Overflowing Bookshelf Challenge Rules [The Main Challenge]

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Welcome to the challenge Laura! I haven't made too many strides myself with it yet because I'm focused on the incomplete series challenge, but the 3 for one definitely helps curb my impulse to buy.

If you're adding books to a shelf, the scan feature on the app is incredibly helpful. I'd recommend scanning and adding only about 25 titles at a time or else it takes forever to upload.

[Laura]

thank you for the welcome Niki. :) I think this challenge will be perfect. Great thing you made it! :D

Which is the scan feature? And where do I find it?
I have just been adding books through the phone app and the blasted thing keeps getting blocked once in a while. It's irritating.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I think Scan is one of the buttons at the bottom next to Search and Notifications... you can then use your phone camera to scan books into shelves

[Laura]

oh! ok. Thanks Iain. :)

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Laura wrote: "thank you for the welcome Niki. :) I think this challenge will be perfect. Great thing you made it! :D

Which is the scan feature? And where do I find it?
I have just been adding books through the ..."

I'm especially proud of the way the challenge came together, although it was Bill's awesome suggestion initially. :)

What Iain said regarding the scan feature.

[Siobhan]

I totally didn't turn off notifications when I made my shelves. So sorry to everyone I probably annoyed the hell out of!! :(

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Siobhan wrote: "I totally didn't turn off notifications when I made my shelves. So sorry to everyone I probably annoyed the hell out of!! :("

Me neither. #Fail

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I feel like the selective algorithm Goodreads uses to decide what shows up in people's feeds negates any need to worry about disabling notifications...

[Siobhan]

Ah cool, phew! Thanks Iain xD

[Laura]

One small question.

My owned-to-read shelf is almost done so I am thinking of starting with the challenge. I'm not very good with computers so could someone please let me know what exactly I'm supposed to do? There are right now around 900 titles on my shelf and by tomorrow I'll probably get them to thousand. (not including kindle books that is). I told you I have a book hoarding problem.... :D

Do I have to link the owned-to-read shelf to my thread somehow? Won't there be too many titles that way? And I don't even know how to link a shelf to a thread.

I have a lot of kindle books also. Should I make a separate thread with a separate challenge for that one or combine them both? The kindle/kobo titles should also amount to a few good hundred and I'm afraid it would become a bit too much if I have to get both on the same thread.

Perhaps I could subscribe to 1 book-buying-ban challenge and 1 separate overflowing bookshelves challenge for the kindle/kobo titles? I am not buying much of those anyway as paperbacks are much cheaper over here.

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

I separated my ebooks from my physical books for the sake of the challenge because I wanted to use the 5 for 1 book buying ban for the physical and the book pledge challenge for ebooks. Much like you mentioned doing for yours. I added a link to my bookshelf near the top of my thread for quick access to my list, but it's certainly not necessary if you don't want to do the same. If you do want to add a link, you have to be using the desktop version. Above the comment box there's a green "some HTML is okay" that you can click on and it will give you the code to copy and paste to add a link. :)

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Oh, and I have all of mine on one thread, just in different comment boxes. But feel free to do whatever makes it more fun for you.

[Laura]

Thank you Niki. :)

I'll try to finish my shelf by today and make the thread with link included. I'll probably take some time to make even the kindle shelf so I'll leave that for later.
In between I'm checking out your threads also to get an idea of how I can make mine work.

I thought about settling for 5 to 1 but I won't be able to resist I think. Prices for second hand paperbacks are so cheap over here in flea markets that it literally pains me to not buy! 50 cents for one Kay or 99 cents for one Wurts in sale... The most expensive ones would be 5 bucks. That would be the hardcovers or huge paperbacks with great cover art. So 3 for 1 will be my goal at first.

With the kindle ones I'll just try to clear them off for now. Or should I include them in the challenge also as same 3 for 1 after the shelf is made? I think that would be easier for me in the beginning and then up the stakes to 5 for 1 for both shelves at the same time. Would that be ok?

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

Totally okay. :) you're welcome to adapt the challenge any way that makes it work better for you. I know a few others have started out with 3 to 1 but then upgraded to 5 to 1 when they got used to it.

I don't know that I would be able to resist those prices either. :)

[Laura]

Well, I made my shelf and set my challenge to 5 for 1 as I got scared when I saw the total number. And those don't even include Kindle!!!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Laura wrote: "Well, I made my shelf and set my challenge to 5 for 1 as I got scared when I saw the total number. And those don't even include Kindle!!!"

Playing Devil's Advocate here... that shelf has 1104 books... that means you can buy 220 books, and as long as you read all 1100 books on that shelf before you buy more, the challenge isn't a complete bust... >:)

[RuinEleint]

Hi, I want to know if I can participate in this challenge. My problem is not owned or hoarded books in the physical sense, I have a huge Goodreads To-Read list, I think is inching towards 250, and a lot of those are just first books in a series. I want to tackle and reduce this in a systematic way and doing this within the established framework of a Challenge might help.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Generally, the way it works around here is you take the template at the start... choose what you want to do with it... make any choices/changes you want... and start a thread in the challenge folder called "Arkadeb's Challenge Name Of Some Sort" and just go to town with it... the challenges are more templates than traditional challenges with start and end dates... the more the merrier and all that...

[RuinEleint]

Iain wrote: "Generally, the way it works around here is you take the template at the start... choose what you want to do with it... make any choices/changes you want... and start a thread in the challenge folde..."

Thanks! I just started a thread under the Overflowing challenge.

[Jenna, I'd be free if not for Temper & Edgewalker]

Mod here to confirm that Iain is right - we're pretty lax around here and we all just want to have fun reading together. :)

[[deleted user]]

Do I create my own thread or do you do it?

[Tammie]

Slytherpuff wrote: "Do I create my own thread or do you do it?"

You can make your own.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks!

[Emma]

This is exactly what I needed! I don't know which challenge to use, though... I think I want buying a book to need more work from me than borrowing from the library, so perhaps I set it up at the three you suggested, Nik, but that's for a lib loan, but to actually buy a book I'd need 6 read... hmm, I need to think about this some more... Also, my biggest problem is that I have a tiny apartment and might end up moving any given summer, so I feel like physical books should require more work from me than ebooks...

[Niki Hawkes, I made it past GOTM... barely]

That’s awesome! It really helped me a lot, and I ended up bouncing around between a few of the challenges based on what my goals were for each month. It sounds like you’re honing in on what you want to focus on - that’ll help a ton! The more you work on it, the more you can customize the ideas to fit your needs. I’m looking forward to seeing what you end up with!