Yey I made it! I missed a couple of days in there due to work and real life, but I genuinely put in effort to read extra pretty much every day so I feel really great about this Bout of Books!
Favorite Thing: I got into the habit of finding extra time to read and wanting to make progress, and I hope that it’ll stick for a while!
Goals:
- Read at least 2 hours every day – Didn’t manage everyday, but read more than usual!
- Read audiobooks whenever driving – Check!
- Finish at least two books this week – Didn’t quite get this, but I’m almost done with the second one, so I’m still happy!
- Spend at least one hour (OUTSIDE OF MY BLOG) communicating with the community – I participated in several of the challenges and did a lot more blog hopping than I normally do, and did a Twitter chat, so I think I did well on this :D
- Find 4 new blogs to follow :D – Done! My list is below :D
4 New Blogs Goal:
On the one grand prize vs. many overall:
I didn’t really care for the grand prize and realized it would be more valuable to someone else, so I didn’t enter. I have no real need for specialty business cards, and was rather disappointed since they don’t seem very book related to me, though I understand that a lot of people were excited about them. I would say a more book related grand prize or just several smaller prizes would have made me a little happier, but I was already really happy with the read a thon, so it’s all good :D .
How did everyone else like the read a thon? What was your favorite part?
-A
About The Story 
I am sorry that you were not overly fond of the grand prize; unfortunately, we are only able to give away what is offered, and because many people seem to like to have business cards or bookmarks for their blog, the grand prize was offered. As the host, I have little control over what people decide to offer (and trust me, everyone who offered to give something away did do so), and other than trying to make sure there are plenty of international giveaways, I don’t dictate what people should or should not offer.
I completely understand, and if people like it then it makes perfect sense, I was always one of weird opinions I’ve found ;-). I didn’t mean for that section to be overly critical of the hosts, just had noticed in the call for wrap-ups post that you had wanted opinions on that change and wanted to help how I could. I was most excited about getting to know the reading community anyway, so it doesn’t much matter to me what the prizes are :).
Happy Reading!
Anya
Ah. I guess in my mind, I was asking for comparisons between the previous Bout of Books, where we had [Indie] author donated books and the grand prize this time. In that case, there was a huge difference (the grand prize was actually far more successful). While the smaller prizes may work, it really depends on what the smaller prizes are. It has to be something people want, and I’m not sure the Indie books were it.
I like the idea of smaller prizes (as long as it’s what people want), but it would be a lot of extra work. This time around, I appreciated the simplicity of having just one.
Thanks for your input!
Makes total sense, and if there was more interest this time then numbers don’t lie ;-). And we definitely don’t want to burn our hosts out so anything that makes things easier on you gets my vote for that!
I think that was my favourite thing as well. Knowing I actually had the time to spare to read extra on some days made me realise that I just kinda didn’t before out of laziness. Glad you had fun!
Your favourite thing was the same as mine, it was nice feeling myself wanting to read for another reason other than just to read, you know feeling like you were accomplishing something :)
I look forward to next time as I really want to push myself more!
Here is my progress post.
Lauren at Northern Plundder
Glad you had a fun week! The comment about the grand prize was legit and totally understandable. No offense taken at all ;) I’m sure that we will have something different as a grand prize next time and every bit of input helps. The most important part of Bout-of-Books is that everyone have fun. Hope you get to join us in August and in the mean time, Happy Reading!