Authors abound

This month's State of the Thing newsletter several exclusive author features, which you can now see on the site, even if you don't read the State of the Thing.

Interview
Interview with Author David Ebershoff.

David is the author of The 19th Wife—the story of Brigham Young's 19th wife, Ann Eliza Young. In his interview with LibraryThing, David talks about his own personal library, his research process, and the book.


Reading lists
On the search for something to read? Authors Steve Luxenberg and Mary Jane Clark, gave us two very different "summer reading" lists. The books they suggest are pictured below, but see their pages for their reasons why.

Steve Luxenberg's creative take on a summer reading list


Mary Jane Clark's summer reading list


Steve and Mary Jane are also doing author chats on LibraryThing right now, so stop by to ask them a question!

Author chats



Authors stop by LibraryThing to answer questions from members, talk about their writing, and more. These three authors are chatting right now, and check out the schedule of upcoming chats for what's up next.

• Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret - chatting through August 7th.
• Mary Jane Clark, author of Dying for Mercy - chatting through August 5th.
• Alan Furst, author of The Spies of Warsaw - chatting through August 7th.

$1,000 Indie bookstore spree for a Maine-based PHP hacker

As LibraryThing learns again and again, hiring hackers in Maine is hard. So we're renewing our offer—find us an employee and get $1,000 worth of books. 

Skills. We're looking for a smart, capable, passionate hacker/programmer. We work primarily in PHP and JavaScript, with some Python thrown in. We use a lot of MySQL. We have a startup mentality.
I've given up on listing skills and requirements. We want someone who will kicks ass immediately or very soon after the hire. The rest is window-dressing.
We are only looking for someone in or around Portland, Maine. If you're super-excited about working for LibraryThing from home, go ahead and send a resume, but it'll go in a different pile.

$1,000 for an Indie. With southern Maine losing bookstores fast, we want the money to, well, keep 'em here. So, the winner gets a $1,000 gift certificate to Longfellow Books, Books, Etc. or any other independent bookseller, new or used. If you're not local, we'll write the check to your local indie. 

Rules. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email ("So-and-so told me about LibraryThing"). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone's blog, we hope you'll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired for a full-time salary job, not part-time, contract or for a trial period (which we often do first). If we don't hire someone for the job, we don't pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we've already heard of or from the candidate, or the situation is otherwise unclear, we may split the money up. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the hidden tax of shelving. Tim Spalding and his family are not eligible, but other LibraryThing employees are.

HelpThing: Member-driven help

We've added a "Help" button to every page of LibraryThing. The button goes to "HelpThing," a member-driven help system taking shape as we speak:

The idea is simple:

• Every page on LibraryThing gets a HelpThing page
  
• HelpThing is wiki-editable by any LibraryThing member
  
• Members and staff collaborate to create a detailed, but accessible guide to LibraryThing
  

HelpThing started as a "stealth project" by LibraryThing programmer Chris (ConceptDawg). It took a while before I was convinced of the idea.

While I was ignoring the idea, however, members were busy realizing it, official sanction or no. Most of the content was written by LibraryThing member fyrefly98, with contributions from mvrdrk. A somewhat separate—but integrateable—guide to collections was produced by PortiaLong and Lquilter. These members, and the others who helped them, are simply awesome.

Well, now it's your turn. From being a non-feature, then a Beta feature, it's now available for everyone to edit. To bring some structure to it, and because, well, I'm still a little afraid of it, I started a HelpThing Style Guide, and fixed up a few pages.

Come and discuss the feature on the New Features post. Ongoing conversation can be had in the Common Knowledge and WikiThing group.

Three cheers for Chris and everyone who's worked on it so far. Now let's make it as helpful and compelling as we can!

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters??

Quirk Books, the publisher responsible for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which has been on or near the top LibraryThing's "Popular this Month" list since May) has announced a new title: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I haven't read P&P&Z yet, but I know Sonya and Tim both enjoyed it...

Ben H. Winters, the author of the upcoming Sense and Sensiblity and Sea Monsters was interviewed in EW's Shelf Life recently, where he said:

I feel like people who really love Austen get it. Her novels are so strong, so cleverly constructed, so smart and dry, they really lend themselves to over-the-top violence.

Were truer words ever spoken?

The books' trailer


Meanwhile, the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame Smith, is now working on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter for Grand Central. That one I can't wait to read.

At any rate, we'll have to see if we can get some copies for Early Reviewers.

Hat tip Speakeasy, a WSJ blog.

Congratulations to Mike and Rebecca

Congratulations to LibraryThing programmer Mike Bannister and his bride Rebecca Kilkenny Mullins—we wish you many joyful years together!

LibraryThing at ALA

I've posted the details of our attendance at this year's American Library Association conference in Chicago over on Thingology. We have a booth in the exhibit hall, and we'll be showing off new features for LibraryThing for Libraries.

July Early Reviewer Books

The July batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 63 books this month, and a grand total of 1622 copies to give out. We've also got a new Early Reviewers feature announcement—Books you've won. More on that below.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Friday, July 24th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada and the UK. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Books you've won: We've added an easy way to track all the books you've won from Early Reviewers. The Books you've won page lets you keep track of the books you've won, reviewed, and whether a book has actually been received. More on the feature in this blog post.

And as always, our thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Hachette Book Group	Crossway	Vintage Canada
HarperCollins	Bell Bridge Books	Workman Publishing
Conari Press	Bloomberg Press	Bantam
Random House	Henry Holt and Company	Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company
Hyperion Books	Beacon Press	The Dial Press
Orca Book Publishers	DK Publishing	Faber and Faber
St. Martin's Minotaur	St. Martin's Griffin	Pronghorn Press
Okri Books	Bloomsbury	Bethany House
Red Hen Press	Loving Healing Press	Leucrota Press
DiaMedica	ArbeitenZeit Media	The New York Literary Society
Tilbury House	Brandeis University Press	Unbridled Books