Inside the ARCycling Studio

You might think this going to be a slightly egotistical post, like I'm over here going, 'oh, ah, look at the insane system I've created and how well it works, I am so great', but more often than not, I fail at something. But really this post is to take you inside ARCycling to understand what utter madness happens every week.

First I'm going to explain the spreadsheets. All eleven billion of them. Seriously. I can't even explain all of them at once, I have to break them into the different groups of spreadsheets.

Let's start with Donator spreads:

Donation intake form spreadsheet - oddly enough, this is the newest of spreadsheets and yet the first mentioned. When you submit a book here, it goes directly to that form. Where it sits until I manually add the donation books to two more forms (below).

Donator Master spreadsheet - Books from the above spread get added here, same information, but this time grouped by donation week and then by donator's name. This is vital on the Donator end, it tells me who needs to know where to send their books. It also tracks how long books have been sitting unclaimed by the masses.

The List spreadsheet - This is the master 'show' list of current books available for the week. This is spreadsheet you see every Sunday afternoon.

Then there are the Requester spreadsheets:
This is the fun part. This is what you see happens every Sunday.

Weekly Request spreadsheet - When you use the form to request a book on those fateful Sundays, they go into their own spreadsheet that is changed out weekly. Requests are timestamped and it's first come, first served. 'Winning' requests are highlighted and books gotten are written to the side for easy reference to us. Then they are deleted from The List.

Suspended (Time Out) spreadsheet - This is kind of a specialty spreadsheet. It's Lili's territory. When someone gets a book, their name is checked to see if it's on here. If it is, REQUEST DENIED. If Lili's working that session, she will politely email you, telling you are still on Time Out or what have you. If Jennifer's by her lonesome, not so much.

Requester Master spreadsheet - If you request and get a book, your information is manually transcribed from the Weekly Request spread to here. This dictates absolutely everything on the Requester end. It's what Lili works off of to manage the Suspended spread and tells where the books from the Donator Master spread go.

Then there are the emails.
For Requesters, confirmation emails go out go out within 20 minutes of start (which is a breeze), but it's the Donator emails that take the longest. In order to email, 2 different spreadsheets have to be consulted. First, the Donator Master spread to get who donated what books, then the Weekly Request spread to get the information on where to send them. Combine that with a 3rd open tab for an email in which to copy and paste the information of both. Then of course, crossing off the people who have been emailed.

During an average ARCycling session, I have about 6-7 tabs open, not including my Pandora channel that keeps me sane. As crazy as it sounds, it's easier to have a million tabs open then to have to go searching around in Google Docs to find a spread in the ARCycling crunch time.

From start to finish, it takes about 3 hours to prep, have the session, then all of the emails and "clean up" aka fixing spreadsheets and organizing the ARCycling inbox, which can get insane. Labels and folders, if you've never used them and have a lot of emails, I highly recommend.

And to top it all off, I keep ALL OF THE INFORMATION ever. Each one of these spreadsheets are forever long because nothing ever gets deleted. I did have to start a new Donator sheet for 2013 because it was getting too long. All this saving helps me track lost requests, lost donors, lost kittens and all-in-all stalk the crap out of everyone.
Me:


Does your brain hurt yet?
Wondering how in Tartarus we do this every Sunday? Me, let's just say I've mastered the keystrokes ⌘A, ⌘C, ⌘V and ⌘Z like nobody's business. Seriously, at times I do them so fast I often mistype them.

Anyway, now I think you guys know why after an ARCycling session I love to hang out and post stupid gifs. Cause me brain dead. And that's why mistakes happen from time to time. Though I *think* I'm getting better at that? Worst/ best part is that before the Weekly Request forms, this was even worse. Seriously. Led to lots of drinking.



Okay, not really. I'm a good girl. Kinda.


But seriously. I think this gif is the spirit animal for ARCycling.


Who doesn't love a cranky crab?

HI GUYS.

I feel like I haven't been here in ages and it wasn't until I actually, like, looked at my blog again was I was like oh, YOU GUYS. I remember you! And then I got all...


I feel like I need to update you guys on my life and what it means for you and ARCycling.

Well, I went to LA Oscar weekend, thinking 'oh, this will be cool!' then we learned the friend we were staying with lives off Hollywood Blvd which is cool, normally, but labyrinthine come Oscar weekend.

No, I didn't see any celebs. Unless you count going to Billy Boyd's band's show. In case you aren't as old as I am, he was Pippin in Lord of the Rings. You know, this dude, the hobbit joke cracker.


Or for a sultryier Pippin...


Either way, yes, it was awesome, he sings beautifully, you should check his band out! It's Beecake. Perfect if you love the Scottish accent!

Anyway, all that driving (22-24 hours solid one way) and... we didn't find nothing.



Big ole WAH WAH for us. So, as of this very moment, I still have no official plans to move to La La land and ARCycling will continue as normal.

I guess that's really all I had to say! An excuse to say hi and use some gifs!

So hang tight and...

No ARCycling Tomorrow, 2/24/13

Hey, everyone!

So, I'm really sorry to say that there will be no ARCycling tomorrow Sunday the 24th of February, 2013.

Why, you may ask? Well, Jennifer's out house hunting in Los Angeles, so I was supposed to be the only one running ARCycling this week. However, I think we all know that I can totally handle it and all would be well! But I've been really sick lately. And by that I mean that I've not been part of the land of the living for the past 6 days and to get over this huge sickness my doctors have decided to knock me out with medications until tomorrow. Alas, there will be no ARCycling because my health is really important.

As Jennifer would say, I hope ya'll will understand.

DONATORS: All current donations will be pushed to next week.

REQUESTERS: All questions about when ARCycling is tomorrow on Twitter will be ignored. Neither Jennifer or myself are going to be near a computer because we have slightly more important things to worry about and I'd really love to rejoin the land of the living.

EVERYONE ON TWO WEEK TIME OUT: This week does not count towards two week time out. So, that means if you were to get off this week, you get off next week. If you were to get off next week, you actually get off the week after. Wherever you currently are in your time outs, push it back a week.

If you have any questions, we'll answer them during the week! I hope everyone is doing better than I am.
- Lili

A giveaway you didn't even know was happening...

So unless you're not reading my tweets/ posts or unless you're really not paying attention, I have hinted that when we hit 100 (or more) reviews in the Review Archive I was going to do a giveaway. Now that we've hit that goal (and more), it's time to spell this out a little more.

But! But! But! Lili mentioned something to me, (y'all should be thankful for her, even if she reams you on Time Out) she said I should thank the donors cause, well, without them, this program would have died as soon as it started (how I thought it would happen!).

My reaction:


Then:


THEN. We hit 500 (+) followers and that kind of sealed the deal.

So all of that led to this: (sorry, this is not a gif, but you might recognize the closet space!)

WHAT IS IN IT?!?!?!?!?
I DON'T KNOW!!!
Actually, I do, but I'm pretending I don't.
The better part is that YOU don't know. And you're not gonna know.

You:


Yeah, I said it.

Here's what's going to happen:
Three prizes. (Mysterious box x3 - Jennifer didn't get enough boxes in time for the picture)
Three winners.
A Russian roulette of giveaways.

*I sifted through a lot of disturbing entries for Russian roulette. You're lucky I found this.

Unmarked Box 1 will go to one of 100 (and some) reviewers listed here: http://arcycling.blogspot.com/p/review-archive.html
That much has been obvious for a while. Every review is one entry.

Unmarked Box 2 will go to a random donor who has donated over 3 books.

Unmarked Box 3 will go to a random GFC follower since we broke 500 followers.

Now. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU ARE STILL WONDERING:
WHAT IS *IN* THOSE BOXES?!
Well, I'll give you this much:
1. Each box has 12 books (blend of hardcover and paperback, new and older).
2. Each box is primarily YA with a balance of genres.
3. While most are ARCs, there are finished copies (both paperback and hardcover) in both boxes.
4. Most these came from my personal collection, cuts, etc because I still have WAY too many books.

So what's super-di-duper unique about this giveaway?
THE BALLOTS ARE ALREADY IN.

More audience reaction shots:


Me:


Means this is like the SAT, you go in knowing what you know. It's not something you cram for, this is an accumulation. Which is this. Your entry (or lack-of entry) is already in. As of this second, no more donations will get you an entry. They will count to the NEXT goal giveaway. Whenever that will be.

Believe me, this saves me a lot of kerfuffle. No fussin' or fightin' or Rafflecopter or nothin'. It saves me even more kerfuffle that I already have my winners picked and going to announce them... right... now...

Random Reviewer: Heather at SPEW You Voldemort
Random Donator: Sara at Forever 17 Books 
Random Follower: Melissa at Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf 

Winners check your inboxes and thanks for being your awesome selves! 

And now to end this on a gif that made me laugh for like, 8 hours.
Really, it's the falling guitar and the completely uncaring cat that kills me. I mean, it doesn't even look over!
 

A fireside chat.

So, it's happened. Through the mouth of a friend I had to hear about someone hating on my lovely little program. The hate in and of itself, I don't mind. Hey, things had been going too smoothly. My ego was getting over-stroked. However, while I won't drag their name in here like they did me, I would like to address their argument. And since this is a pretty serious post, I am going to lighten it with as many gifs as I could make sense of. As always.

What they say:
ARCs should never be distributed to others than who they were intended for by the publisher. Ever. Like, ever, ever. So if you don't keep them, they should be destroyed. And we are wrong and ignorant for doing this.

My response:
Point #1
Okay, okay, okay, let's start simple. Imagine for a second that some huge blogger, who has been blogging for years, were to keep every ARC ever. I imagine it would be something like this:

*Yes, I realize this is not a gif. Sorry. No gif of something like this exists.

Yeah, rooms like this make us book nerds (theoretically) ecstatic. But here's the downright, honest truth. Ain't nobody got space for that. What about a book you read and were totally MEH about? *I* don't keep it. Why? I'm not gonna read it again! I'd rather clear it off for a book I love.*
*I can't speak for everyone, but if I read an ARC, love it, I go and buy the book. Cause it looks prettier on my shelf, they last longer than ARCs and it supports the author/ publisher. So there.

Let's just agree that keeping every book you read (even if you don't want it) is insane. I read over 100 books a year, I'd be dead under the weight of them if I kept them all. Enter factors of earthquakes or fires and deadest dead that ever deaded.

Point #2
As per unnamed person, if you have you've ever gotten an ARC from a publisher and given it away on your blog (to anyone), then you are on the naughty list. Which means like 90% of bloggers are on the naughty list already. Which makes me think we all need to get together and have a big ole bad kids party.


And, uh, not to point out the insanely obvious, but publishers aren't stupid. They aren't unaware of the happenings of what we do on our little Blogger and Word Press-run sites. They know we do giveaways. If it was a problem, we would have heard about instances by now. Just saying.

And for the record, I've never used Amazon Vine. Honestly, I'd never even heard of it before. I also hate Amazon and won't use it if it can at all be avoided, but that's an entirely different story.

The day the blogging community stops all giveaways, maybe unnamed person will have a point, until then, I am going to disregard this as ridiculous as Ptolemaic epicycles in the 21st century.

Point #3
This is a big baddie point. But it's true. Ugly, ugly truth.
I know people who sell ARCs. The chain Half Price Books is a used book store around Texas and other areas and I see ARCs there ALL. THE. TIME. Specific case: I saw Malinda Lo's Adaptation (9/12) there all the way back in April. I've heard cases of librarians selling them when they do their sales of extra books cause they can't actually use them and they get too many. There are even those bloggers that sell them on eBay.
So, all of this is happening and yet I'm getting ragged on for spending my own money to mail them out while others (many others) don't give a flip about the no-sell thing?

Me:


Me at the haterade:

I try not to cuss here, but I feel like if I am going to offend people's sensibilities, it's going to be with such a classic teen film as this. Plus, it perfectly illustrates my thinking.

But, seriously, attack them first and make them stop, then come back to me.

Point #4
What unnamed person would (I guess) like me to do would be to contact every publisher for every title I ARCycle.


Are you cracked?
First of all, by the time most of the ARCs get to me they are "expired" which means they are already out. So the chance of "leaking" is minimal.
Now I feel is a good time to bring up how expensive ARCs are to produce. They actually cost more than finished hardbacks. Didn't know that? Well, they do. I've always felt it's ridiculous that a book that expensive gets used once. But if 2 bloggers read it, then it's like $10 per read, times the amount of people their stellar review and go out and buy it from that.
I am both a bookseller and a reviewer and through reviewing and hand selling, I've earned my weight in the ARC world and anyone to try and tell me otherwise is going to see what a fierce ginger I can be. Oddly, this is something unnamed person mentioned in their post... so... there's that awkward piece of common ground.

Summary:
Here's the wicked truth: ultimately, I don't really care what unnamed person thinks. I'm going to keep rocking it like I do.


*Yes, this is a Percy Jackson gif. Finally having a reason to use it makes my life.

If a publisher should contact me about a title or even their whole line of books, then sure. I'm respectful enough to not take that title(s) anymore.

What frustrates me is that this unnamed person bad-mouthed me behind my back. If you're going to spread around incorrect or incomplete information about this program, have the guts to do it to my face. Oh, and don't condescend to me like I'm some noob. I've been in this community for years, even if this blog is new. Any future whining or finger-pointing at me or this blog project from bloggers who need to deflate their britches is gonna get a

in response. Yeah, no seriously. I have this gif saved. I will use it all of the time.

Lastly, to end my essay off, I remind you this: I provide an option to the masses on how to get rid of  their unwanted books. I don't go out of my way to acquire these ARCs to pass out to peeps. Mainly 'cause I don't got time for that. We get what we get and are grateful for it. No more. There's no wink-wink-nudge-nudge-secret handshake in back alleys to get them. If you don't agree with this project, don't participate and go burn your ARCs in defiance. I don't care. They are yours to do with what you will. Keep that in mind for the people donating here. This is a judge-free zone. As well as a drama-free zone.

And now... peace out.

HTML: A simple lesson

Okay, so I know this is not supposed to be within my realm of knowledge, but surprise! surprise! It actually is. Many, many, MANY moons ago when the internet was new and young and website software didn't exist, I learned HTML.

Does this mean I am a computer software specialist? No. Do I have a computer science degree? No. Though I aced my computer science class in college and have dealt with more software and hardware issues than I ever care to admit.

So, today's lesson: Blog Buttons.
I've seen many, many and many, many have been wrong. No seriously. Out of everyone on the Donator page, I've seen like five dead-on perfect ones. Really, the code you need for your actual blog button is very simple.

Codes you need: <a href="http://www.WEBLINK.com/"></a> <- this is the code for a link. <img src="http://www.IMAGELINK.com"> <- this is an image code. For a blog button you are combining them:
<a href="http://www.WEBLINK.com/"><img src="http://www.IMAGELINK.com"></a> For your super basic blog button, that is it. That is all the code you need. MAKE SURE your a href tag encloses the img src tag. This makes the image a link.

Now, let's go into fancier things and what they mean: <a href="LINK.COM" target="_blank"></a> A link tag with a target="_blank" means the link will open a new window or tab.

Now, with the img src tag you can do lots of things, most of them useless. <img alt="ARCycling" border="0" height="100" src="LINK.COM" width="100"> What do all of these mean?
Height - pretty obvious, the height of the image IN PIXALS. Not percent.
Width - same as above, but for width. IN PIXALS. Not percent
Border - I feel like this is an archiac thing. I can't remember the time I even saw a link border on a image. Either way, if you really want the code in there, set it to 0.
Alt - this is text that will pop up if your image doesn't load. Again, this seems like archaic code. If you really want it in there, set it your blog's name and blog button, or whatever. Most people won't see this anyway.

You can also add: <center> if you wish, but for my donator page, I always delete them.

Now, lastly, since I opened this topic, might as well finish it off.
Right now (if you don't already have a blog button up) you might be thinking 'well, Jennifer, this is all well and good, but how do I get that nifty little box up with all of this marvelous code in it?' For this, I will screen cap from my good friend Lili's blog.

What you mean is this:

That box is called a text area. <center> <textarea rows="2" cols="22"> <a href="BLOGLINK.COM"><img src="BUTTONLINK.COM" /></a> </textarea> </center> Looks familiar, eh? Notice that rows and cols thing? Rows mean the horizontal space seen. Cols means columns. That code right there is the exact code for my blog button, so that's what those numbers look like in real life. They can be changed to whatever.
In conclusion, if you use some web generator and it gives you think with divs and spans and it's 80 lines long, no. That is wrong. Delete all that junk until you have: <a href="http://www.WEBLINK.com/"><img src="http://www.IMAGELINK.com"></a> That's it, folks.

Pandas and Kermit

I find it amazing that no matter how much I try to plan for things, there are ALWAYS situations that my mind never creatively imagines.

That being said... a few things.

• Donors: Please, please, please, please, please, please, please only offer up books you can, ya know, mail out. At least, eventually (a month time frame should really be doable). Because when I tell someone they're going to get a book then they don't they are sad panda when they don't get it and I am sad panda when they don't get it (not to mention it really messes with my stats). And worst of all, I keep having to give reasons as to why it hasn't been mailed, when really, I have none. All around everyone is this:
• The last bullet point is actually so important, I'm repeating it. DONORS PLEASE ONLY OFFER BOOKS YOU CAN MAIL WITHIN A TIMELY FASHION.
• Okay, new things. Requesters! This one is for you. We give books to active bloggers. But, what does that mean? Simple. 5-8 reviews a month is passable. If you have several reviewers per blog, then more, usually.
• Another one for Requesters. (New Requesters, mainly) The books on here are not "spare copies for grabs". Or whatever. These books are for review. They are not books for you to get just to giveaway for your blog or just to horde ARCs. No. No no no. If you give them away on your blog AFTER you review them, then that's kosher. But (for example) if I see you've already read and reviewed them, then no. This really shouldn't be an issue, but alas. It is now an issue that's come up.

Okay. That's all for this post, I think.
Whenever I do informational posts, I feel like this.


Okay, I'm not that serious. Maybe more like this.


Peace out!