STACKED

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STACKED’s Top 10 of 2015 & A Break Until 2016

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It’s been another great and rewarding year in blogging. Kimberly and I have really loved sort of changing up our style this year, as it’s let us read more and think more about the things we’re reading.

We’re going to have our annual blogging break through the holidays. We’ll be back on January 4, 2016, for our seventh year of blogging about books and reading. In the mean time, we thank you once again for spending time with us and our thoughts and hope you have a wonderful holiday (if you celebrate) and a fabulous New Year.

To sign off on another year of STACKED, here’s a look at the top ten posts this year. These are in no particular order (and some are attributed to Kelly even though Kimberly wrote them — we’re still working out the kinks of our redesign!). Thank you for supporting us for another year of writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changes at Stacked

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Over the last several years, Kimberly and I have changed a lot in our lives, and over the last several years, blogging itself has changed significantly.

So, we’re taking the opportunity to work with our life changes, as well as the changing tides of blogging, to announce we’re shifting a little bit of our work here at Stacked.

We’ll still be writing as normal, covering the same topics and interests we normally do, but we’ll be cutting back a bit to a guaranteed posting three times a week. I’ll be writing on Mondays, Kimberly on Wednesdays, and then our regular round-up of our work in other spaces on Fridays.

This is for several reasons.

First, both Kim and I have found that traffic patterns and readership here, while still growing, has definitely changed. This is largely in part due to how people interact with blogs now. Without Google Reader, discovery is different and the work involved in daily social promotion on our end takes away from reading and writing. We’re finding that the bulk of our traffic now comes through search — people are looking for reviews of a specific book or a book list and they’re finding us that way. They aren’t clicking through to posts via Twitter, and they click through via places like Tumblr when it’s a book list and often, that comes when the desire for reading comes, rather than immediately (in other words, bookmarking). This is an awesome thing to learn, since it helps us think through what we can write about that’s useful to readers.

Likewise, both Kimberly and I are working hard on projects outside of Stacked relating to books, reading, and writing. We want to be able to give the best of ourselves here, without sacrificing on those other ventures, and to do so, we’d rather cut back a little here, rather than try to create a lot of filler (we’ve seen those blogs and what happens to them — not our thing).

Another small change you may see on my end is a cessation of long form reviews. I’m finding them to not only be tedious to write, but the rewards aren’t particularly high and those posts tend to see the least amount of traffic and roughly zero interaction. I’m sure as soon as I post this, I’ll read the book that begs me to write a lengthy review of, but it’s a thing I plan on stepping back from, with the hopes of doing more thematic round-ups on titles with shorter, more to-the-point reviews.

If you’re curious about peeking behind the curtain a bit, here it is: Kimberly has been working on building a side venture in critiquing. It might be the perfect time to talk with her if you’ve got a manuscript you’re looking for solid, critical feedback on.

As of right now, I’m not taking on new clients for my own critiquing. I will when the new year rolls around. My big projects right now include continued work on Feminism for the Real World, as well as (dun dun DUN) finally working on this novel that’s been in my head and in various forms of notes for a few years now.

We’re still here and we’re still going to be here. It’ll just be a little more substantive and a little less frequently — though really, three times a week is still more regular than many book blogs today. We’ll be taking our normal end-of-year two-week vacation, too, so we’ll have a few more weeks of posts coming in 2015 before another short break and we’re back in high action in 2016. . . which will be heading into our 8th year of blogging here. That is roughly 5.3 times longer than the years I spent in graduate school and twice as long as I spent in college, which is weird to think about.

Thanks as always for being readers. Remember, too, we’re always happy to hear your ideas or interests in features or book lists. Just leave a comment or shoot us an email at stacked.books [[at]] gmail.

For anyone wondering: the winner of the massive feminist YA giveaway has been notified and I’ll be building your amazing book recommendation list soon! There were over 300 entries, so there are a lot of great titles to make sure I get on the list.

How Do You Keep Track of YA Book Releases?: A Resource Guide

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A popular question I get in my inbox or on social media from people is how I find and keep track of book releases. I thought rather than keep answering that question, I’d write about it so more people can keep tabs on upcoming YA releases. My method isn’t perfect and it’s not consistent, but I can offer the wheres and leave the hows up to how they work best for you.

There are three main sources from which I collect YA release date information: publisher catalogs, YA Lit/Bloggers/Goodreads, and Tumblr. There are a couple of other places I peruse, as well, which I’ll note at the end.

Publisher Catalogs


I spend a little time every single week going to Edelweiss. From there, I look at the center column to see what the most recently added catalogs are. If there’s a catalog from a publisher I like to peruse, I’ll make note and spend a little time with it when I can allot an hour or so.

It’s really easy to remember the big five publishers, and all of them — Hachette, Macmillain, Simon & Schuster, Penguin/Random House, and Harper Collins — are on Edelweiss. They each do a good job of separating out their children’s catalogs from their general and adult catalogs. Generally, though not always, the catalogs come out during three seasons: winter, summer, and fall. Some of those publishers do four catalogs, one for each season, and some do a spring catalog instead of a winter. They tend to come out about six months in advance, if not more. That means, I can look at Fall 2015 catalogs now for most of these publishers and it probably won’t be too long until Winter/Spring 2016 catalogs hit.

Mid-size publishers are recognizable on Edelweiss, too, though they’re not all there. Publishers like Scholastic are easy to find, as are Abrams, Candlewick, Chronicle, Disney, and Sourcebooks. Smaller publishers, those which are ensconced within bigger houses, can be more difficult to find because you have to know the name of the bigger house. For example, Carolrhoda LAB books are found in the Lerner catalog, Algonquin Young Reader books are found in the Workman Press catalog, and sometimes Harlequin Teen is within Harlequin. I find the Harlequin catalogs very difficult to figure out on Edelweiss, so I tend to instead go to their website and do a search there.

Not all publishers are on Edelweiss, so I know that I will have to do some searching elsewhere. Amazon publishing, Switch Press, and Flux, for example, don’t have a presence on Edelweiss, so I have to go to their sites specifically to look. Flux, I should note, is finally getting onto Edelweiss, but I still like to cross check.

Edelweiss catalog use is a time investment, but I am okay spending the bulk of my research time here. I can, as noted in the link above explaining Edelweiss, be efficient in my searching by release date or keywords. That makes an hour or two there not feel overwhelming. Likewise, I find looking at the available digital review copies helpful, too. But that’s more for immediate information rather than long-term planning.

YA Lit/Bloggers/Goodreads

One of the best non-publisher resources, one that I tell every single person to keep tabs on, is YA Lit. Kari and Stefan have been running this site since 2006, and it’s a straight up compilation of YA books by release dates, with links to appropriate retailers. You can see upcoming releases for a few months ahead of time, as well as look through already-published titles. It’s that simple and straightforward. Since it’s curated by a librarian, I trust the information being correct. If I had to direct general readers to one place for book release information or those who have little time but want to stay ahead of the game, it would be YA Lit.

I don’t read as many blogs as I used to and a number of blogs I used to read aren’t running any longer. But there are still a few that do excellent round-ups of books that they’re excited about and looking forward to. The Book Smugglers do this in their weekly “On the Radar” feature and Leila at Bookshelves of Doom does this through her “By The Catalog” posts, her “New Books” posts, as well as her previews over on Kirkus.

I don’t tend to use a lot of Goodreads lists, since they’re crowdsourced and people don’t tend to keep them well managed, but I do peruse the 2015 YA books lists periodically. This is especially useful for smaller press books AND for being conscious of what books look like they’re going to be extremely popular. There’s also a nice list of diverse YA/MG titles out in 2015 and debut 2015 YA novels (though sometimes this one in particular isn’t always correct).

Tumblr


I love Tumblr’s book lists. There are some really solid ones, and there are some that come out each and every week. Though I often know about the books from the publisher’s catalogs, these do tend to fill in some holes or cover some titles I miss. And what’s great about Tumblr is I can share the lists easily and return to them when I need to do some research.

Two of the best Tumblrs for book lists: Paperbacked’s monthly new releases post andRich in Color’s weekly roundup of new diverse books being released. I read a ton of other Tumblrs too, including Diversity in YA and Disability in Kid Lit, though they don’t tend to offer up regular new/upcoming books features.

Another really solid Tumblr is the Pickerington Public Library, which regularly does reader’s advisory for brand new or upcoming YA titles, which helps me sometimes place who a book might be for before I’ve even read it. They do some excellent graphic reader’s advisory, too, with flow charts and read alikes.

Other Resources


A few other resources I take advantage of, but to a much lesser extent, include trade reviews and the handful of debut novelist websites.

I don’t tend to love trade reviews. They’re often reviewing things I know about already or that are already published, though not always. I like to peruse Kirkus in particular, in part because I love the honesty of the reviews (though I sometimes think they love and pan the same authors/styles over and over) but more, they’re reviewing well in advance of publication. They pick up on a lot of mid size and smaller presses I might otherwise miss. You can read the reviews by those recently posted, those which have the books out already, or those books which are coming soon. That ease of navigation works for me.

For monthly debut YA novel roundups here at Stacked, alongside the other tools above, I make sure to check the Fearless Fifteeners site and the Class 2K15 site. I use their author profile/book links on site, then I do a search by month. As a side note: if you run a site like this, either now or in the future, the best thing you can offer to those who aren’t insiders is a way to quickly find relevant information about publication dates. I’ve seen sites in the past where the publication dates haven’t been easy to find and I don’t spend time trying to figure it out. This is my last stop, so by this point, I’m only picking up what I’ve missed and double checking what I’ve got.

Once in a great while, I do look at the previews on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but since those tend to be the biggest books of the season or are paid for by publishers, I generally already know about those books.

How I Organize Information


I have a really good memory for book titles, release dates, and especially covers. So when I read catalogs or blogs or reviews, I’m able to make mental notes that get them on my mind well enough. Things I am personally really looking forward to reading or that I think I might forget I tend to pop onto Goodreads in my “to read” shelf.

When I know I’m going to write something specific relating to book releases, such as a big roundup on Book Riot or the monthly “on the radar” posts here, I write book titles, authors, and month of release down (see the photo above). Usually it’s in a notebook dedicated to my notes about books or reading, and sometimes, I’ll open up either a draft email or a draft blog post and take notes. Sometimes, perusing catalogs leads me to seeing a thematic trend, and I note those things down, too, to think about later. Since migrating from post-it notes to using a bullet journal for my day-to-day planning, I’ve made use of one specific notebook for taking these notes and returning to them at a later date to think about.

I know of folks who use spreadsheets to track book releases, particularly when it comes to the books they’re receiving from publishers. I tried to do this, but I found it overwhelming and ineffective for me. It would take me more time to do that than it would to do research when I can dedicate time to it and it keeps me from actually reading the books.

So what about you? Do you have any sources you frequent when organizing information about upcoming YA releases? Anything I should know about?

Edelweiss 101: A Guide for New Users

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I’m a huge fan of Edelweiss. I’ve talked it up at a couple of library conferences, telling attendees that it’s a one-stop shop for learning all about the books coming out that they should have on their radars. I used it regularly not only for features here at Stacked, but it’s where I acquire some of my digital review copies of forthcoming titles.

Something I regularly hear, though, is that Edelweiss is not easy to use and for those who haven’t been playing with it for a while, it can be extremely difficult to navigate. It’s not intuitive. So I thought because it’s a tool I find so useful and valuable not only in blogging but in librarianship, I’d offer up a quick and dirty how-to to Edelweiss. This is geared toward US librarians, educators, and bloggers who aren’t otherwise familiar with the site and its interface, and I know for sure I’ll miss some key or valuable features. Things might vary depending on what country you’re in, which is why I note it’s geared toward those in the US (I think most things should be the same if you’re in Canada, but I can’t tell you for certain). This is meant to be a beginner’s guide, and it’s meant to help make some of those really frustrating elements of the site easier to work through.

 

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What IS Edelweiss?


First, if you haven’t used it or have only heard of it in passing, you might not even know what Edelweiss is or where to find it.

Edelweiss is a one-stop shop for publishers to share their seasonal catalogs. It’s not comprehensive, as it’s opt-in by the publishers. But it offers the biggest place to peruse numerous catalogs; it saves you from having to track down each publisher’s website then navigate their websites to find their most recent catalog. Many publishers not only have the current season up, but they have loads of former seasons still available and many of them will share specialty catalogs as well. Scholastic, for example, will offer not only the Fall 2014 catalog, but they’ll also have a catalog of titles they spoke specifically about during one of their educator/librarian webinars, making it easy to see only the books that were talked about.

That’s the front page of Edelweiss when you’re not logged in with your own account. It’s got the publishers listed on the left-hand sidebar, and down the center are the most recently added catalogs. Even if you’re not logged in, you should be able to access many — if not all — of the catalogs when you click on a publisher’s name. I’m logged out, and I clicked on the ABRAMS catalog:
All of their listings are along the left-hand sidebar, and down the center are the most recent catalogs they’ve added to Edelweiss.
When you pick a catalog to view — I chose the Spring 2014 Children’s catalog — this is what the screen will look like. There are 79 entries for this particular catalog, but the entries include all sorts of products that ABRAMS made available this spring. The top entry, for The Night Gardener, is for that specific book and you can see all kinds of information about it, including the ISBN, publication date, page count, what the first print run will be, the cover, and so forth. Not all publishers furnish all of this information; it’s entirely dependent upon the publisher. The second entry for this catalog is for the 12-copy floor display of the same book. This is meant for book sellers, rather than for librarians or educators, so it might not be super useful information.
Digging Deeper Into Catalog Entries
 
I’m still logged out of Edelweiss, but even logged out, there’s a ton of information that can be pulled from the individual catalog entries. Using the same ABRAMS Spring 2014 Children’s catalog from above, I went and clicked on the title The Night Gardner.
Where looking at the entire catalog as a list gives you some basics about upcoming titles, clicking on the individual entries will give you far more in-depth information. This particular title doesn’t have as much information in it as others do, but it gives you a summary, a biography of the author, and it lists the first book in the series as a comparable title. You can also see the reviews that the book’s garnered, as well as blurbs that might have been given for the title.
The information presented varies depending upon the book and depending upon the publisher. Some offer far more information and some offer even less. Here’s a title that gives a ton of great information about the book:
The entry for Melissa Marr’s Made for You, out in September, has a really filled-out entry. You not only have the basics, but you also have the marketing plan laid out on the right-hand side. For a general reader or blogger, this might not be interesting. But what it can be valuable for — what I’ve told people to use it for — is to see where the book, or other books, might pop up. You might see website names that there will be promotions pitched to and that can be useful for sussing out where people are learning about books more broadly (and it lets you stay ahead of the curve on those things). Made for You doesn’t list any specific sites except for Epic Reads, which is Harper’s promotional site, but it does tell you that there will be some significant marketing for this title, suggesting teen and non-teen readers will likely see something for this book, especially around Halloween. The 150K first printing, which you can see in the top box, tells you it’s one of the lead titles in the Fall.
The comp titles for this entry are all Marr’s previous titles. This isn’t particularly useful when you know the author’s other works, but it can be useful to know it’s going to be fairly similar to her prior books and it can be useful to know in the event you’ve missed an older title.

There are some publishers which offer really great comp titles in their entries that can be extremely useful for figuring out what a book might be about or who that book might appeal to.

For Brenna Yovanoff’s Fiendish, the comp titles are really great. You not only get a look at her own titles, but you also see that Fiendish is comparable to Kendare Blake’s books, Tom McNeal’s, Jonathan Maberry’s, and Holly Black’s. They’re not meant to be read alikes, but rather, they’re meant to sort of situate the book within a genre or a style. Sometimes they work as read alikes, but that’s not the purpose of comps.
Limitations of Using Edelweiss Without an Account
 
While you can pull a lot of information out of Edelweiss without an account, you’re also limited in what you can do. For one thing, there’s not a good search interface. You can’t, from the front page, look up books well. Even within catalog, it’s not easy to search through titles. So if you wanted to pull up information for a book, you’d have to dig around for it.
If you’re not logged into Edelweiss, you also have no access to digital ARCs, either. You have no idea whether a title is available for request because the buttons just don’t exist at all.
You don’t have the capability of looking up buzzing titles. In fact, the way the home page of Edelweiss looks when you’re logged in as opposed to using outside your account is substantially different. This is my homepage while logged in:
I’m able to pick up where I may have last been looking (the center column tells me the last catalogs I looked at), and I’m able to simple do and peruse a lot more.
Signing Up for Edelweiss
 
It’s easy to sign up for Edelweiss and have access to a lot more information. Signing up does not guarantee you anything — you might never be given access to digital ARCs, for example, which I’ll get to in a minute — but you will be able to do more advanced searching and other things.
 
To sign up for an account, click on “Register” in the top right-hand corner. The form looks like this:
                           

Fill this out as best you can, with as much information as possible. Include all relevant URLs and be as specific as possible about what your role within an organization is. If you’re a blogger and a librarian, I’d put librarian down as your key role, followed by your blogging information under the “User Profile Information.”

You’ll get a confirmation email minutes after you agree to the terms, and then you can log in to the site. Now your screen looks different and you can see so much more.

Digital Review Copies


The biggest advantage for logging in at this point is probably digital ARC access. But just because you have access doesn’t mean that publishers are going to grant you copies. There are limits in distribution and choices aren’t always clear-cut. Sometimes, you’ll find you have access without having to ask for a book, and other times, you’ll see that there isn’t even a button to request a digital ARC. Still other times, you’ll request a title and wait for a couple of weeks before you find out whether your request was accepted or rejected.

When you’re perusing a catalog and logged in, oftentimes, you’ll see a button that there’s a digital copy available right in the catalog itself.

 

I can request this particular digital ARC right from the catalog Fall 2014 Penguin Children’s catalog. When I click on the “Request” button, this is the box that pops up:
The first time you request a title, you’ll be asked to describe your role. This is going to stay attached to your requests every time you put one in, unless you choose to edit them each and every time. Be specific in your role — mine says I’m a YA librarian, as well as a book blogger. I listed where I blog, since that tells the person going through all of the requests exactly where I’m writing, rather than just saying that I have a blog. It’s one way to differentiate yourself and it’s giving a better idea of who you are. You can include stats or any other information, but I choose not to furnish that information because it’s not something I pass along for free.
That second box, where you can give a specific reason for your request, is really important. This is a box I make sure I fill out each time I request. In it, I reiterate I’m a blogger and where, and I note that I’m requesting it for potential coverage at either site. I don’t promise a review or any response; I note that there’s the potential for it.
I request very few digital ARCs, so I don’t feel bad about saying that by requesting, I may not cover it. In many cases, I’ve also used this box to express an interest in a particular digital ARC because I’ve read the author’s prior work or I saw it in a promotion somewhere and it piqued my interest. Fill this out each and every time to increase your chances of having your request approved. Even if it doesn’t grant you a specific ARC at times, it’s important for you to do because it reminds you why you’re interested. It’s a reminder of the role YOU play.
 
There’s no timeline for when requests are approved or denied. It can be hours, it can be days, it can be weeks. Those will come through the email you gave Edelweiss when you signed up. But if you happen to miss the communication, there is a way to check out it.
Discovering available digital ARCs isn’t limited to catalog perusal. There’s an entire tab on the Edelweiss website devoted to ARCs and to ARC organization. You’re able to search it, narrow down your interests, and you’re able to submit reviews or other information as you choose.
When you go back to the Edelweiss homepage, click on the  “Review Copies” tab and this is what you’ll see:
Along the left-hand sidebar, you can narrow down your search through the available digital ARCs by age category, subject, publisher imprint, publication date, or publisher. When I pulled up this screen, I had 3,370 digital ARCs I could peruse, so narrowing down to exactly what interests me would be helpful. If there’s a specific title I’m interested in, the search box right above the first available title is useful.
When you look at the right-hand side of this screen, you can see that above the “Request Digital RC” there’s a note that lists when the title was added. This is useful if you check back every few days. You’ll know exactly what’s new. You can also see there are two different colored buttons on my screen: the blue one notes I can request the ARC and the green one, for the title below, means I can just download it. I’m “white listed” for Random House Children’s titles, meaning anything they put up is available for me to download without asking. Different publishers have different rules for who and how they choose people to put on their white list. I know some, like Macmillan, let librarians on their white lists and tell you how to go about it.
The next little tab to know about within the Review Copies tab is where those ARCs are held and where you can check the status of titles you’ve requested.
You can see I clicked over to the “Requests” tab which is on the second row of tabs that stretch across the top of the screen. In there, I can see the status of everything I’ve requested. The top title, The Walled City, I haven’t yet heard back about, which is why it’s a blue question mark under “status.” I sent the request about a week ago. Beside the status, you can see when the title is downloadable until and when I downloaded it. (And funny, as soon as I began writing this section of the post, I got an email saying I’d been approved for this title).
The second two titles you can see were both approved and had both been downloaded. If I had an issue with either of them, the little blue “Message” link beneath them would allow me to be in touch with someone about those issues.
The bottom title, A Time to Dance, shows that I was approved, but that it expired and I never downloaded it. This happens — I think this particular title is one I requested close to when it would expire, and since I use a Nook to read and downloading/transferring can be cumbersome, I didn’t act on it fast enough. It’s not the end of the world, but I do dislike seeing that I never downloaded it when I’d been able to.
You’ll be emailed when your request has been answered, but if you miss it, this is where you can check that status. Do read those emails, though, since they can tell you some of what the publisher wants from you. Though you don’t have to comply if the request isn’t reasonable — if they expect a review, for example — some publishers kindly ask you to hold off on posting reviews until it’s near publication date. That kind of stuff I do keep in mind when reviewing, especially if it’s for a book I really enjoyed.
There’s a second tab beside the Request tab worth knowing about, too. Though it looks like it has the same information, the Downloads tab is where you’ll input reviews of titles you’ve requested if you want to do that. Many people think you have to write or share a review for each title you request, and I think it’s courtesy to do that, but I’m not very good at it. I think part of why is because I read a lot and review them in other venues — Stacked or on Goodreads — though it’d be just as easy for me to copy those reviews and put them into Edelweiss.
Here’s a look at the titles I’ve requested and downloaded in the last 4 months (I can change the view to look at books within the last 2 days or up to the last year or more) and on the right-hand column, I can put in my review. As you can see, too, I do my requests/downloads in batches. I should probably get better about doing that with reviews. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t include a review, but it’s probably a good idea to do that if you aren’t reviewing in other places. Here’s what the review screen looks like. Note that your profile from where you request review copies carries over into the review form, too:
You can leave a recommendation for the book with your level of enthusiasm, and you’re also able to leave a text review. On the bottom right-hand side, you can see that you have options for who can see the review. The little blue “i” boxes will tell you what IndieNext and LibraryReads are, so if you’re able to submit to either of those, feel free to do so. Edelweiss is a professional tool used by professionals, so if you’re a librarian and the title fits the LibraryNext criteria, then go for it.
Those reviews you enter into Edelweiss can be seen in the catalog if a publisher so chooses. I hopped up to the search bar on the top of the screen — the one that looks at All Titles, as opposed to just the review titles search — and put in 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith to get back to the main catalog entry for it, which looks like this:
The entry notes that there is 1 featured peer review and that it has received “much love” from 11 peers. 11 people were enthusiastic enough to give this a “much love” rating in their review box, and one person wrote and submitted a text review that then the publisher allowed other users to read:
I think of those text reviews like Amazon or Barnes & Noble reviews. They’re as useful as you allow them to be when you write them, and they’re as useful to you as you allow them to be when you read them. They’re going to be better since this is an industry tool, as opposed to a consumer tool, so if you like reading reviews, digging through these when you’re looking at titles might not be a bad thing.
There is another way to read through reviews, too, but it’s a little more involved. Edelweiss has ways for you to make the site social in a GoodReads sort of way. I don’t use it this way, so I can’t show a good example, but up on the main bar of tabs at the top of the screen, there’s a tab for Reviews:
If you use the social aspects of Edelweiss and have friends on the site, you’re able to see what reviews they’ve submitted within any give time frame. You can also filter it down by which friend reviews you want to look through. For me, this isn’t particularly useful, but I can see it being an interesting thing to toy with if you’re at a school or a library with multiple people reading and reviewing titles.
Buzz
 
Another basic feature worth hitting in Edelweiss is the “Buzz” tab. You can find that up on the top bar, where you found the “Review Copies” tab. This digs through the catalogs and pulls out entries that fall within a variety of different awards.
Say you want to know what books were on the recent LibraryReads list but can’t remember or you want to read through their descriptions. You can find them all here under this tab. The future pub titles are for the most recent list — the August LibraryReads list — and the recent pub titles are ones from the last four months. The backlist are from prior seasonal catalogs (and remember in the publishing world that backlist is 6 months old, so those would include titles that were published this year).
Though there’s not a whole lot here for those interested in children’s or YA titles, I still find it’s useful to look through periodically because it tells me what books are being talked about in other arenas. I may not be reading them, but other people are, and knowing that is useful to me.
Interestingly, if you were to see the rest of this page of buzzed titles, you’d see that Texas’s state awards titles are included, as are starred reviews from Publishers Weekly. I’m not sure I know how the lists got included here or what the criteria are for being included, but they’re worth a look.
Using Search

The final basic thing worth knowing about Edelweiss is their advanced search feature. It’s imperfect and misses a lot of things I know I catch when I read the individual entries, but it is a great starting point when you have a question or want to try to remember something you thought you saw.

On the second row of tabs across the top of the main screen page, there’s a tab for “Advanced Search.” When you click on it, you’re taken to a screen where you can search through a ton of different elements within the catalog entries. Again, since publishers include different information in different parts of their entries, this is going to be imperfect searching.
I find using the “summaries” and “keynotes” boxes the most useful for seeking out what I’m looking for. So, for example, I think I’ve seen a few books that have been compared to Looking for Alaska recently. But I want to know what some of them might be. I can do that from here by going to the “summaries” box and doing a search for Looking for Alaska and changing my delimiter to “containing the exact phrase.” I could limit my search to specific catalog seasons (which is useful if you’re looking for books about a certain topic coming out in the fall) or to specific publishers (like I did in a prior microtrends post, I did for books featuring girls named “Lucy” — I kept it to the publishers I knew did YA). In this case, I’m not going to limit though, since I limited by search to the exact phrase “Looking for Alaska.”
This is what that search looks like when you run it. Note that if you’re looking for something big, the search can take a long time and can sometimes bring you tons of unnecessary results. This one is pretty straightforward and limited, though:
When I get the results for this search, I get 28 entries. Among them are the various editions and sales models for Looking for Alaska and books which were reviewed by Green. A couple of titles pop up that include the words “looking” and “Alaska” in their summaries, too, even though they’re not being compared. But out of 28 titles, I can browse and see that a few have been compared to the book in their summaries:
Indeed, there’s at least one forthcoming book with that in the description.
I looked through the rest of the entries I got for this search and they confirmed that a few titles in the past have been compared to Looking for Alaska. I’m not sure why this is the case, but it doesn’t capture all of the titles I know have that comparison. The advanced search, as I noted, is imperfect, but it’s a really good starting place. If I wanted to find more comps, I’d go back and revise my search to look in the keynotes, too, as it might help me pull up some of the other titles I know have that comparison drawn (one off the top of my head which didn’t appear in any search combination I did is Chelsey Philpot’s Even in Paradise, despite the fact the exact phrase Looking for Alaska is right there in the summary).
To Wrap Up
 
While the interface is imperfect and there are things which aren’t intuitive, Edelweiss is a great tool for professional readers or those who teach or work in libraries. It takes experimentation and everyone will find different aspects of it suit their needs and their interests. I’ve laid out the basics here, and from those starting points, I’m able to pull out the information I am looking for or thinking about. I use Edelweiss to put together previews and to talk about book covers and trends. Since these are the catalogs from the publishers, I trust them more than I trust pulling images from a retail site (those aren’t always accurate, as the wrong cover may have been submitted).
Feel free to ask questions if you have any and I can try my best to answer. Edelweiss does have a pretty good help page, which has a lot of other tips and tricks to help you navigate and use the site in the best way possible. Edelweiss is what you make of it, and once you have the basics down, you’ll find that you’ll use it more than you thought you would.
If you know any other tips or tricks I should know about, I’d love to know those, too.

The Three C’s of the Changing Book Blogging World

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The post I wrote about blogging and responsibility a couple of weeks ago seems to have struck a chord with  lot of readers, both those who blog and those who just enjoy reading them. The responses were great and gave me a lot to think about.

I noted in the post that there were a few other things on my mind in relation to blogging I thought might be worth writing about. More specifically, I thought it would be worth looking at how blogging has changed in the last few years and what, if anything, that might mean. It’s interesting to take stock of what’s out there now and what’s been out there in the past, and it’s also interesting to think about the kinds of things that aren’t gone but have instead shifted. As blogs have grown in popularity, the way people interact and engage with them has grown and changed as well.

Like last time, I’d love anyone to weigh in on what they think about these or any other blogging-related topics. What I see is from my own experience, as well as those experiences of people I know who blog or read blogs and have been for a while. The three topics I want to delve into — crediting, commenting, and critical reviews — are things that are on the forefront of my mind and they’re things that matter a lot to me in terms of how I can be a better blogger within the blogging community and as important, to our readers here.

Crediting

In the last few weeks, citing and giving credit where credit is due has been popping up in the blogging world. There are two thought-provoking posts from the library world (here and here) and there’s a post from Molly at Wrapped Up In Books.

During the same span of time, I stumbled across more than one post written on other blogs that mirrored things I’ve written, almost down to the voice. And these weren’t coincidence type posts; these were posts that were on a very similar topic that wasn’t necessarily timely to what was going on in the bigger world of books and reading. In none of those posts were my posts noted or credited. While I think it’s fair for anyone to write on anything they want to, it’s also obvious to me when people have written a post that’s been inspired by another; perhaps it’s because I read so many blogs. Perhaps it’s because I know my own voice and writing well enough to ferret out the sorts of passages and thinking patterns that I go through when I work something out in writing.

Seeing those posts and seeing no credit to me at all, not even in a passing manner, made me very angry. And it makes me equally angry when I see posts by people I read being used in the same way: as springboards without any passing credit.

I think it’s easy when you’re new to the blogging world to think everything on the internet is free. Unfortunately, what I saw didn’t come from new bloggers; they came from established ones who should know better than that. Rather than acknowledge their post was spurred by another interesting discussion, those posts were written without any contextualization and without any credit. When there’s no credit given, and when it’s obvious that credit should be acknowledged, it’s not borrowing; it’s stealing.

Having your work stolen is shitty.

When I sit down to work on a post that’s adding to a larger discussion or trying to spur a larger discussion, I also open up Google and do a little searching. I pull open my Feedly saved posts, as well as the things I’ve saved in Pocket, and I look to see what, if anything, other bloggers have said about this topic. In many cases, the reason I find myself interested in writing a big post is that it’s something I’ve been thinking about because someone else has written or discussed it. It only makes sense for me to sit down and dig through what people have said or not said and raise those posts into my own piece, in order to ground my argument and to give credit to those sources. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, but it means I acknowledge that they had an idea and pursued it; it would be lazy and, I think, unethical of me to ignore than, even if I disagree completely.

The work people put into blogging isn’t free work. It’s a passion but it’s also a passion pursued at the expense of something else. What’s being said and what’s worth expanding upon doesn’t come from the ether. Actual, real people sit behind those words and use their energy to pursue ideas. To not credit that work in some capacity is theft.

It is hard to keep track of what and where you’re reading things. But there are easy-to-use tools worth looking at in order to be a better, more ethical, more thorough blogger. Feedly and Pocket are my go-to choices, since I can bookmark and save interesting things in each, then I can search through them. But it’s also easy enough to hop on Google and refine your searches to a certain time frame, when you know or remember having read a post on a certain topic.

By no means do you have to look everything you’re interested in writing up and build your own work around those who’ve written on it before you. But good writing does build upon the work of others, so taking a little time to do research — then crediting that research — is just good practice. When we write our monthly genre guides, for example, we know other people aren’t necessarily talking about those topics at that particular time. We also know, though, that doing our research then linking to what we’re looking at only makes what we’re doing more enjoyable to use and more valuable to readers.

Write whatever you like and however you like to. Just give credit where credit is due.

Commenting

One of the biggest changes in blogging — one related to the issue of crediting — is the decrease in commenting across blogs. We’ve definitely noticed it here. Where we used to see a large number of comments, we now see relatively few, even though our readership has grown (some bloggers have noted a decrease in readership but we continue to see ours increase). Some days, it’s disappointing; you work on a blog post or a review for hours and hours and no one says anything about it. Other times, it’s almost a relief no one commented because it’s a post you didn’t feel entirely sure about or didn’t think was your A game.

In many ways, I find it more disappointing to see work I think is fantastic by other people have no comments on it. This is such a great piece! It should have loads of comments! Why is no one listening and responding to it?

The answer is, I think, that the way people engage with content is significantly different than it was a year, three years, and five years ago. One’s blogging content and response can’t be gauged anymore by a number at the bottom of a post. That’s not where readers are looking at and thinking about your work. Engagement is no longer within the blog; it’s beyond the blog.

Bloggers are on Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, and any number of other social networks. So are blog readers. Because of the way information’s shared and dispersed, the commenting on a piece is no longer on the blog post itself. It’s through shares on social media, through responses that pop up when a post is reblogged on Tumblr. It’s through how many tweets and retweets a piece gets. It’s also through the discussion that post can spur on podcasts, on other blog posts, and so forth. Because blogging is such a large thing — and the word blog itself means such a bigger thing than it once did — people want to comment, talk about, and share what it is they’re reading. A post about magical realism in YA might not see a single comment, but it might be tweeted by 100 people, reblogged by 50, discussed on a bookish podcast, linked up 15 blogs on weekly link round ups, and so forth. Your work has been seen by thousands at that point, even if it hasn’t been commented on by a single person.

Rather than your blog existing within itself and within this community of bloggers, it’s grown legs and reached audiences both familiar and, maybe more interestingly/importantly, those who are unfamiliar.

Reaching new eyes is exciting and it’s what drives new people to become regular readers. Reaching new eyes also means that it’s harder to pinpoint engagement and it’s harder to figure out who your readership really is. We rarely see where our posts end up unless we spend a long time researching where they’ve been shared socially. Sometimes, those pop up if we go into Google Analytics, but for the most part, I’d rather spend time writing and reading than tracking down every instance where my work ends up.

And this is where crediting becomes really important, too.

When a blog post is credited as a source or inspiration for another post, that’s how the initial blogger can often “track back” where their content is landing. For me, this is exciting because I love seeing what people are taking away from my writing but more, I love that it opens up new voices and blogs for me to read and follow. It’s the new way to engage and grow the community. No longer are their big roundups of “necessary to read” bloggers like there was early on. Because this is such a huge world and because it’s expansive in terms of content creation and dispersion, finding where people are reading my work gives me an in to see what work I should be reading, too. When you credit where you find inspiration for your work, you help grow the community, not shrink it.

Is it still a bummer that commenting on blogs seems to be a dying art? Sure. But I like to remind myself it means that the comments we do get are really worthwhile, and even if we don’t reply to every single one, we do read them and appreciate them. I also like to remind myself that engagement now isn’t contained to one place.

There’s something fun about seeing one of your blog posts pop up on your Tumblr dash weeks after it’s been written and seeing that people have not only shared it, but they’ve added to it.

Critical Reviews


There’s not a lot to explore in terms of critical reviews in the YA blogosphere, is there?

I feel like a lot of the staple critical reviewers — ones who have been doing this for a long time — are still doing it. I think about The Book Smugglers, Liz Burns, Leila Roy, and a few others are still writing some of the most thoughtful, deep, analytical reviews out there. Those reviews take exceptional amounts of time to write, and it’s not just about the book that these critical reviews are worth reading for. It’s also the craft of writing the review itself; they can be creative, exciting, and sometimes funny pieces of writing in and of themselves.

Review writing is an art in and of itself.

I read a lot of blogs, but I have become particular about the ones I read for reviews. I don’t like seeing blog tour reviews for the book that a publisher is promoting at the time. I like having the book on my radar, but seeing one, two, or three week long blog tours doesn’t excite me, nor does it compel me to want to write a review of the book, unless I know my take aways from the book differ from the ones I’ve seen (positively or not).


A big reason I love critical reviews is that they’re often of books that aren’t getting the big marketing and publicity attention that other books are. Whether or not I agree with the review, I find that the critical, thoughtful, an analytical reviews are the ones that make me most want to pick up a book because I know that it’s something that’s going to make me think — both about the book and about the review writers.

As I’ve said again and again, critical reviews are not negative reviews. Critical reviews are thoughtful explorations of what does and does not work in the material at hand. Some of the best critical reviews are entirely positive, but what separates them from a lot of other reviews is they offer a huge slice of the person behind the review. They’re often more personal than a personal blog post because they let in opportunities for vulnerability that the reviewer doesn’t always know they’re opening up: their biases, their preferences, their world views, their passions. These reviews allow me as a reader to really get inside the book and inside the head of another reader. It’s hard work, and it’s the kind of work that isn’t always rewarded with the kind of engagement other posts are — either in comments or in sharing — but it’s work that is rewarded in terms of what core blog readers (who are readers in general) want.

That’s why I blog and that’s why I read blogs. It’s engaging with other readers.

Which is why I wonder: where are the newer critical reviewers? Where are those newer critical voices? Who can we read and think about and who is going to open us up to new books worth checking out? We’ve had our eyes on a few bloggers who came for a few months, wrote great reviews, then disappeared. We had our eyes, too, on bloggers who were critical reviewers for a long time then decided for any number of reasons that writing critical reviews was a thing they didn’t feel comfortable pursuing anymore.

I know I’m eager to see more. I can’t be the only one.