Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

Please post anything here that helps all to

-find books on sale easier (ie/ your favorite discount sites, price match info)
- use lending apps easier ie/ overdrive, Hoopla
- make informed choices in online shops (good/bad reviews and customer service)

Just anything that you think others may or may not know that would benefit their book buying/lending/reading experiences

Overdrive recommend feature:

Under my bookshelf (where you will find holds and checked out titles), you will see some links such as wishlist, recommendations. Some libraries will have the recommend feature turned off, but most have them on.

To find a title, search as normal, then keep scrolling past the "we couldn't find any results" message. Some titles may come up with different formats (ebook or audiobook)

Click recommend. There is a limit on how many recommendations you can have at a time so be mindful of that. There will be some options via auto checkout etc, which I would highly advise using, as overdrive will put you first on the holds list when they purchase the title.

Why am I mentioning this:

Often titles will show up before release date (about a week or so) and you can pre-reserve them..
BUT, if they haven't purchased the book yet.. you can search the unreleased book, "recommend" it, and overdrive will place you #1 on the holds list! Yay you get to read the book before anyone!

Getting Niki to turn Kitty-Unicorn:

Find a subject that doesn't quite fit into a specific area.. pick the area that Niki would prefer the least :D

Hahaha my first thought was "cool"! My second thought was "which folder is this in?" <-which my phone won't tell me. O_o

I'm certain I'm going to learn a lot from this thread. It seems I'm always asking how to do stuff lol.

It's in the Hodge Podge Folder

Margret wrote: "It's in the Hodge Podge Folder"

lol perfect. :)

My Amazon trick is to put everything that isn't available at the library in my wish list. They used to have a drop down filter called price drop which was awesome. I'd just click on that and bang I'd have all the books I want to read that had been reduced. Not every book with a price drop is listed in deals so this is very helpful. I was pissed they took it away. So instead I scroll to the bottom because it will only list the top 20 if you don't and then hit ctrl+f and search on dropped to see if anything qualifies.

For overview I recommend books all the time. I've recommended over 200 and they've bought 20. That 20 has saved me somewhere between $250-300 since some of these were audio recommendations they bought.

Scott wrote: "My Amazon trick is to put everything that isn't available at the library in my wish list. They used to have a drop down filter called price drop which was awesome. I'd just click on that and bang I..."

I did the exact same thing and I was so upset when they took it away too! Actually I'm still upset about it. I didn't know the ctrl+f trick. I'll do that from now on. It's better than having to look through the whole dang list.

Also posted in the Oathbringer thread. Being serialized starting August 22 on Tor.com http://www.tor.com/2017/08/15/brandon...#

Margret wrote: "Also posted in the Oathbringer thread. Being serialized starting August 22 on Tor.com http://www.tor.com/2017/08/15/brandon...#"

Thanks, that's pretty interesting. With Deadhouse Landing being released the same day I may need to use this as a cheat a few days in advance to get both books in.

I have a question that I think this thread might be able to help clarify. :)
So I was looking at the "top reviewers" for the week (https://www.goodreads.com/user/best_r...) and they are listed by "People who wrote reviews that got the most votes on Goodreads this week".
My question is: what the hell are votes? lol I've never seen anywhere where you vote for people's reviews. Unless they're speaking in code and they're actually talking about "likes."
Thoughs??

Niki Hawkes wrote: "I have a question that I think this thread might be able to help clarify. :)
So I was looking at the "top reviewers" for the week (https://www.goodreads.com/user/best_r...) and they are listed..."

They are talking about likes. The most popular reviewers have the most likes and the top reviewers are ranked by how many reviews they have written. It took me a while to figure out the whole system on Goodreads. I finally did one day after I made my location public on Goodreads. I was suddenly ranked as the number 4 top reviewer that week. It was because all 600 of my reviews showed up at once. I've also noticed if you are from a country that doesn't have as many Goodreads users it's really easy to always be a top reviewer. I have a Goodreads friend from Costa Rica who is always a number one reviewer. It's much harder in places like the US, Canada, or the UK. Another interesting thing to note is that if you modify a review it counts as a new review for that week.

I saw that and one time I was somewhere like #20 in Canada and thought wtf because I seriously write a couple words or at most 3 sentences. Only 5 or so likes usually. So I have no idea where they get their numbers from

Oh I guess we shouldn't forget to mention the Tor.com free ebook of the month for folks who don't know!

Ok so I have a Hoopla question. I use the iPad app and when I go to audiobooks --> Sci-fi and fantasy --> sort by a-z it will only show me the first 1000 results which gets me to about H. I emailed their support but they were like hey thanks keep checking in with us. Anyone know a way around this? Seems like a shitty system if I can't browse book with titles I-Z.

Making the top if you're from the states is nearly impossible. I happen to finish 5 books in the same week and a couple were very popular ones. Between the 5 I ended up with over 200 likes and I think I was 98th for the week which was the one time I made it.

Such great info! Thanks you guys - it makes sense now haha. I only made the list once as #1 for reviews posted when I got active on Goodreads and decided to transfer over all of my reviews from my blog. I can't imagine I'll ever come close to touching the list again, I was just really confused at their terminology. For the record, because of instances like me transferring all my stuff over from my blog, it makes it impossible for that list to be helpful lol. Too skewed.

Bill I'm not sure. Hoopla is such a clusterfuck. I generally just search by narrator or author. When I go to buy a book I see if either overdrive or Hoopla has it first by searching. Because I've noticed their criteria for fantasy is very broad lol

My husband usually just uses 4 titles a month for music and leaves me one title for the odd audiobook

Thanks Margret. I have been using it for comics only up until this month so it was the first time I'm really exploring it. I used the search to check for any of my open series. I'm trying to browse through everything to get everything I want to read in my favorites so I can just check the new arrivals each month.

Have to remember to check on my desktop next time I have it fired up.

New app by Overdrive in beta. My "source" aka my friend from work tells me they are eventually planning to switch to this one

Libby, by OverDrive by OverDrive, Inc.
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/libby...

Heya, I need some tips and tricks. :)

I have a few library audiobooks only available on One Click Digital (Now known as RBDigital). There is no speed adjustment on this, and I'm about ready to bang my head against the wall, the reader is so agonizingly slow. I know there's nothing in the app itself that'll make it go faster, but is there a simple hack I don't know about?

Sounds like you can do it if you follow instructions similar to what I found skimming this thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

1) Get the OCD desktop manager app

2) Download the book to your computer that way

3) Import the book to iTunes

4) Right click the book/album -> Get Info -> Options -> Media Kind = Audiobook (also 2 checkmarks for skip when shuffling and remember playback position)

5) Sync it to your phone/etc through iTunes

6) Use whatever book app you usually use and you can modify playback speed

These instructions are obviously for Apple phones... someone else can probably translate them to whatever program Android uses if needed... should be similar...

I follow similar instructions with Audible Download Manager since I had problems with the audible app when I used it (it wouldn't remember chapter positions with the screen turned off and I would constantly have to fast forward to get back to where I paused my books)

Thanks Iain!! :D