How I Am Keeping Organized This Year

February 10, 2020 |

I’ve written before about my low-key bullet journaling style twice. Over the last year and a half, though, I’ve found bullet journaling to not be sufficient anymore for my needs and I took to finding a new system of keeping myself organized, motivated, and reflective of what it is I’m doing with my time every day.

The bullet journal stopped working for me because, as much as it was useful for assessing task importance, it didn’t give me a way to delegate my time during the day nor plan further ahead. I slowly began to shift over to a digital task management system, then realized that alone wouldn’t be enough for me.

Every Day Organization

Enter: Day Designer.

As I noted in the Instagram post above, whenever I lug this thing around — and lug is the right term, given how substantial it is — I get asked about it. The Day Designer is exactly what it promises to be: a way to design your day around time blocks. Every single day has its own page, except for Saturdays and Sundays which are on the same page, and the days are broken down into hours from 5 AM to 9 PM.

In addition to the time breakdown, though, each page offers a ton of other ways to track what’s important that day. There’s space for a top three of the day, for notes, as well as a space for that day’s to-do list. I don’t use the gratitude space in the planner, since I leave that in another place, but there is room for those who want to see that when they open up their planner.

I get up at 4:30 every morning. Having the chance to start planning my day at 5 AM is a game-changer. So many planners start much later, but I do need to get started early. Sure, “reading” and “meditation,” are things I’d likely do automatically, but the act of slotting those into time boxes prioritizes them and is a reminder of what exactly I did with my time on any given day.

I don’t write down every single thing I want to get done on the to-do list each day because I also use a digital task management system. Things is the one I prefer, as I can set up recurring tasks, can reschedule things easily, and I can keep a running list of “future ideas.”

Under “Today” on Things, you get a check list and can just mark things off as you go. You get a nice view of upcoming tasks like that seen above, and you can keep track of ideas in the “Someday” folder. This is where I often brainstorm post ideas or take notes about trends or topics I want to remember to go back to but that don’t necessarily have any due date associated with them. Often, one of the recurring tasks in Things ends up on the Top 3 priorities in the Day Designer, just because it is. I know I’ll do it, but it’s the most important thing to get done, no matter what else pops up during the course of a day.

The to-do list in my paper planner becomes a bit of a dumping ground for things that are small but need to get done: packages to take to the post office, appointments to make, emails to send or follow up with. When I collect those administrative-like tasks together in that space, I’m able to get an idea of how much time I need to allot in my day to complete them. Will it be an hour? Two hours? Or do I move those to another day and schedule a longer period of time to knock out a lot of things at once?

My last tool is one that isn’t updated daily. I have a monthly calendar planner that has just each month of the year. In it, I write down my planned blog posts, newsletter topics, and other regular writing when it’s scheduled. It’s an old-school content calendar and allows me to see what I’ve got cooking so I don’t repeat myself or find myself being bored by writing the same kinds of things all the time. It also ensures I don’t forget to do something.

Goal Setting and Reflection

In addition to the organization system for my day-to-day life, I keep a similarly-large planner for my goal setting. After reading numerous rave reviews of the PowerSheets system, I decided to splurge on one this year. I’m so glad I did!

The PowerSheets ask for a lot of upfront work, but it’s all good upfront work. You reflect on things going well in your life, then think about what it is you really want to get out of the next year of time. Those are distilled into no more than eight goals for the year, which are then broken down even further. Those micro-steps are transformed into tasks you tend to, either over the course of a month, each week, or every day.

Image from https://cultivatewhatmatters.com/.

Every week, I review my tending sheet a couple of times and update it. What did I get done from the month’s tasks, the week’s goals, and the daily tasks? It’s a reminder to refocus and also to allow myself space to deviate — an example is that I make it a daily goal not to turn on my laptop until 7 am and use that time to read and meditate. But sometimes things come up and my morning gets compressed and I need to turn on my laptop for some work. When I look at the daily goals and see that 10 out of the last 11 days have been successful in no turning on the laptop, I do not feel an ounce of guilt for doing it once because I can see how good I am at maintaining the goal overall.

I’ve taken this a step further, too, in that I have been creating themes around my goals by month. February, for example, is “renew,” and it’s when I’m trying to take care of overdue tasks. I went and got my Real ID at the DMV, I ordered new glasses, and I am in the midst of figuring out what to do with my hair. I made myself a massage appointment and will be taking my car in for some overdue repairs I’ve put off. Spending time at the start of the month to put all of those things down and look at them in conjunction with my big goals, I see how each of those moves me closer to the bigger picture in some way. It’s incredibly motivating.

Each month’s tending is paired with a reflection page about what went well and what didn’t that month, which is so helpful and grounding.

I don’t stop at the PowerSheets though. The other tool I use for dreaming and goal setting is the Start Today journal. I’ve written before about my complex relationship with Rachel Hollis, in that I see where she has weaknesses but also that there are a lot of things she talks about and shares that are extremely helpful to me (and frankly, I think a lot of the feedback she’s seen has made her a lot more aware of those shortcomings, as I’m finding myself liking her more and more because it’s clear she’s working and is indeed complex and flawed and sees that!).

Start Today is her methodology, and it requires on fancy journals. I do have one, though, that she sells because I grabbed it on discount. The premise is extremely simple: every day, you write down 5 things you’re grateful for, then 10 dreams — written as if they’ve already happened, so it doesn’t read like a to-do list, and then the ONE goal you’re going to achieve first. This fits in SO neatly with the PowerSheets and gives me a roadmap to success in the grander scheme of things while also inviting me to not only dream, but find gratitude every day.

Journaling

The last tool in my daily regimen for staying organized and grounded is a simple journaling technique I learned from a fellow student while doing my Yoga Life Coach certification.

While all of the above tools are extremely useful, they’re not the best for looking backward. They’re all set in the now or in the future. And while those aren’t bad things, there’s tremendous value in also reflecting and recalling what it is you did in a day.

I use a journal I’ve had at home and answer these four questions every single day:

What brought me joy?
What am I grateful for? (Yes, I repeat something from the Start Today list)
What is it I can let go of?
What am I most proud of?

On days when I am working, I add a fifth question:

What did I work on today?

This gives me the chance to reflect on the highs of a day, the things I’m glad I did, and gives me a reminder of what the heck I am doing with my time, so that when I look back on the week, I can acknowledge that I wrote 4 newsletters for work and recorded two podcasts, had a number of phone calls, wrote a couple of posts, and so forth. It’s the “Ta-Done” list, if you will, and writing it out, as opposed to simply checking it off my planner or task list solidifies accomplishment.

So How Long Does It Take You?

Honestly, half an hour on a slow day. After I get up, I make myself a cup of tea, and while it’s brewing, I generally journal from the previous day or work on the Start Today page. By the time my water is hot, I can enjoy my cup of tea while doing the other, and as soon as that finishes, I often still have most of my tea.

That’s when I crack open the Day Designer and plot out my time for the day. I prioritize things that are on my Things task list, as well as things on my Tending list for the month or week. When I see there’s time in a day, I will get cracking either on the tasks on the Day Designer list or poke through my tending list and make some progress.

That half hour is more than worth it weight in gold, especially when I see each way those tiny steps adds up to a much bigger picture and forward movement toward those big, juicy goals and dreams.

Micromovements, The Cult of Busy, & Owning Your Time

April 11, 2016 |

For readers who get my personal newsletter, this is a rerun of a piece I wrote last month that generated so much feedback privately that I knew I had to post it on STACKED. I’ve written about “busy” as a status here before, but after diving into Laura Vanderkam’s I Know How She Does It, I couldn’t stop thinking about the concept and how we can change our mentalities to fit everything we want into our lives with a little shuffling. I think that we can all relate to it, no matter what our careers, and I think for readers who want to be doing more reading, more talking about books, spending more time in the book world, this is all applicable.

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I am and have been endlessly fascinated with the concept of “busy.” It is, in my mind, about giving a false sense of importance when shared. I’m so busy lately. Of course life gets busy and your day to day can be hectic and then you have other shit coming at you requiring your attention.

But here’s the thing: in general, in the day-to-day scheme of things, busy is a status and it’s one that’s taken on the same role as bragging.

Laura Vanderkam’s recent(ish) book, I Know How She Does It, explores the idea of mosaic time management. Her argument is that we all have time to do the things that we want and we are, in fact, doing most of the things we want to with our time. But because we do not track our time well or see how we can shift around the tiles in our lives, we instead choose “busy” and “tired” as markers of how we’re doing. Even when we are technically neither. These are ways for polite conversation. It’s more acceptable to say you’re so busy, rather than to say you’ve been slaying it and are feeling fierce about it.

The book goes on to look at how women who are successful — and Vanderkam is clear in defining successful as women who make $100,000 a year on their own, a narrow and yet culturally-relevant measure of success — and how they manage their lives. Are they really working 50 or 60 hours a week? (No). Are they only getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night? (No). Are they spending any time with their families? (Yes, a lot). The thing is, we as individuals do not code or label the things we’re doing into useful categories, nor do we quite understand the measure of time on a bigger level. Vanderkam suggests rather than looking at the 24 hours we have in a day, we instead consider the 168 hours we have in a week.

When you do that, suddenly things shift in your perspective.

Maybe you only got 5 hours of sleep on Monday night, but on Saturday, you got 10 solid hours. That averages to 7.5 hours each night, right there. So yes, maybe you WERE tired on Tuesday, but how did you feel on Saturday and Sunday? Bet the answer might not be the same.

If you look at the whole of a week, you’re spending a lot of time pursuing the things you love to do. Maybe it’s not in one heap of time like you’d prefer. Maybe it’s not as much as you’d prefer; we all have those projects we want to get to but just find that, after all of our other tasks, we don’t have it in us to get to. But, by looking at time in 168 hour chunks, it might be easier to see where pieces of the time mosaic can be moved around to accommodate those passion projects. You feel fantastic when you wake up on Saturday morning after 10 hours of sleep? Maybe you spend that first hour laying in bed reading or writing or tackling a puzzle or playing a board game or writing a letter to a friend. That sounds and feels more manageable than throwing it on a to-do list for, say, Wednesday and realizing after putting in work and a stop at the grocery store and laundry and cooking dinner and feeling worn out by the time you get to it.

I wrote last year about how Bullet Journaling has changed my relationship to productivity, and I still remain dedicated and passionate about it. There is something about looking at a week over a two page spread, then choosing what gets carried over and what gets ditched. And when you consider the 168 hour week, suddenly, there is time to write that blog post. There is time to color your hair or get a pedicure. There is time to watch that TED Talk and get in a workout everyday. You probably do get in some good sex and some good time with family and friends. What you have to do is make a microshift in your mindset, though, to see it: driving with your partner to do an errand is family time if you make it a conversation or a game. You can watch that TED Talk while you’re on the elliptical or treadmill. Get a pedicure and listen to that podcast you’ve been eager to tune into. During nap hours on the weekend, maybe you spend the first part of that nap getting close with a partner. Shift how you think about your time and suddenly, the time is right there.

The idea of microchanges has been on my mind a lot, as it’s a big component of the yoga practice I’m doing. The instructor talks a lot about adjustments you can make in a pose to make it more or less challenging. But the fascinating piece for me is the microchange, the slight shift in movements and muscles that are working in a pose, whatever the adjustment you’ve decided may be. It’s crossing your legs opposite of the way you normally cross them. It’s placing the thumb you never place on top on top and noticing how it feels. It’s flexing your foot instead of pointing it. Simple, tiny things, but the results are quite phenomenal. Different muscles work. New things unlock. Something internally and/or externally clicks.

I think we get stymied into believing that important things come through adjustments. Adjustments mean change, which means time, and we’re all just so busy and we’re all so tired. And it’s true: an adjustment requires the whole of your body and your mind.

But microchanges are easy, tiny, tweaks in your routines, in the way you think about things, in noticing how you feel when you shift your weight from the front of your foot to the back. It’s in recognizing that maybe you can’t do something in 24 hours a day, but you can put it into one of your 168 hours a week.

Getting Things Done with Bullet Journaling

April 30, 2015 |

Taking a day away from talking about books and reading to instead talk about the art and science behind how I get organized and stay productive. Part of it is being inspired by folks like Jane from Dear Author who talked about this at the start of the year, and part of it is that I’ve really taken to bullet journaling and have had a number of people talk about how they want to get into it and don’t understand how it works.

I’ve always been a list keeper. I have notebooks upon notebooks of to-do lists, stretching back to college and earlier. They’re still sitting in boxes and in closets around the house, in the event I need to do something like see where I was in wedding planning back in 2006. Just incase, I guess. I’ve kept a notebook of every book I’ve finished reading since 2000, which sits on the book case in my living room.

When I worked outside of the house, I kept numerous notebooks for lists. Some were for work. Some were for inspiration. Some were for random note taking. For a few years — recent ones — my list keeping and note taking got out of control. I not only had numerous notebooks going, but I also became an unabashed post-it note user. The great thing about post-its is how easy they are to move around, put into notebooks, rearrange, and, as it turns out, throw away. Where I cannot get rid of a notebook with lists, tossing a post-it of tasks I’ve completed away felt like an accomplishment. I enjoyed that.

The downside to throwing out post-its, though? Not being able to see at a glance what sorts of productivity I can achieve within a certain time frame. Am I getting ten things done a day? Three things done a week? What sort of long-term projects require weeks, instead of an hour? Quantifying productivity with post-its and numerous journals just doesn’t work for me.

Enter bullet journal.

If you’re not familiar with the bullet journal, take the three minutes to watch the video which gives an overview of the theory and system:

After watching this, I had more questions than answers. It felt overcomplicated for my own needs while also feeling too simple. Can I really keep numerous lists in one place? Why do I need multiple calendars within the journal? Do I need the journal AND a calendar? Will it make sense to mix up my work-related tasks with my personal tasks? Blog tasks? How will I make sense of all the little symbols and notations?

In short, I watched the video and felt like it was a lot to take in. But I wanted to try it anyway.

A little bit of backstory here: I noted being a journal and note book nerd, but I didn’t mention the level to which this exists. Back in the glory days of Livejournal, I was a member of numerous notebook and journaling communities, and even after, I connected with many folks who were into that, too. Is there something more nerdy than talking about how you journal or stay productive? About what kinds of pens you prefer? About where to score really great notebooks (…and yes, I have preferences on the note books I use and for what purpose)? I knew there’d be people out there showing off how they bullet journal, and while there are some great examples on Tumblr, I knew where the gold mine would be: Pinterest.

Here’s a quick and dirty set of search results for “bullet journal” on Pinterest. While many follow the formula of the original, many diverge. If you spend some time digging around through people’s posts, you’ll find so many variations on the standard bullet journal, and it was through a few hours of time, I was able to cobble together a system that absolutely, positively works for me.

Yes, I am 100% analog in my tasking and I foresee this being the case for a long time. I am better at remembering things when I write them down than I am keeping them in my head or on a digital calendar or document. I have no more post-it notes in my life, and I keep only two notebooks now. One is for almost everything I do (that’s the bullet journal), while the second is my notebook for keeping track of work scheduling of social media, meeting notes, and generally uncategorizeable note taking. I use a large Moleskine with a grid format for the journal, while I use a Chronicle journal for my note taking (this one right now). I am very, very committed and devoted to both of those products for those very specific reasons. It’s partially about size, portability, and quality. Likewise, they sit together neatly on a shelf when I am finished with them, which is important, since I refer back to many of the note-taking notebooks frequently.

This is how I organize my bullet journal, and as the year has progressed and my projects and work have shifted and grown, you’ll see my methods have evolved, too.

I began like the video does, by numbering my pages and creating an index at the front of the journal. This method lasted for approximately 15 pages and two days of January. I don’t care about being that organized. If I do, I can go back later and fill in those gaps. I did end up making a yearly calendar at the beginning of the journal, month by month, with key dates highlighted and marked. I haven’t referred back to this much since creating it, so it’s stayed blank. I’d probably ditch this in future iterations.

At the beginning of each month, I write out a rough events calendar:

This is nothing more than the dates of the month on the left, along with events or important things I ned to remember beside it. On dates with more than one event, I just separate them but put them all on the same line.

On the next page, I keep a single-page monthly task list. This is a list of things I need to do during the month that don’t necessarily have a due date or need to be done by a certain point. I refer back to this every day when I’m working on my daily task lists (getting there in a minute) in order to build those daily to-dos.

Following those pages, I like to make myself a place to track my monthly workouts. Some people do things like Fit Bit or Polar Vortex (which isn’t the real name, but that’s what I call my husband’s fancy tracker). I think I’ve made it clear I’m a paper person.

Following those three key pages, I then flip to the following page for a two-page spread which becomes a place where I keep track of two things during the month: blog post ideas, as well as books I’ve read and books I’d like to read that month. I don’t get to everything on the “to read” list, but that’s become a way for me to keep up with what I’ve been thinking about or wanting to read so when I do finish something and wonder what next, I have a place to turn.

After that, I give myself 3-5 pages which I’ve so creatively titled “miscellaneous.” This is where all of my monthly catch-all to-dos, lists, and other things I can’t forget or want to refer back to end up. Sometimes it’s literally a note about something I need to mention in an email or it’s an address. Something I don’t want to lose or misplace and would want to maybe refer back to at some point. I didn’t include pictures because all of those pages have personal stuff on them, but the important part for me is they exist and they’re there before the daily task lists.

One of the key features of bullet journaling per the video is that people can use a special key to track their events and tasks. This…does not work for me. Instead, I make a running agenda for every single day and mark things off as I go. For important things, like an appointment or call I have to attend to, I usually put a star to note that to myself. Otherwise, it’s a straight list, and I keep the daily task lists to half of a page. That’s all I can reasonably do in a day. Or rather, it’s all I expect myself to try to accomplish in a day that needs to get written down. Some things are so routine, I don’t need to mark them.

Generally, I write out a week of dates at a time. Sometimes I’ll go further. I don’t usually put the day of the week beside the date, but I have done that to keep track periodically. What’s been key for me here is this: I list things I need to do, or a memory cue for them (like “Pinterest” and “Goodreads,” which are things I do for Book Riot) and I mark them off as I accomplish them. When I see there are things being unmarked and unaccomplished, I move them to the next day.

Some people believe in very specific tasks being written. I alternate between specific tasks (“Write a Tumblr post for work about this event doing this”) and cues (“Goodreads,” which simply means do a few things on Goodreads that need to be done that day). It works for me because some things require specific information and other things do not.

If things don’t get done within a week or so — depending on what the task or memory cue is — I reevaluate the task. Do I need to do it? Will I do it? Or is it taking up unnecessary space in my life and it’s time to let go? If something isn’t on my monthly task list and has just been taking up space on my calendar, it’s time to either do the task (like go to the post office, which is a notorious one I hold over) or get rid of it and not think about it again.

By keeping my daily task lists to a week or so planned out, I force myself to make these decisions regularly. I don’t have time to waste writing things down again and again if I’m really not going to do them or if it’s a thing I just need to do and finish.

I keep all of my to-do list in one space. I do not separate out work tasks from personal tasks. I am very good at budgeting my time and energy during the day, so I know how to proceed with those multiple sides to my daily life. I practice energy management as opposed to time management, which I know is a touchy-feely way of getting things done, but it works for me. And since I work from home with an unconventional schedule, I find this method of taking care of things every day really works for me. Basically, I don’t plot things out in time chunks. I plot them out by energy. I know I am more likely to get certain things done in the morning and other things done mid-day. So I look at my lists every day and go from there. (This also tends to be why I am generally very fast at responding to emails or messages I get: as soon as I have the energy for it, I’m tackling it, rather than planning to go at it in one period of time.)

And that’s all.

I don’t do anything else with my bullet journal. I have no fancy secrets or knobs or gadgets. I use the same black ink Pilot pen on every single page. I reevaluate the monthly task lists as I go, and sometimes things get knocked off when they’re accomplished or I know it’s not going to happen.

I’m sold on this method of tracking my life because it’s analog and because I love having both the feeling of accomplishment that comes with marking things off and seeing how much can and cannot get done. More, I have a lot of opportunities to make choices with my time more regularly now that I see how my energy works with me, rather than against me. As a person who has to have control in her life, this is the biggest benefit. I know when and how I can get things done when I see it like this.

Keeping a record of books read, workouts finished, and blog post ideas keeps me motivated. I like seeing those pages full visually. And it’s always nice to know there’s a pile of blog post ideas sitting in line when I feel like I have nothing to work with when I sit down to write.

My bullet journaling came from trial and error, looking at what other people were doing and what would work for my own life. If it’s something that appeals to you but feels overwhelming, I cannot emphasize looking around at how others adapt them and then doing the same for yourself. I started with some idealistic notions on what I’d do with this, but then I let them die away as I realized the key component of bullet journaling for me, aside from organization, was decision making. Where do I invest my time and where do I let things go?

Other resources for getting started in bullet journaling:

Maureen wrote about her own personal methods of bullet journaling earlier this year. As you’ll see we all have methods that work for us. The beauty of bullet journaling is the adaptability of the format.

There’s also a Facebook group for bullet journaling. You can hop in and show off, ask questions, and get ideas for how other people use their journals here.

Bullet journal ideas and examples from Pinterest to get you started.

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

April 13, 2015 |

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

July 31, 2014 |

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.

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.