It’s that time of year again! The RITA® Reader Challenge.
We did something new last year with including a sign-up sheet, and we’re keeping that same format with just a few minor changes. You can also see the official announcement for RITA finalists here!
Basics:
There are 9 different reading deadlines, spanning every ten days. We started with books that are a little shorter to give those who wish to read longer titles more time to read.
We’re asking readers/reviewers to fill out a short contact form. This is purely to send out deadline reminders. We will not use this information for anything else, and we won’t sell it to or share it with anyone – not even if they promise unlimited book budgets and a lifetime supply of dark chocolate.
We’re limiting the reviews to 2 per book to help keep from flooding the site. These reviews will be posted throughout the week, leading up to the next deadline. If we’ve already reviewed the book on the site, then only one slot will be open for a reviewer.
You can sign up for more than one book, though of course, sharing is caring!
Rules:
The contact form can be accessed here! Once you’ve entered your name and email address, the link to the sign up spreadsheet will be on the confirmation page.
Or, if you missed the spreadsheetlink, (but please make sure to give us your name and email in the form above before registering to review books!).
In the sign-up column, simply list the name you want to be known as when posting the review. Please be respectful of those who’ve signed up before you.
Remember, 2 reviewers per book!
The deadline is when readers should submit their reviews. Send them to: amanda@smartbitchestrashybooks.com
Reviews will be proofread before posting. If there are any serious changes or clarifications, we’ll let you know!
Thank you for signing up to review books for the RITA® Reader Challenge. This is a community project that we really enjoy because it makes the RITA® ceremony each year more fun, as we know a little bit about all the books that are nominated. This year, Sarah will not be available live-blog the RITA® ceremony, but she’s happy to set up a chat so we can all watch and discuss the live stream!
We can’t provide copies of all the books to those who sign up to review – wish we could! However, if you’d like to support the site and the RITA® Reader Challenge project with your fine and excellently selected purchases, these retailer links are affiliate coded to provide a 6-8% commission. If you use them, that is most terrific, and if not, that’s perfectly cool.
There are always new books to discover in the nominees, and I know some readers love to review in genres they don’t normally read. However you do it, thank you for joining us this year.
Any questions, feel free to email Sarah or Amanda!
Wandering through the spreadsheet, question – how is Pintip Dunn’s book under ‘best first book’ category but her Amazon bio says she was a 2012 RWA finalist?
Anony Miss:
Pintop Dunn was a 2014 Golden Heart Finalist, and a 2012 Golden Heart double-finalist. The Golden Heart awards are for unpublished manuscripts, not published books.
She’s nominated in 2016 for her first published book.
I’ve reviewed dozens of books on Amazon, but I’m a little scared to do this. I’m not sure my reviews would have enough substance beyond “I liked it” or “I couldn’t stand it”. I recognize several books I’ve already read and reviewed, though. Hmm… If I decide not to sign up, I hope you all have fun with this!
I note that some books (e.g “A Noble Masquerade”) are nominated in more than one category, thus, unless blocked will have four reviews . . .
@Heather T: Ah thanks! I thought I call all the duplicates. If a book has been nominated in more than one category, we try to restrict it to one review for that book per category. So A Noble Masquerade will have one review as an Inspirational nominee and one review as a Best First Book nominee. This usually only happens when a book is nominated for Best First Book and then gets nominated in its genre category.
Every year, this review project finds rather little overlap between the finalists and the kind of stories readers of this blog like. The reason, I am sure, is that RITA entries are submitted by the authors, paying an entry fee of $50 for RWA members, $170 for non-members. They accept up to 2000 entries. So it’s not an overview of the field as a whole, only of those authors who think it worth their while to participate. I figure that wouldn’t include most well-established authors who don’t need the publicity, so you won’t see very many familiar names (although Nora Roberts entered?!). There’s a panel of judges to narrow down the initial entries to finalists, and a different panel to rank the finalists.
Hooray! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I’ve signed up to review a couple of books that are out of my comfort zone in hopes that I will make another fabulous discovery this year.
Well, I’ve never reviewed for you guys, but it seemed like a good year for it. I signed up for two books. One was one I’ve been wanting to read for awhile, and the other just looked interesting. My method is way scientific, yo.
How many books can/should we put our names down for? I’ve bought a number of these books over the last few months and would love an excuse to whittle down my tbr pile, but I don’t want to overtake the sheet! I put down two, but I’d love to do four…
Vasha, a lot of well-established authors enter every year. This is Jaci Burton’s first year nominated (for her 69th published book). In addition to Nora Roberts, Nalini Singh, Julia Quinn, Tessa Dare, and many, many others have multiple nominations over the years.
I agree it can be perplexing which books final when so many others I like more that I know were entered don’t, but it’s not just a contest for authors that feel they need the publicity. I think it depends a lot on how involved they are with RWA.
The RWA has a reputation for conservatism, right? Maybe writers on the innovative, feminist, role-innovating side would be less likely to enter their works for the RITAs? I’m just going by having closely followed this review project for the last three years and being surprised by how often reviewers said “why was this published, let alone chosen as a finalist?” and speculating on reasons for the mismatch between the tastes of the Smart Bitches community and the judges. (Doubts aside, I would really like to sign up to do some reviews, but I have a crazy-busy spring coming up.)
I think I signed up for one. I never know if the form saves.
There are a few others I’ve already read if they don’t get picked by anyone else I could maybe do.
@Aislinn: My suggestion is to sign up for just two to start and then give it a day or so. That way, other people can get a chance to grab something and if a spot is still open for one of the books you have, go for it! Reading these books and reviewing them, I think, can take up more time than people realize.
I’m participating for the first time, and am now worried about living up to the awesome RITA reviews of the past. The detail-oriented, rule-following part of my brain would like to know if there is a recommended word limit? Thank you!
Amanda, thanks for clarifying!
I always enjoy doing this and this year, I’m actually signing up for two. The books aren’t always my favorites but they keep me stretching my reading and reviewing muscles.
@Jenny: We don’t typically enforce a word count. My suggestion is to take a look through last year’s reviews to get a sense for the length. And what we tend to write on the site for our own reviews is usually between 500-1000 words. Hope that helps!
@TaffyGrrl — I was humming “It’s the most wonderful day of the year” while I was making my choices!
Love this opportunity! So many options to expand my horizons.
Good luck to all the books (and authors).
Oh no! I’m late, I’m late for a very important review! I swear I will get it in shortly, I just forgot the deadline was yesterday!!!
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