(And What You Can Expect in the Future)
Those of you who have been with the Bout of Books read-a-thon for a while know that 7.0 introduced a new sign up process. I want to briefly touch on why we made the change, problems we saw, and what we'll do for future read-a-thons.
Why
1. The Google form and spreadsheet--introduced while I was on wordpress.com and unable to provide a linky--was causing too much work for Kelly and me. We spent too much time fixing links and fielding questions about it.
2. We wanted people to post about the read-a-thon (declare their intention to participate!) to help us spread the word.
Problems
1. Mass confusion about the difference between the official sign up linky and the social hour form.
2. Kelly and I spent too much time comparing the entries on the sign up linky to the entries on the social hour spreadsheet and goals linky.
3. Links that went to homepages instead of direct posts. This is a problem because we use your "I'm participating in Bout of Books!" post to verify your participant for prizes. We don't have the time to track down your post.
Moving Forward
1. The social hour form will move to the social hour page and will exclusively be used to build our Twitter list.
2. You will be asked to link up with the same name everywhere.
3. If your participation entry goes to your homepage, you'll be disqualified from receiving prizes. You'll be responsible for double checking; we won't police you.
4. If you need to fix your link, you are responsible for doing so. The linky allows you to delete and re-add your own links.
5. We'll endeavor to make the sign up process as clear as possible and provide examples.
