The November 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 102 books this month, and a grand total of 3571 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 Saturday, November 28th at 6PM EST.


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, Germany, Afghanistan, Aland Islands, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Ascension Island, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bouvet Island, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Republic of, Congo, The Democratic Republic of the, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia/Hrvatska, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Diego Garcia, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, French Guiana, French Polynesia, French Southern Territories, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Heard and McDonald Islands, Holy See (Vatican City State), Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Republic of, Iraq, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, Democratic People's Republic, Korea, Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Federated States of, Moldova, Republic of, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Palestinian Territory, Occupied, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn Island, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion Island, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Isl, Soviet Union (being phased out), Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tristan da Cunha, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands, British, Wallis and Futuna Islands, Western Sahara, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 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!

Kensington Publishing	Dafina	Citadel Press
Bell Bridge Books	The Permanent Press	Open Letter
Penguin	Red Hen Press	Bloomsbury
W.W. Norton	Bantam	Ballantine Books
International Publishers Marketing	Human Kinetics	St. Martin's Paperbacks
St. Martin's Griffin	Weiser Books	Conari Press
Tor Books	Universalis Publishing	Doubleday Books
O'Reilly	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	HarperCollins
Bascom Hill Books	Rovira i Virgili University Press	Bethany House
Small Beer Press	Little, Brown and Company	Grand Central Publishing
St. Martin's Press	Orca Book Publishers	Picador
Pocket Books	Avon Books	Harper Paperbacks
Viking Books	Putnam Books	Random House
Henry Holt and Company	Faber and Faber

October Early Reviewer Books

The October 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 55 books this month, and a grand total of 1590 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 23rd at 6PM EST.


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, Germany, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Catalan books. A special treat this month–we have a Catalan publisher (Rovira i Virgili University Press) participating, who is offering a few books in Catalan! There are only 5 copies available for each of the books from Rovira i Virgili University Press, since they're testing the waters to see what kind of audience there will be for Catalan books.

And of course, thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Kensington Publishing	Dafina	Citadel Press
B&H Publishing Group	Bleak House Books	South Dakota State Historical Society Press
Delacorte Press	New York Review Books	New American Library
Little, Brown and Company	Barbour Books	Rovira i Virgili University Press
Self-Counsel Press	5 Spot	The Permanent Press
Hunter House	Harper Paperbacks	Avon Books
Random House	Springer	Faber and Faber
Picador	Open Letter	York House Press
Bloomsbury	Orca Book Publishers	Timber Press
Bethany House	Bell Bridge Books	Doubleday Books
HarperCollins

September Early Reviewer books

The September 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 59 books this month, and a grand total of 1310 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, September 25th at 6PM EST.

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, Germany, Denmark, European Union, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. 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!

Bloomberg Press	Weiser Books	The Permanent Press
Bell Bridge Books	Tilbury House	Kensington Publishing
Dafina	Citadel Press	Bloomsbury
B&H Publishing Group	New York Review Books	St. Martin's Minotaur
Faith Words	Hachette Book Group	St. Martin's Griffin
Orca Book Publishers	Random House	BelleBooks
Picador	Gefen Publishing House	Bleak House Books
HighBridge	University of Wisconsin Press	Barbour Books
Osprey Publishing	Beach Books	Doubleday Books
Kiwi Publishing	Henry Holt and Company	How To Books
HarperCollins	Brandeis University Press	University Press of New England
Bascom Hill Books

Early Reviewers - September bonus batch

We have a small bonus batch of Early Reviewers up right now. The September bonus batch (hey, we're *almost* to September!) has only 25 copies of one book from Riverhead Books in it, but we think it's pretty fitting book for LibraryThing...

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 Monday, September 7th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US only. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

August Early Reviewer Books

The August 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 64 books this month, and a grand total of 1,585 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 Wednesday, August 26th at 6PM EST.

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 Germany. 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!

Knopf Canada	HarperCollins	B&H Publishing Group
Conari Press	Weiser Books	The Permanent Press
Scribner	New American Library	Scholastic
St. Martin's Griffin	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	McBooks Press
Seren	Barbour Books	Bloomsbury
Delacorte Press	St. Martin's Minotaur	The Overlook Press
Broadway Books	Dorchester Publishing	Picador
Tilbury House	Random House	Kensington Publishing
Souls of My Sisters	Citadel Press	Dafina
Other Press	New York Review Books	Minted Prose
The Little Bookroom	Aquila Polonica	W.W. Norton
Little, Brown and Company	Candlewick	Spiegel & Grau
Chin Music Press	Henry Holt and Company	Hyperion Books

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters??

Quirk Books, the publisher responsible for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which has been on or near the top LibraryThing's "Popular this Month" list since May) has announced a new title: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I haven't read P&P&Z yet, but I know Sonya and Tim both enjoyed it...

Ben H. Winters, the author of the upcoming Sense and Sensiblity and Sea Monsters was interviewed in EW's Shelf Life recently, where he said:

I feel like people who really love Austen get it. Her novels are so strong, so cleverly constructed, so smart and dry, they really lend themselves to over-the-top violence.

Were truer words ever spoken?

The books' trailer


Meanwhile, the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame Smith, is now working on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter for Grand Central. That one I can't wait to read.

At any rate, we'll have to see if we can get some copies for Early Reviewers.

Hat tip Speakeasy, a WSJ blog.

July Early Reviewer Books

The July batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 63 books this month, and a grand total of 1622 copies to give out. We've also got a new Early Reviewers feature announcement—Books you've won. More on that below.

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, July 24th at 6PM EST.

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

Books you've won: We've added an easy way to track all the books you've won from Early Reviewers. The Books you've won page lets you keep track of the books you've won, reviewed, and whether a book has actually been received. More on the feature in this blog post.

And as always, our thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Hachette Book Group	Crossway	Vintage Canada
HarperCollins	Bell Bridge Books	Workman Publishing
Conari Press	Bloomberg Press	Bantam
Random House	Henry Holt and Company	Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company
Hyperion Books	Beacon Press	The Dial Press
Orca Book Publishers	DK Publishing	Faber and Faber
St. Martin's Minotaur	St. Martin's Griffin	Pronghorn Press
Okri Books	Bloomsbury	Bethany House
Red Hen Press	Loving Healing Press	Leucrota Press
DiaMedica	ArbeitenZeit Media	The New York Literary Society
Tilbury House	Brandeis University Press	Unbridled Books

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!

June Early Reviewer Books

The June batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 68 books this month, and a grand total of 1,796 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, June 26th at 6PM EST.

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 Germany. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

And if you haven't been paying attention, we just released Collections. This is great for Early Reviewers who need to review their book but don't necessarily want to keep it in their library. Just make an Early Reviewers collection, and put the book there. That way the book (and review) stay associated with you, but you can, if you like, keep it separate from Your Library!

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Howard Books	Canongate Books	HarperCollins
Crossway	Scribner	Raven Tree Press
Touchstone	Steerforth Press	Bloomsbury
Hachette Book Group	Ecco	Demos Medical Publishing
Bantam	Open Letter	WaterBrook Press
Doubleday Canada	Bottletree Books	HighBridge
Chin Music Press	Bell Bridge Books	Henry Holt and Company
Orca Book Publishers	Delacorte Press	Workman Publishing
Bethany House	Scholastic	Masterstroke
St. Martin's Press	St. Martin's Minotaur	Ballantine Books
St. Martin's Griffin	Beaufort Books	Conari Press
Bancroft Press	The Permanent Press	Skyhorse Publishing
Phoenix Books	WEbook	Viking Books

May Bonus batch of Early Reviewer books

This month we have a special bonus batch of Early Reviewer books! The May Bonus batch includes 7 books and a grand total of 185 copies to give out.

For a special treat, Random House is giving away books from two recent Pulitzer Prize winners. Jon Meacham for American Lion and Elizabeth Strout for Olive Kitteridge.

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, June 5th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This batch of books can be sentonly to members in the US. 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!

Random House	Open Letter
Ballantine Books	Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company

May Early Reviewer Books

The May batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 61 books this month, and a grand total of 1,569 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, May 29th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada and the UK. 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!

Howard Books	W.W. Norton	HarperCollins
Canongate Books	Litwin Books	Tradewind Books
St. Martin's Griffin	The Permanent Press	Shambhala
WaterBrook Press	Leucrota Press	Newmarket Press
Henry Holt and Company	Crossway	Beacon Press
Scribner	Bantam	Touchstone
Knopf	Manic D Press	Doubleday Canada
St. Martin's Press	Raven Tree Press	Solutions
Delta	North Atlantic Books	Faber and Faber
Bell Bridge Books	Bloomsbury	Workman Publishing
South Dakota State Historical Society Press

London Book Fair

A few weeks ago I flew across the pond to speak at the London Book Fair. The panel* I was on focused on books and marketing in an online world. I talked about how traditional marketing is seen as just spam when it comes onto social networking sites (the "hi, want to be my friend? buy my book!" posts endear no one), and how authors need to genuinely participate and become part of the community online.

On LibraryThing, there are a number of ways for authors and publishers to become involved. I talked about Early Reviewers, of course, but also Author Chats, LibraryThing Local (add upcoming readings!), and our (upcoming) author interviews.

I spent the rest of the fair walking around to publisher booths, inviting them to join Early Reviewers. We have a majority of the big publishers in the US participating, but only a handful in the rest of the world. Part of this trip was to attempt to remedy that, one country at a time (if LibraryThing wants to fund an Abby world tour, that's fine by me)! I talked to many UK publishers, and hopefully we'll see some books available to more countries on the Early Reviewers lists soon!

And, of course, London was great fun. I'd only ever been to England on layovers before (meaning, I'd been to Heathrow, but not beyond the airport walls!). In the evenings I played tourist and walked all over the city. I only went inside a few places, but the highlight was definitely the underground The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms.

*See Lance Fensterman's (my fellow panelist and director of BookExpo America) post about the panel here, and the moderator, Chad Post's here.

April Early Reviewer Books

The April batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 43 books this month, and a total of 1,129 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, April 24th at 6PM EST.

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 Germany. 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!

Little, Brown and Company	Crossway	MSI Press
St. Martin's Griffin	Howard Books	Hampton Roads Publishing Company
WaterBrook Press	Hachette Book Group	Algonquin Books
Picador	Other Press	Doubleday Books
The Permanent Press	Beacon Press	HarperCollins
Between the Lines	Bethany House	Chosen Books
Vanderbilt University Press	Orca Book Publishers	Litwin Books
St. Martin's Press	North Atlantic Books	McClelland & Stewart
HighBridge	Broadway Books	Riverhead Books

March Bonus Batch of Early Reviewer Books

This month we have a bonus batch of Early Reviewer books—13 different books and a grand total of 405 copies to give out.

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, April 3rd at 6PM EST.


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, Germany, Argentina, Brazil and Spain. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country. Oh, and check out the Spanish language book!

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Faber and Faber	St. Martin's Griffin	Broadway Books
MSI Press	HarperCollins	The Permanent Press
Hachette Book Group	Ballantine Books	Spiegel & Grau
Random House

Authors: Free barcode scanner or tshirt for all!

I love authors. I love them so much I married one! LibraryThing has a whole host of special features to encourage authors to join, and make the most of the site.

So it comes as a surprise to hear LibraryThing called anti-author. (What we are, is against pay-for-review schemes, and authors who think LibraryThing is for posting advertisements and not engaging with anyone.)

So, we're going to prove it. Until May 1, authors willing to join up, become LibraryThing authors and add some books, get a free CueCat barcode scanner, shipped for free. If you'd rather get a t-shirt, we'll send one of those instead.

The rules:

• This applies to new members, or members with less than fifty books added today.
  
• Your LibraryThing author page has to show at least 10 members with one of your books.
  
• You have to add fifty books to qualify for the scanner.
  
• Or: If you have 100 members with one of your books or have had a book on LibraryThing Early Reviewers, we'll send you the scanner before you catalog fifty books.
  

How to do it:

1. Sign up for an account.
   
2. Send an email to Abby at info@librarything.com to become listed as an official LibraryThing author.
   
3. When you meet the rules, send Abby your address and we'll send you the CueCat and/or t-shirt.
   

More for authors on LibraryThing. There are a number of other ways authors can use LibraryThing:

• If you're interested in providing copies of your new books for LibraryThing members to review, check out Member Giveaways or have your publisher participate in Early Reviewers.
  
• If you'd like to give your fans a chance to chat with you, sign up for an Author Chat.
  
• If you have upcoming readings or events, you can add them to LibraryThing Local.
  

UPDATE: Let us catalog your library! If you are a really "big" author, a LibraryThing Flash Mob Cataloging mob will come to your house and catalog all your books for you! We won't tell anyone where you live, bother the cat or steal the silverware. You get a high-quality catalog entered by librarians and book nerds. We get the fun of cataloging an interesting library. (Yes, we think this stuff is fun.)

We tried to get this offer to Jon Updike, after doing his church, but he died soon after. (Jeremy and the Legacy Library crew REALLY hopes his library is not broken up and unrecorded, like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr's!) We've also offered to do Neil Gaiman's, so far without success. I now extend our invitation to Steven King, a fellow Mainer, and indeed close neighbor to Katya, librarian and flash-mob cataloging's "original cataloging" maven. Anyone got King's email? (Rhetorical question.)

March Early Reviewer Books

The March batch of Early Reviewer books is up! This is, by far, our largest batch of Early Reviewer books yet. We've got 72 books this month, and a grand total of 2,140 copies to give out. There's literary fiction, poetry, chick lit, Christian fiction, historical fiction, young adult books, cookbooks, mystery, memoirs, and non-fiction books ranging in topics from going green to wilderness survival to travel and adventure to self-help and more!

We also have a variety of formats this month, including a few ebooks and audiobooks. If the book on offer isn't one that you can physically hold, it's noted in the title ("audio edition") or at the beginning of the description ("this is an ebook").

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 Monday, March 23rd at 6PM EST.


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 Germany. 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!

Crossway	Canongate Books	Springboard Press
Picador	W.W. Norton	Santa Fe Writer's Project
Beacon Press	Penguin	B&H Publishing Group
Hachette Book Group	Grand Central Publishing	Candlewick
Ballantine Books	North Atlantic Books	Menasha Ridge Press
Clerisy Press	St. Martin's Griffin	Tyndale House Publishers
HarperCollins	Bloomberg Press	HighBridge
Bell Bridge Books	Watkins & McKay	Blue Steel Press
Bethany House	Little, Brown and Company	BookViewCafe
Howard Books	Broadway Books	Hyperion Books
Riverhead Books	Scholastic	Unbridled Books
Tor Books	New York Review Books	Melville House
DK Publishing	St. Martin's Press	The Overlook Press
Orca Book Publishers	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Random House

February Early Reviewer books

The February batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 68 books this month, and a grand total of 1760 copies to give out.

(Not enough books to choose from, you say? Check out our new Member Giveaway program as well. Member Giveaways is like Early Reviewers, but isn't limited to select publishers--any author or member can post books! We launched it last week, and currently there are 285 copies of 70 books being given away. Combined with the February batch of Early Reviewer books, that's 2045 copies of 138 different books available right now!)

First, make sure to sign up (one sign up for both Early Reviewers and Member Giveaways). If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct. Then request away!

The list of available Early Reviewer books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy from the February batch of Early Reviewers books is Wednesday, February 25th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month's batch of Early Reviewer books has publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France and Germany. 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!

St. Martin's Press	Candlewick	Henry Holt and Company
Tyndale House Publishers	Crossway	Bethany House
Beacon Press	Springboard Press	Doubleday Canada
Hyperion Books	Firecrest Books	PublicAffairs
Other Press	DiaMedica	HarperCollins
Faber and Faber	Harper	Bond Street Books
DK Publishing	Demos Medical Publishing	Orbit Books
Picador	Grand Central Publishing	W.W. Norton
Springer	The Permanent Press	Hampton Roads Publishing Company
Shambhala	MSI Press	Pomegranate
Atria Books	Curbstone Press	St. Martin's Minotaur
Andrews McMeel Publishing	Ballantine Books	Orca Book Publishers
Tarcher	B&H Publishing Group

Member Giveaways: Early Reviewers for everyone

We've just introduced a major new feature: Member Giveaway, a simple but flexible way for authors to get review copies into readers' hands, and other members to clean out their attics!

Member Giveaway is built on top of our Early Reviewers program, which invites publishers to send LibraryThing members pre-publication copies of upcoming books. It has been a huge success, often giving out more than 1,500 books per month. But Early Reviewers has strict rules on participating, quantity and release dates, to keep up quality and encourage publishers to send out as many copies as they could spare.

Member Giveaway differs from Early Reviewers in a couple of ways:

• Any LibraryThing member can participate.
  
• There are no quantity restrictions. You can post a single book or a hundred.
  
• Books do not need to be pre-release or even new.
  
• Members are encouraged to review Giveaway books, but not reviewing them cannot hurt you.
  
• Giveaway selection is random, not based on a similar-books algorithm. To discourage sockpuppetry, requesting members must have cataloged at least fifty books or be a premium (ie., paid) member.
• Early Reviewers has a bird, but Member Giveaways uses squirrels. As you know, squirrels are lovely, sociable animals who share books readily.

Some other fun details:

• If you've signed up for Early Reviewers, you are ready for Member Giveaways. The two programs have the same sign-up.
  
• When you post a book you have a lot of options, including length of time it will last and where you're willing to send it.
  
• The sending member is responsible for all shipping. If you request and receive a book, the sending member will get your shipping address.
  

We made Member Giveaway for authors who couldn't get their publisher to sign on to Early Reviewers, couldn't get enough copies together or whose book was already out. (Early Reviewers also does not allow most self-published works, which has angered a few members, but both publishers and members reacted strongly when we included self-published books before.)

Publishers and authors aside we wanted to give regular members a chance to send good books to good homes. We have long pondered whether LibraryThing should enable book-swaps. But our friends at BookMooch do that so well already, and swapping is very hard to get right. But many members still wanted a simple way to get their old books to new homes. So, we set up a system to do that too.

We've started Member Giveaways off with seven great books.

Cancer is a Bitch and Beef were offered by my friend Larry Weissman, literary agent to both authors.

Released this Fall, both have already drawn great reviews from LibraryThing members and others. LibraryThing member skrishna wrote of Cancer Is a Bitch: "It’s funny, witty, sarcastic and will have you laughing out loud. Read this book. That’s all I really have left to say." Of Beef, a microhistory in the tradition of Salt, the Boston Globe praised its "bovine evolution is riveting stuff." Eats.com called it an "eloquent, poignant and influential account of man’s historical relationship with the cow."

The other five books all come from a single member, keigu, Robin D. Gill, of Paraverse Press, which promises bilingual books "at a monolingual price."

The books consist of Japanese text and English translations of hundreds or thousands of short Japanese poems—haiku and senryu on various topics. The publisher, who is also the author, sent LibraryThing a huge box some time ago, in anticipation of such a program. Abby and I, custodians of the books for so long never got around to reading them, but we will sorely miss people's reactions at finding tall stacks of The Woman Without a Hole and Rise Ye, Sea Slugs!.

Three cheers for Mike! Memeber Giveaways was developed by Mike Bannister (LTMike) after I rather blithly tossed out the idea of opening Early Reviewers to everyone on a separate page. It took a while, but i is a beautiful, and solid piece of code.

Its completion frees Mike up to concentrate on Facebook full time, while Chris and me (but my programming time is somewhat hobbled by everythin else I do) continue work on collections.

Come talk about it here.

January Early Reviewer bonus batch

We just posted a bonus batch of Early Reviewer books for Janurary! Spiegel & Grau are offering 100 copies each of two new books.

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 Wednesday, February 4th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. The books in this batch can be sent to the US only. 

January Early Reviewer Books

The January batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 38 books this month, and a grand total 670 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 the end of the month— January 31st at 6pm EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel and Italy. 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!

12	Bantam	Barbour Books
Candlewick	Canongate Books	Clotho Press
Doubleday Books	Doubleday Canada	Foremost Press
Gefen Publishing House	Grand Central Publishing	Henry Holt and Company
IAP	Picador	Pomegranate
Random House Canada	Shambhala	Springboard Press
St. Martin's Press	The Overlook Press	The Permanent Press
Toby Press	W.W. Norton	Weinstein Books

December Early Reviewer bonus batch

As a special holiday treat, we've got an Early Reviewers "bonus batch" for you. Unlike most bonus batches, this only includes one book, *and* it is running at the same time as the regular December batch. What that means for you is that you could potentially win two books this month, since the bonus batch 'winners' are picked separately.

The book: Random House's new Modern Library edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. It's a new complete and unabridged translation by Burton Raffel with an introduction by John Miles Foley.

NPR's “Weekend All Things Considered” did an interview with the translator, Burton Raffel, a few weeks ago, The Art of Translation, if you're interested.

Only fifteen copies are available, and only to residents of the US.

Go request it if you're interested! You have until the end of the month.

December Early Reviewer Books

The December batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 71 books this month, and a grand total 1,445 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 the end of the month— December 31st at 6pm EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Israel. 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!

Andrews McMeel Publishing	Authentic	Avon Books
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Beacon Press
BelleBooks	Bethany House	Canongate Books
Center Street	Delacorte Press	Excelsior Editions (SUNY Press)
Grand Central Publishing	Hachette Book Group	HarperCollins
Henry Holt and Company	Knopf	Little, Brown and Company
Open Letter	Our Sunday Visitor	Picador
Spiegel & Grau	Springboard Press	St. Martin's Minotaur
St. Martin's Press	Steerforth Press	The Friday Project
The History Press	The Permanent Press	Tor Books
Tyndale House Publishers	UnT2	Vertical
W.W. Norton	Wattle and Daub Books

November Early Reviewer Books

The November batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 60 books this month, and a grand total 1,645 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 Sunday, November 30th at 6pm EST.

Eligiblity:

Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. 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!

ABA Publishing	Algonquin Books	Ballantine Books
Beacon Press	Bethany House	Bloomberg Press
Center Street	Classical Comics	Del Rey
Delacorte Press	Delta	DK Publishing
Faber and Faber	Hachette Book Group	Harper
Henry Holt and Company	Hunter House	Knopf Canada
Laughing Gull Press	Little, Brown and Company	Lost Hills Books
Loving Healing Press	McClelland & Stewart	Modern History Press
New York Review Books	Newmarket Press	North Atlantic Books
Orca Book Publishers	Other Press	Picador
Random House	Springboard Press	St. Martin's Griffin
St. Martin's Press	Swank Books	The Overlook Press
The Permanent Press	Trumpeter Books	Viking Books
W.W. Norton	Wizards of the Coast

Early Reviewers October Bonus Batch

This month we're trying something new with our Early Reviewers bonus batch. Sourcebooks is offering up 2,500 "copies" of In the Land of Invisible Women as an electronic download. The first 2,500 people will be able to download a copy to read and review.

Read a description of the memoir on the Early Reviewers list page:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

And then you don't even have to bother clicking "request it!" Just click here to download your copy.

You have until Friday October 31st to download a copy.

The author, Dr. Qanta Ahmed will be on LibraryThing doing an Author Chat from November 10-21. Read it now, and save your questions for her!

October Early Reviewer Books

The October batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 55 books this month, and a grand total 1,670 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 Sunday, October 26th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity:

Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, France, Germany, and Israel. 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!

5 Spot	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Avon Books
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Beaufort Books
BelleBooks	Canon Press	Cheops Books
Classical Comics	Delta	Demos Medical Publishing
Faith Words	Frog Books	Hammersmith Press
Hunter House	IAP	Leucrota Press
Loving Healing Press	McBooks Press	McClelland & Stewart
New York Review Books	North Atlantic Books	Other Press
Pantonne Press	Picador	PS Books
Random House Canada	Raven Tree Press	Seal Books
Sourcebooks	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	Spunky Books
St. Martin's Griffin	St. Martin's Press	Summertime Publications
YMAA

More Dewey

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter is one of our most requested Early Reviewer books this month. Unfortunately, there were only 15 copies available—and with a few hours left now, there are a whopping 1,637 members requesting a copy to read and review. So our friends at Grand Central Publishing decided to double the number of books they're giving out, and now 30 lucky members will get a chance to read and review Dewey. Thanks to them.

To everyone who requested an Early Reviewer book in this September batch, you'll find out soon if you won one!

September Early Reviewer Books

The September batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 1,020 copies of 50 books available this month.

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 Sunday, September 30th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to tons of new countires around the world. 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:

Algonquin Books	AMACOM Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Bloomberg Press
Canon Press	Cheops Books	Clark-Nova Books
Delacorte Press	DiaMedica	Doubleday Canada
Down in the Country Press	F+W Publications	Grand Central Publishing
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt	Hunter House	Loving Healing Press
Marshmallow Press	McBooks Press	McClelland & Stewart
Modern History Press	Open Letter	Orbit Books
Raven Tree Press	Sourcebooks	South Dakota State Historical Society Press
Springboard Press	Spunky Books	Tarcher
Unbridled Books	University of Chicago Press	W.S. Beetle & Company
WaterBrook Press	Welcome Books

August Early Reviewer Bonus Batch

St. Martin's Press is responsible for this month's unprecedented and huge Early Reviewer bonus batch! They're giving out 1,000—yes, one thousand—copies of Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland.

The book is available to residents of the US and Canada, and the deadline to request a copy is Sunday, August 31st at 6pm EDT.

Request your copy here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

About the book: it's a brand new series featuring Elizabeth Phoenix, a cop with extraordinary psychic powers who's hot on the trail of a ruthless murderer- and whose life is about to change forever. Bestselling author Lori Handeland delivers and unforgettable heroine and a pulse-pounding series that you don't want to miss.

And, on their website, you can sign up to receive In The Beginning, the free prequel story to Any Given Doomsday.

August Early Reviewer books

The August batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 56 books this month, and a grand total 1,274 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 Sunday, August 17th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity:
Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to tons of new countires, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, France, Germany, and the Philippines! Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers, new and old!

Algonquin Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Ballantine Books
bluechrome Publishing	Cuneiform	Delacorte Press
Delta	F+W Publications	Faber and Faber
Loving Healing Press	McBooks Press	Modern History Press
Open Letter	Other Press	Picador
PublicAffairs	Raven Tree Press	Santa Fe Writer's Project
Solaris	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	Sparklight Press
St. Martin's Griffin	St. Martin's Minotaur	St. Martin's Press
Thomas Nelson	Tor Books	Unbridled Books
University of Illnois Press	W.W. Norton	WaterBrook Press
Willow Ridge Press	YMAA

Bonus batch of Early Reviewer books

We've got three books in July's bonus batch of Early Reviewer books this month, and a total of 200 copies! Two books are from Random House (thanks as always), and one is being given away by Miramax Films (see the blog post).



So, visit the Early Reviewer page to request your copy—the deadline for requests is this Friday, July 25th at 6pm EST.

Remember, bonus batches are treated as entirely separate from the regular batch of Early Reviewer books. That means it's possible to win a book from both the regular batch *and* the bonus batch. Good luck!

Brideshead Revisted giveaway

Miramax Films is giving us 25 copies of Brideshead Revisted to give out as Early Reviewer books! The movie adaptation comes out in theaters July 25th, and I for one plan on going.*

Check out the Early Reviewers page to request a copy.

So, what's your stance - read the book before seeing them movie, or after? Ok, I realize the book was popular long before the movie ever was in the making, but for those who haven't read it yet, what's the plan? (Weigh in here, in "What's better: reading the book first before watching the movie, or vice versa?")

For more discussion on movies adapted from books, try the Made into a Movie group.

*The site for the movie has a link for advance screenings, which is always fun!

More Early Reviewers books and buzz

We have two last-minute additions to July's batch of Early Reviewer books, and some scandalous book news to report.

The new books
The new additions are American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, and Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg. So go run and request them!

The buzz
American Wife has been generating a lot of buzz lately (see Wonkette, Radar). It's a work of fiction, loosely based on Laura Bush's life. This morning, Maureen Dowd wrote about it in The New York Times, saying

"It's the sort of novel Laura Bush might curl up with in the White House solarium if it were not about Laura Bush. It would be interesting to hear how that lover of fiction feels about being the subject of fiction."

Another July Early Reviewer book, The Winds of Tara is also buzz-worthy. The Winds of Tara is the unauthorized sequel to Gone with the Wind—so unauthorized that (according to Wikipedia) copyright holders blocked US distribution of the book and bookstores had to pull it from the shelves. You'll note that it's being offered to Early Reviewers only to Australians, by an Australian publisher, Fontaine Press.

July Early Reviewers

July's huge batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 68 books this month, and a grand total 1,629 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, July 18th at 6pm EDT.

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

Thanks to all the publishers, new and old!

Andrews McMeel Publishing	B&H Publishing Group	Ballantine Books
Bantam	Bethany House	Candlewick
Delacorte Press	Fontaine Press	Frog Books
Gefen Publishing House	Harper	HarperLuxe
Hyperion Books	Leisure	Lifetime Media
Loving Healing Press	Modern History Press	New York Review Books
North Atlantic Books	Other Press	Picador
Picnic Publishing	PublicAffairs	Simon & Schuster
Solaris	Spellbinder Press	St. Martin's Griffin
St. Martin's Minotaur	Steerforth	The Dial Press
Thomas Dunne Books	Toby Press	University of Chicago Press
Vertical	Vertigo	William Morrow
Wizards of the Coast

June Early Reviewers

June's batch of Early Reviewer books is up! This month has 37 books, from 23 different publishers, with a grand total of 1,075 copies to give out.*

What is LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program? It's simple really—we're teaming with publishers to provide advance or just-published copies of books to you, in exchange for reviews. The publishers are supplying the books, you get to read and review them, and we play matchmaker! :) Check out the FAQ for more on the program.

All you have to do is sign up, and then go request the books you're interested in! You can request as many as you like, but you're only eligible to receive one per batch.

The list of books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, June 16th at 6pm, EDT.

Eligibility: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, and the UK.

Thanks to all the publishers, new and old!

Andrews McMeel Publishing	B&H Publishing Group	Broadway
Candlewick	Canon Press	Canongate Books
Demos Medical Publishing	DiaMedica	Doubleday Books
Faber and Faber	Hyperion	Loving Healing Press
Marion Boyars Publishers	Menasha Ridge Press	Modern History Press
Newmarket	Other Press	Picador
Picnic Publishing	Shadow Mountain	St. Martin's Griffin
Waveland Press	Steerforth

*Tim and I spent several days last week talking to every publisher we could at BookExpo America—I'm hoping these batches of books will just get bigger and better!

May Early Reviewer books

May's batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 51 books this month, and a grand total 1,115 copies to give out.

Some of the big highlights include the new Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and The Given Day by Dennis Lehane! Or would you rather read The Inverted World by Christopher Priest? The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen? Is historical fiction more your thing? Try Hallam's War by Elisabeth Payne Rosen". In the mood for some Norman Mailer? Request a copy of Miami and the Siege of Chicago. On the nonfiction side, how about a little bit of everything, with The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 2...

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 Monday, May 19th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity:
Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, and for the first time, Australia! We only have one Australian publisher (I'm sure those 15 books will be coveted), but we're working on getting more for the future.

Thanks to all the publishers, new and old!

Algonquin Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Bantam
Berkley	Canongate Books	Clerisy Press
Cypress House	Delacorte Press	Faber and Faber
Farrar Straus Giroux	Fremantle Press	Harper
Hatherleigh Press	Hyperion	LJW Publishing
Loving Healing Press	Menasha Ridge Press	Mirrorstone
Modern History Press	North Atlantic Books	NYRB Classics
Other Press	Picador	St. Martin's Griffin
Trumpeter	Unbridled Books	W.W. Norton
William Morrow	Wizards of the Coast	Zoland Books

Bonus batch of Early Reviewer books from Random House

Random House has given us a bonus batch of Early Reviewer books this month!

There are six titles up, and a whopping total of 470 copies to give out. So go sign up (if you haven't already), and then request your copy to read and review!

The list is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Wednesday, April 30th at 6pm, EDT. These books are only available to residents of the US and Canada.*




*In another country? Don't despair. The May batch, which will be out very soon, includes books for residents of the US, Canada, and the UK and Australia!

April Early Reviewer books

April's batch of Early Reviewer books is up! This month features 66 different books from 33 different publishers, totaling 1,599 copies. It's our biggest batch ever--I know, I said that last month, but apparently we grow fast around here!

Sign up to get a free advance copy, in exchange for writing a review. If you're already signed up, make sure to check that your name and mailing address are correct (here). More help available in the Early Reviewers Frequently Asked Questions.

Then just go ahead and request books to read and review! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Tuesday, April 8th at 6pm EDT.

New and noteworthy things this round:

Audio books. We have our first audio book in this batch, (Elizabeth Berg's The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted). Love listening? Tell us, and we'll try to get more audio books included.

Author Chat. We're about to debut a new feature, Author Chat. To start, Broadway Books is giving out copies of Tell Me Where it Hurts, Nick Trout's new book about a day in the life of an animal hospital. Read it, review it, think about it. Then Nick will be on LibraryThing from April 14th through the 30th to answer questions, talk about his work, etc. More details on Author Chats to come, so stay tuned.

New Publishers. As I said, there are 33 different publishers participating this round. Thanks to all of them, and of course, thanks to the publishers that just keep giving us books!

AMACOM	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Ballantine Books
Beacon Press	Bloomberg Press	Broadway
Canongate Books	Cleis Press	Delacorte Press
Dell	DiaMedica	Egmont
Handsel Books	Lantern Books	Loving Healing Press
Manic D Press	National Geographic	North Atlantic Books
Picador	Picnic Publishing	Random House Audio Publishing Group
Random House Trade Paperbacks	Shambhala	South Dakota State Historical Society
St. Martin's Griffin	St. Martin's Minotaur	St. Martin's Press
Staghorn Press	Thomas Dunne Books	Vertical
W.W. Norton	William Morrow	Wizards of the Coast Discoveries

You'll also notice that a few of the books are already released. A few of publishers new to Early Reviewers decided to include some back-list titles as well as new ones, to kick things off. Though we generally prefer pre-publication books, we decided to allow these less "release-driven" titles into the program.


Make sure to check the flags to see whether you're eligible to receive each book. Most books are open to residents of the US and Canada, several are open to residents of the UK only. Pay attention--only the flags will tell you which is which!

Bonus batch of Early Reviewer books

I love March. It's the beginning of Spring. It's my birth month, and Tim's as well. So, of course, it's time for a bonus batch of Early Reviewer books.

Much thanks to Random House for these two books, which both look amazing.

The March bonus batch from Random House includes Salman Rushdie's new novel, The Enchantress of Florence and Joseph E. Persico's history of FDR and the women in his life, Franklin and Lucy.



Request your advance copy here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

You have until Saturday, March 22nd at 6pm EDT to request a copy.

March Early Reviewers

This is, by far, our largest batch of Early Reviewer books yet. March's batch includes 46 different books from 23 different publishers, totaling 1,172 copies, available to residents in 4 different countries! There's poetry, literary fiction, chick lit, memoirs, mystery, historical fiction, travel books, cookbooks, history, biography, humor books, and non-fiction books ranging in topics from opera to crime to global warming to the Olympics!

Sign up to get a free advance copy, in exchange for writing a review. If you're already signed up, make sure to check that your name and mailing address are correct (here). More help available in the Early Reviewers Frequently Asked Questions.

Then just go ahead and request books to read and review! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Wednesday, March 12th at noon EDT*.

Make sure to check the flags to see whether you're eligible to receive each book. Most books are open to residents of the US and Canada, several are open to residents of the UK only, US only, Canada only, or US or Israel only. Only the flags will tell you which is which!

Thanks to all 23 publishers who contributed books this round.

Algonquin Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Ben Yehuda Press
Bloomberg Press	Canongate Books	Collins
Crown	Demos Medical Publishing	DK Publishing
Doubleday Books	Ester Republic Press	FT Press (Pearson)
Gefen Publishing House	Kent State University Press	King Tractor Press
LJW Publishing	New York Review Books	Profile Books
Shadow Mountain	Shaye Areheart Books (Crown)	Three Rivers Press (Crown)
University of Michigan Press	William Morrow

Remember, if your favorite publisher hasn't joined Early Reviewers yet, you can write them a letter and suggest it!



*Daylight Saving Time kicks in on Sunday. If that's not a sign that warm weather is en route to us in New England, I don't know what is...

February Early Reviewers Books

February's batch of Early Reviewers books is up!

Sign up now to get free books in exchange for reviews! Once you've signed up, request any books that look interesting to you. Then just wait and see if you've won a copy to read and review. Questions? Try the FAQ or learn more in the Early Reviewers group.

The deadline to request a book is Tuesday, February 12th at noon, EST.

The list of available books is here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list

We have 29 books this month, (630 copies in total), from 14 different publishers, including a few new (and big) ones - including Collins, Small Beer Press, and The University of Michigan Press..

We even have TWO UK publishers this round—Canongate Books and The Friday Project. Books from those publishers are *only* available to residents of the UK. All other books are open to residents of the US and Canada.

Thanks to these publishers for participating, and welcome to all the new participants!

Algonquin Books AzurAlive Press Canongate Books (UK) Collins Ester Republic Press

Hobblebush Books Picador Small Beer Press Stone Pine Press

The Friday Project (UK) Thomas Nelson University of Michigan Press W.W. Norton William Morrow

Update from Tim: We've removed one book. As a blog comment pointed out, there is said to be controversy over whether the publisher has the right to publish the book. The publisher puts this front-and-center on their website, claiming the consent is "expressed, albeit obliquely, in the book itself." If the controversy is real, it's clearly in violation of copyright. If false—as I suspect—it's an irritating promotional stunt. Either way, we don't want to have anything to do with it.

Bonus Batch of Early Reviewer Books

Random House has once again given us a "bonus batch" of Early Reviewer books. Two books this time, and 230 copies in total.

• Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
• The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

You have until Tuesday the 22nd to put your requests in:

http://www.librarything.com/er/list

If you requested a book from the big January batch, you'll find out soon if you won a book or not. Go ahead and request one of these too though, you could end up with *two* books this month!

And if free books isn't enough for you, go play with our new Series feature (see the blog post below)!

January Early Reviewers books

January's batch of Early Reviewer books is up! This month has a mix of literary fiction, fantasy, YA fiction, Christian fiction, a memoir, non-fiction, health and how-to books, and more...

Sign up to get free advance copies of books, in exchange for reviews. (Please please please make sure to include your full name and mailing address -- it speeds up getting a book to you if you win one).* More help available in the Early Reviewers Frequently Asked Questions.

Then go ahead and request books to read and review! The list of available books is here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list

This month we have 20 books (495 copies in all) from 10 different publishers:

• Algonquin Books
• B&H Publishing Group
• Bethany House
• Eirini Press
• Hunter House
• Orange Curtain Publishing
• Orbit Books
• Picador
• Shadow Mountain
William Morrow

The deadline to request books from this batch is Tuesday, January 15th at noon, EST.




*The country thing: This month we only have books that can be sent to residents of the US and Canada. I *know* there are interested reviewers in many other countries, and we're trying to find publishers willing to give out books in those countries. I know it's frustrating, but know that I haven't given up yet.

The Somnambulist!

A few days ago, I announced our December batch of Early Reviewer books. One of the books, The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes, immediately shot to the most requested spot. An hour in 200 people wanted a copy. As of right now, 1081 people have requested it—making it by far our most requested Early Reviewer book ever.* Unfortunately, we had only 20 copies to give.

So, I emailed the publisher, William Morrow, and asked if they'd be willing to part with more copies. They readily agreed, and tripled the quantity of books from 20 available copies to 60. So, forty more people will get to read and review The Somnambulist early. Thanks William Morrow!

This batch is shaping up to be popular across the board. I can't stop refreshing the list of Early Reviewer books, it's addictive to see them go.**

On a semi-related note, we also have some cross over between Early Reviewers and our LibraryThing Author program. This month, Spellbinder Press is offering up The Sex Club by L. J. Sellers, one of our LibraryThing Authors! (L.J.'s LibraryThing profile). So after you request her book, go browse through the author's library... We've had several other authors join (or while) their books were up on Early Reviewers. Check out:

• Hillary Jordan / scribblegirl (author of Mudbound)
• Jonathan Trigell / jonnytrig (author of Boy A)
• Paula Bernstein / paulabernstein (co-author of Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited)

*The number kept rising as I was drafting this, and understandably so. It looks fantastic, I plan on reading it myself when it comes out... As one member put it in Talk, "I suspect that's because it's the first thing to show up that has a decidedly fantastical bent to it. The sci-fi fans and fantasy fans groups on LT are two of the largest."
**[Tim's note: If I were eligible, I'd go for The Boat and the Sea of Galilee, about the discovery, excavation and preservation of a first-century boat, something I know a little about from briefly working at the Institute for Nautical Archaeology in Bodrum, Turkey. Unfortunately, I'm not eligible. We need to start getting our own copies, though. Some day we'll want to take a picture of all the books Early Reviewers has released, and we won't be able.]

December Early Reviewer Books

This month's batch of Early Reviewer books is up! Once again, publishers give us advance copies of books, and we give them to you to read and review. Free!

First, sign up to be an Early Reviewer, if you haven't already (and make sure to include you full name and mailing address).

Then go ahead and request the books you'd like to read and review! Check out the Frequently Asked Questions for more help.

The list of available books is here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request copies of these books is Saturday, December 15th at noon, EST.

This month we have 24 books (455 copies in total) from the following publishers:

• Aliform Publishing
• Gefen Publishing House
• Leaping Dog Press
• Seasonally Fit Books
• Spellbinder Press
• St. Martin's Press
• Trumpeter Books
• W.W. Norton
• William Morrow

Eligibility: Most of the books are available to residents of the US and Canada. Books from Gefen are available only to residents of Israel and the continental United States. Every book has a flag (or two) beneath the "Request it!" box—check the flag to see whether you're eligible to get that book.

LibraryThing in Hebrew Because we now have an Israeli publisher in the mix, we figured it was time to introduce LibraryThing in Hebrew. So http://il.LibraryThing.com is now officially live and ready for translation. More details in this talk post.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a mash of this month's LTER covers.

Bonus batch of Free Early Reviewer books from Random House

Thanksgiving is a week away and in the spirit of giving, Random House is offering a bonus round of books for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers.

They're giving out four different books (425 copies in total) so it's a big batch!

• Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
• The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block
• Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

The list is here—go forth and request.

You have until noon EST on Wednesday the 21st (that's the day before Thanksgiving) to request a copy. Enjoy!

Free books! November Early Reviewers

The November batch of Early Reviewers books is now up. It's a nice varied list this time. 13 different publishers provided 24 different books, adding up to 600 copies in total.

See all the books and request the ones you'd like to review here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list.

Open to UK residents The big news this round is that we've got a publisher from the UK participating, so one book is available only to residents of the UK! We're still working on opening this up to more countries, so if you don't live in the US, Canada, or the UK, don't give up hope yet!

The deadline to request books this round is Monday, November 12th at noon EST. Check out the rules and Frequently Asked Questions, or talk about the program in the Early Reviewers group.

A big thanks to the following publishers for participating:

Algonquin Books CareTrust Publications Caros Books Demos Medical Publishing

Genealogical Publishing Company Hunter House Hyperion Books Leaping Dog Press Serpent's Tail (UK)

St. Martin's Trumpeter Books W.W. Norton William Morrow

Tim also made up a bunch of new graphics for Early Reviewers—feel free to take them, love them, use them on your blog, proudly proclaim that you're an Early Reviewer. You can find them here: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Early_Reviewers_Graphics

We also made the news last week—the Early Reviewer program was mentioned in November's issue of Publishing Trends ("We Won! Publishers Learn That Everyone Loves (to Talk About) a Free Book"), which was also picked up by GalleyCat. Hopefully this will bring more publishers (and thus more free books) our way.

Early Reviewer books on NPR

Two LibraryThing Early Reviewer books have been mentioned recently on NPR, so we figured that deserved some notice here.

The story 'Identical Strangers' Explore Nature Vs. Nurture is about Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein's* Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited.

And Disease, Politics Permeate 'The Air We Breathe' is on Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe.


We're still/perpetually looking for more publishers to join our Early Reviewer program—more information here: http://www.librarything.com/forpublishers/

And for aspiring readers/reviewers, we'll announce the November batch of available books soon!

Oh, and Tim wants me to remind everyone about the latest book pile contest (below): Twenty-million books and/or Halloween...

*Paula Bernstein is, incidently, also an official LibraryThing Author.

Free books: October Early Reviewer books

I'm thrilled to announce our October batch of books for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. This is by far our largest batch yet—12 publishing houses, 31 different titles, for a grand total of 578 copies to give out!

Thanks to the following 12 publishers, who contributed fiction, non-fiction, poetry and even children's books:

Algonquin Books Aliform Publishing Bloomberg Press DiaMedica (RES Marketing Alliance)

DK Publishing Hunter House (RES Marketing Alliance) Knopf Nimble Books

Tatra Press William Morrow W.W. Norton Zarahemla Books

See all the books and request the ones you'd like to review here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list.

And here's a mash of all the covers:



The deadline to request one of these books is Wednesday, October 10th at noon EST.

What is Early Reviewers? How do I sign up? Where do I post my review? These questions and more are answered here, in the Early Reviewers FAQ.

There's been some talk lately on how to score a book—so for the record, the basic algorithm is randomness, but other factors come into play. For one thing, LibraryThing's matching algorithm will try to match up books with readers, based on the rest of your LibraryThing catalog. And if you complete a review—good or bad!—you're more likely to get another. Finally, getting a free advanced readers copy comes with NO obligation. Under no circumstances will a bad review change your chance of getting another. More on this in the Rules and Conditions.

Early Reviewers now free to publishers

The short version: We've made LibraryThing Early Reviewers—our program to hook publishers up with LibraryThing members willing to review upcoming books—entirely free for publishers. The response has been huge. We'll have seven publishers and twenty-four titles this October!

The long version: We planned on charging publishers to participate in the program. Publishers were eager to do it even so. Certainly its closest analogue, the Amazon Vine program is charging. (Our sources say "an arm and a leg."). Also, it takes work on our side.

Then we decided: What the heck? Pricing discussions took time and limited the reach somewhat. And we figured out how to automate the process better. When in doubt, we err on the side of openness. More publishers means more books, more books means more happy members, more reviews, and more fun.

We're looking forward to announcing the October batch. So far, we have 7 publishers signed up, with a total of 24 different titles and 420 copies in total. It's a mix of fiction, and non-fiction, with reference and even poetry books on offer. That's a lot of books, and we think it can get even better.

I like to think of Early Reviewers as playing matchmaker between publishers and readers. The idea is a simple one—give free pre-publication books to people in exchange for reviews. But it's surprisingly hard to find the *right* people to review the books. That's where LibraryThing and the whole matchmaker scheme comes in. We match members to the books based on the other books in the library, so the books end up in the right hands.

For members: I've added a section to WikiThing with an FAQ on Early Reviewers for members—what it is, how to sign up for a book, where to post your review, and more.

For publishers: Introduction to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for publishers

We're going to do monthly batches of Early Reviewers, so I'm always working on gathering more publishers and books. If you know of any interested publishing houses, send them my way!

Early Reviewer books shipping; Second Life announcement

The September batch of Early Reviewer books is now closed, and books are about to start arriving on the doorsteps of 75 lucky winners.

Once again, we were oversubscribed this batch—1,550 people requested those 75 copies, giving us a good test for the algorithm matching books to people! Thanks to Unbridled Books and Nimble Books for the books, and we're all looking forward to reading those reviews! To everyone who didn't get a book this time around, don't give up hope! We have a LOT of books coming in the October batch.

We also have a big announcement about LTER coming early next week, so stay tuned...


Second Life. A quick note about Second Life—LibraryThing members gather there every Saturday at noon (Second Life Time). This week there's an animal themed Bookstacks quiz. Want more info? Check out LibraryThing's Second Life group.

September batch of books for Early Reviewers

The September batch of books for LibraryThing Early Reviewers has arrived! This month, we've got titles from two publishers: Unbridled Books and Nimble Books.

What is this? LibraryThing is teaming with publishers to provide advance copies of books to you, in exchange for reviews. The publishers are supplying the books, you get to read and review them, and we play matchmaker!

How it works:

1. Sign up for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
2. Check out the list of available books and indicate which one(s) you're interested in reading and reviewing. You can apply for as many books as you'd like, but you can only apply for each book once.
3. Wait and see if you've won a book!

Deadline: The deadline to request a book is Saturday, September 15th (at noon EST).

This month's books:

• Every Past Thing by Pamela Thompson
• The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
• The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis by Michael Pritchett
• Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge by Pepe Escobar

Check out the Early Reviewers group to learn more about the program and discuss the books.

Read the complete Rules and Conditions.

Even more books from more publishers coming in October, so stay tuned!

Amazon Vine and Early Reviewers

Amazon has just announced Amazon Vine. Basically, it's our LibraryThing Early Reviewers idea—a way to get publishers' pre-release books to interested and vocal reviewers. As they put it:

"Vine helps our vendors generate awareness for new and pre-release products by connecting them with the voice of the Amazon community: our reviewers. Vine members, called Voices, may request free copies of items enrolled in the program and have the ability to share their opinions before these products become generally available."

Apparently Amazon had experimented with sending-out ARCs before. But we suspect they were not unaware of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, which made Publishers Weekly, Pub Lunch and top publishing blogs. It makes a lot of sense for them to be doing.

So far the program is email invite only. They're apparently basing invitations on being among their top reviewers. By contrast, Early Reviewers program is based around similar libraries, although we favor "vocal" members too. Ultimately, we think LibraryThing is in a better position to give books to the best readers, but there's no denying Amazon's scale and, if they put their mind to it, they've done remarkable things with recommendations algorithms before.

Lastly, Amazon is to be congratulated for stating unequivocally that will not be editing negative reviews:

"As with all Amazon reviews, we want your honest opinion of the product. Amazon will not edit or modify any reviews beyond small tweaks to fit within existing guidelines..."

This is in line with how Amazon has always worked. As James Marcus writes in Amazonia, their decision to show bad reviews was a gutsy decision at the time—a reminder of the "bad old days" of marketing! I hope they follow this up with what we promise: that negative reviews will not impact whether you continue to get Amazon Vine books.

More Early Reviewers books from Random House

Our second batch of books for LibraryThing Early Reviewers is available. Like last time, Random House has given us some advance copies of books that are soon to be published. We'll distribute them to LibraryThing members to read and review. Note: The current batch ends July 16 at noon Eastern time—this Monday

This batch of books includes:

• The Guardians by Ana Castillo
• Gifted by Nikita Lalwani
• Tipperary by Frank Delaney
• Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein
• (Not that You Asked) by Steve Almond

Some notes:

• The number of actual copies have SOARED. Random House gave us 420 copies this time, up from 95 last round. That's thanks to you all; if they hadn't liked how this was received, they would not have been so generous!
• Canadian residents are now eligible to join in the fun.
  
• There's some non-fiction in the mix this time—I know that was a request before, so I hope this goes over well enough to get even more next time.
• One of the offerings (Not that You Asked) is a sampler—not the full book. We aren't sure about whether to include them, but we thought we'd give it a try. Notably, asking for and/or getting the sampler will in no way affect whether you get other books.

So, what do you have to do to get a book?

1. Sign up for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
2. Check out the list of available books and indicate which one(s) you're interested in reading and reviewing. You can apply for as many books as you'd like, but you can only apply for each book once.
3. Wait and see if you've won a book!

Read the complete Rules and Conditions. By the way, if you got a book last time, and didn't review it, while it may hurt your chances a bit, it's not instant death. We have a LOT of books to give out, and we don't hold a grudge.

We've got an Early Reviewers discussion group going on as well.

Early Reviewers books ship

We ran the algorithm, picked the winners and now Random House is shipping out Advance Readers Editions of five upcoming titles to 95 lucky LibraryThing members. We've sent notes to everyone who won or lost.

This first batch was a big success. As of this morning, 844 members had enrolled in LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and 547 requested one or more books. (The rest are mostly non-US members waiting for the program to open up, although I think some people didn't understand you needed to request individual books to get them.)

Being 475% oversubscribed gave our matching algorithm a good work out. (Man, that was a fun algorithm to write!) Books went to the people most likely to enjoy them, which was the whole point. All this interest and LibraryThing's novel approach drew a story in Publishers Lunch and notice of a half-dozen publishers. We think this is going to help Random House and its authors—Jonis Agee, Ellen Barker, Amy Bloom, Lisa See, Amanda Eyre Ward—make the most of these books. With luck, this will expand, and more publishers, authors and members can benefit. (How can you help? Pester your favorite authors and publishers!)

Random House will be unveiling a second batch of Early Reviewers books in July. We'll post about it here when it goes live.

LibraryThing/Random House Early Reviewers

This is a done-up re-announcement of Early Reviewers. We blogged it last week, but tentatively. Since then we've refined it a bit, particularly on "our end" (ie., the stuff you don't see). I also want to explain what's nifty about it—for members and particularly for publishers.

The idea is simple. Basically, LibraryThing and Random House will be giving out free pre-publication books in exchange for reviews.

The first batch includes:

• The River Wife by Jonis Agee (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Peony in Love by Lisa See (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Keeping the House by Ellen Baker (LibraryThing | Ellen Baker's site)
• Away by Amy Bloom (LibraryThing | Random House)

What's cool here? Many publishers distribute "Advance Readers Editions" (AREs) to booksellers, journalists and—increasingly—bloggers. A few have formalized programs, like HarperCollins' First Look program--register and from time to time you'll get a book. LibraryThing builds on these, but it takes it a whole new step.

AREs are a tricky business. It's hard to get them into the hands of the right people, and harder to make those hands open them. Most are simple wasted. And they're not cheap. Although usually pretty flimsy, they're made in small batches, so they generally cost more to produce than the final hardcover.

LibraryThing Early Reviews solves this problem. Books aren't distributed randomly, but to the right people. The algorithm we're using has a bunch of factors, including plain luck. The core, however, is what LibraryThing knows that nobody else knows—the books in people's libraries.

If you saw this list clearly, we'd have to kill you.

To kick things off, Random House gave us a list of "similar books" for each title. We then washed these through a new recommendations algorithm, "sorting" the LibraryThing library according to their statistical proximity to these titles. We ended up with a 200 "similars" for each book. All things being equal, the more of these you have—and the higher on the list—the better your chances of getting a book.*

It turns out, this is a pretty powerful thing to do. Some reviewers pop right out—the ones reading lots of similar books. They're not guaranteed to like the book—nothing ever could—but they're the right people to review it. At the other end, it found members with hundreds or thousands of books, none of which are in the 1,000 similar titles. I'm not actually worried about bad reviews—bad reviews are fun!—but nobody is happy when books go to the wrong people. For starters, unlike professional reviewers, "regular" people don't usually finish and review books they aren't enjoying.

We thought hard about "exposing" the similarity information to users. But we decided against it. The lists are uncanily good, but they're ultimately subjective. I don't want to argue that X is more like Y than Z. And I don't want users to despair that they're never going to get books. If this thing works, they will. We'll get more books. Every book its reader, as they say.

I did, however, calculate every members "affinity" to the books on offer, and send invitations to the most eligible .5% who aren't already signed up for Early Reviewers.

Anyway, we think we've added a new twist to ARC distribution. We think this going to become something really big—big and "not evil" (in the Google pre-Chinese censorship sense).

Early Reviews does some other new things:

• We promise not the let the *content* of a review affect your chances of getting subsequent books. I suspect this isn't always true when publishers send bloggers books--why keep sending someone books when they keep trashing them? LibraryThing is different here. First, we hope to match books and reviewers better in the first place. Second, our reviewers are our members, and LibraryThing stands or falls based on them, not on anyone else. If we started blacklisting members, we'd fall apart.**
• We're starting with two batches of books from Random House. Starting in October, the program will be open to other publishers.

Anyway, check it out here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list .

*By the way, we only consider books added before Early Reviewers was announced. So, you can't spam this.
**Indeed, my greatest fear is that pure randomness makes a few people feel blacklisted, and they raise hell about it. Anyway, you have our word on this. Anyway, I've always felt that the best reviews were negative ones. It is, after all, much harder to be creative in "I love yous" than in "your mothers" and other put-downs.

Update: As explained before we have to stick with US members for now. But I've opened up registration to everyone. When we get a batch that can be distributed more widely, we'll let you know.

Second update: My friend, author Kevin Shay linked to a great blog post of his, The ARC of the Covenant.

Third update: Jessica Mulley shot me this link to an article she wrote about collecting galleys, proofs and advance copies. Actually, I'd already seen it; it ranks high in Google, but a read-through convinced me of it's value. I'm glad, however, that I'm not a book collector per se. It would get exhausting.

New Feature Tip-Toe: "Early Reviewers"

We're introducing something new, called LibraryThing Early Reviewers. It's coming out officially on Tuesday, but assiduous blog readers get to start early.

The text at the top of the page sums it up:

"Random House has given us some advance copies of books soon to be published. We're sharing these with you to read and review. You get free books, and share your opinions with a wide audience. LibraryThing makes everyone happy and keeps everything free and fair."

So far, like much of what we do around here, this is something of a test. Kudos to Random House for being up to that.

Random has signed up for two batches of book. The first batch includes:

• The River Wife by Jonis Agee (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Peony in Love by Lisa See (LibraryThing | Random House)
• Keeping the House by Ellen Baker (LibraryThing | Ellen Baker's site)
• Away by Amy Bloom (LibraryThing | Random House)

Eventually, Early Reviewers will be open to other publishers.

Members should understand what this is, and what it isn't. We're going to talk about LibraryThing Early Reviewers, but won't be pushing Random House's or anyone else's books at you. Similarly, getting a free advanced readers copy comes with NO obligation. Under no circumstances will a bad review change your chance of getting another.

If more people want the books than we have copies, we'll have to ration them. The basic algorithm is randomness, but other factors come into play. We're going to try to spread the wealth around. And if you complete a review—good or bad!—you're more likely to get another. Finally, LibraryThing's matching algorithm will try to match up books with readers, based on the rest of your LibraryThing catalog. For publishers, that's the interesting part; we're anxious to see how it turns out.

I've set up a Early Reviewers group, to talk about Early Reviewers and Early Reviewer books. Let us know what you think!