Behind the Scenes at the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, Part 1

'Tis the season. The colder days are coming, leaves are changing. Or so I hear. In Texas it's just slightly cooler than it was at the height of summer.

It's also time for the Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon to ramp up behind the scenes, and I thought I'd share this step-by-step, phase-by-phase process  with you all this year. Why? I dunno. Someone might think it's interesting. Someone else might want to jump in and help. Someone might just decide to read with us for the first time.

It's roughly a month until go-time, and we've already:

• Undertaken a website re-design. For the first time we actually own the Readathon website, which was previously owned by Trish from TLC Book Tours who was an early participant and steward of the Readathon.
• Taking over the website means a transition and some redesigning. Thank God Heather is really good at this stuff. See seasonal logo above!
• I was a total bum last April and never did a wrap-up post, soooo now we're scrambling a bit to get a rough list of people who might want to volunteer. Speaking of that, you can express your interest here! 
• Meanwhile, we're reaching out to our Goodreads moderators. Two of the three will be largely unavailable for this event, so we have some recruiting to do!
• I'm already using Buffer to schedule out social media reminders. We do a good bit of live Tweeting but some standard posts have to go out, too! 
• We've calendared out our sign-up posts. Reader sign-ups go live on September 18 with cheering, mini-challenges, and prize donations to follow, as needed!
• We've been thinking since last year about the issues that MUST be addressed! Namely, the way we cheer and the way we award prizes. There just aren't enough cheerleaders for 1,500+ readers, and we can't always trust the prize donors to follow through (I'm looking at you, publishers who flaked!). 

We have plans, plans, plans. Surprises and plans. We'll roll out more here as the time comes!