-up here in the Talk group.

Date: Saturday, September 25, 2010
Time: 2-3 pm (the festival runs from 10 AM – 5 PM)
Place: Bottom right side of the steps leading to the Museum of Natural History (the domed building).
What: We gather informally for an hour to chat and get to know one another. Bookcrossing will be giving away free books. Help yourself to any books that you wish to take home. Just look for the yellow Bookcrossing wagon.
Who: Any member of LibraryThing OR Bookcrossing and their family and friends are invited. Wear something that identifies you as a LibraryThinger or Bookcrosser.

Thanks to Squeakychu for organizing!

Labels: 1