Top Ten Tuesday – Top 10 Things that Make Your Life as a Reader/Blogger Easier
Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! This weeks top 10 are “Top Ten Things that Make your Life as a Reader/Blogger Easier”
My top ten are listed below in no particular order.
1. Goodreads: This is an excellent place to interface with authors and other readers. It’s also the best place to look up series information. I cannot tell you how many times I have been frustrated when trying to figure out the order of books in a series; Goodreads has solved this for me. I also love receiving the new releases newsletter each month.
2. Paperbackswap.com: I love swapping books on PBS. It also has a great community of readers. You can use the forums to swap large amounts of books with one person and receive credits for really cheap. So many times I get books to read for under $1.
3. The Anoka County Library System. Seriously my library rocks. They allow you to request purchase of books very easily, which I do often. They have a wonderful online system and will automatically let you know when they get a book in by an author you have marked as a favorite. They have great kids’ programs and great online account management. Not to mention the ladies there are wonderful.
4. Librarything.com: This is a much better book database than Goodreads, but not as social. They have wonderful ways to input large numbers of books (via barcode scanning etc). This is where I input every book I receive so I know what books have been read and are in the house or loaned to friends. It is my number one way to keep track of where my books are.
5. Amazon.com: Amazon is great at alerting you about when new books are coming out. They have very up to date information on publish dates and of course great prices on books.
6. Edelweiss/NetGalley: Both of these are excellent places to look at catalogs of soon to be released books. They both also let you request digital review copies which is how I get a ton of pre-released books to review.
7. Audible.com: I love listening to audiobooks while I am biking, driving, and working out. They are wonderful. I have been getting audiobooks from Audible.com for years and years. They have a wonderful site and incredible customer service.
8. Google Docs/Drive: This is where I write all of my book reviews before posting. I keep information here on what reading challenges I am participating in and also any html code I use over and over. This is also where I keep my spreadsheet for what series I am reading and when books for those series release. It is a wonderful tool for blogging/organization and life in general.
9. Feedly: I would have said Google Reader last year, but I have moved everything over to Feedly now and it works very well. I use this to organize all of my RSS feeds from both other bloggers and from authors.
10. Rafflecopter: Up until a few months ago I was using Google forms to run all of my giveaways…when I moved my blog to this new url I switched to Rafflecopter. Rafflecopter makes giveaways so darn easy, I am so happy I switched. It saves me a lot of time in setting up giveaways and posting winners.