Whatever-You-Want-A-Thon FAQ

hi everyone my name is maddie welcome back to my channel and welcome to this video where i'm going to be doing an faq q a kind of thing for whatever you want-a-thon so some very quick context for anyone who doesn't know i did announce last week or probably a couple weeks before you're seeing this a readathon i'm posting throughout june i will link the announcement video up here it is called whatever you want-a-thon it is through the whole month of june as a very basic overview it is a competitive readathon there's five teams and pretty much you can read whatever you want different things will earn you points but it doesn't have to factor into what you read and you set your own goal at the beginning of the readathon when you sign up to take part and that is the goal you're aiming to achieve achieving that goal gets you basically as many points as anything else would combined i think i worked out very roughly that if you achieve your goal you get the same number of points as reading like 20 other books so it's definitely achievable for everyone you set your own goal you get a lot of points from achieving that goal read whatever you want there is a lot more to it than that though if you do want to watch the announced video i would recommend it because that's where you're going to get the majority of the information i will also have linked down below the google drive with all of the graphics for the readathon which does explain pretty much everything but with both of those things existing there are a lot of questions which keep coming up and a lot of questions people still have so i've asked in the discord because there's a discord for it the link for that is in the sign up form i've asked the discord for questions from people i know lots of people have commented questions and i'm just going to run through some of the ones i feel like i've seen a lot of times and possibly need a bit of clarity if you have any more questions after this you can ask them in the discord but i would really really ask you to please watch the announcement video and look at the graphics first because understandably i am getting a lot of questions which are covered in those things which i will cover again some of here but please please please use the resources available before asking questions because we've had a phenomenal number of people sign up we've had over 1500 people sign up in the first week since its announcement and therefore i cannot keep up with answering every single question so please look at the graphics so that i'm not being asked the same question 500 times now very quickly before diving into all of the questions that i've seen everywhere i just really quickly want to say the biggest thank you to every single one of you who has signed up for this i am utterly mind-blown the 1500 of you have signed up in the first week i cannot believe it the fact that we got almost a thousand people in the first day is just beyond insane to me i'm so grateful as a collective we have pledged 12 000 books that is incredible if people are to hit their goals and we read that much that's it's just beyond incredible so thank you so so so much to every single person who has signed up and who is taking part and who is asking questions i am so excited i mean i was excited before but now it's just a whole other level of excitement to do this with all of you and also apologies if i get a bit negative in this video i'm just trying to like be really clear and i feel like my frustration may have shown a teeny tiny bit when filming some of these answers but i promise i'm not actually annoyed at anyone i'm just trying to be really really clear with what the rules are and how we're gonna be playing this so that everyone can have the best and fairest time possible now where we're going to start and i will say this probably many many times throughout this video is and this is something i did expect a question that's been coming up time and time and time again is does this count can i read this can i fit this so basically the answer to all of those questions and i'll go through some examples but the answer in one line is count it if you want to but don't be a dick about it and i think this is just the ethos we always take into this the whole way you earn points is through an honesty practice you will tell me if you think your book fits a prompt and therefore you get the points for it i will not be looking at individual entries and assessing whether i agree with you or not i don't have time we've pledged over 12 000 books i cannot look through that many entries and see if what you say is true so i'm just gonna have to trust you but therefore don't be a dick about it so i've had a lot of people asking like this book was published in 2005 and set in 2005. can i count by his historical fiction i would realistically say no i would say the 80s 90s are significantly far back enough that he wants to count that as historical fiction than fair but honestly 2000's onwards probably not really the rule i always use historical fiction is if it was published or set before a significant portion of the current population was born then yes but i feel like 2000s is you're stretching that so again count it if you want to don't be a dick similarly and this is where i think it's actually most important i've had a lot of people asking for the poc prompt and for the lgbt problem because i'll see this big big points bonus for reading lgbt books for both of those and for disability and mental health i've had a lot of people ask what counts i would say pretty much for all of these a main character or an extremely prominent secondary character would be my rule for that or author is the other option so that would be kind of where i'd like for that like i've had a few people saying oh well this one small character from this book people ship with another character the same gender and so can i count that for lgbt and i'm not saying you can't if you see that character and see yourself in them and you think you're queer and you want to count it do it but if it's a case of oh the fandom thinks they're cute maybe don't the whole the whole point of having those prompts is to encourage people to read diversely so i would just really hope that you take that with its message and if you're trying to twist the prompts and not reach diversely and still get the points like you've slightly missed the point maybe try and think about that the thing as well with genre a lot of people saying does this genre fit my team in general i'll run through again the genres here contemporary are doing contemporary and romance middle grade monarchs are middle grade obviously which does cover a lot of genres because i realize middle grade is an age range not a genre but it was quite a nice differentiator epic and high is like epic high fantasy if you have like a space opera epic high sci-fi that you want to count for that then so be it dreams and drama queens is like the slightly fantastical so this is anything that you wouldn't cast like a full-out epic huge political fantasy but does have fantastical elements to it and this can be on a huge scale and i would even class some like dystopian speculative things in this it's again it's slightly up to you and then comrades of chaos covers everything else so sci-fi thrillers historical mystery literary fiction anything else and i've seen a lot of people in comrades of chaos this isn't a criticism i realize it's a really undefined team saying they will count any book for it because it's the chaos team and my rule would be if you think another team could claim it as their team genre don't claim it for yours obviously they're all within this so if you're reading like a middle grade contemporary or middle grade fantasy obviously you can claim that for middle grade even though the other teams could also claim it so there is going to be crossover like a fantasy romance you could probably claim for either contemporary or fantasy because if it's got a strong romance plot it fits into the romance team so it is up to you but again the very simple line do what you want don't be a dick about it and this again applies to a question that a lot of people have asked can i read a book i've already started before the month 100 yes if you've started before the month and you still want to count it that's absolutely fine i'm regularly halfway through a book at the end of the month and so i will roll it over and count it um i have books that i've started like six months ago maybe you want to try and finish those count 100 again don't be a dick about it don't try and start 20 books with 10 pages left of each just so you can tick off finishing everything in the first five days like that's a bit of a dick move don't do that but again it's all down to you guys i have no way of policing this so it is being done on honesty policy and on trust so please just don't abuse that i think would be my biggest thing that i really like everyone's take out this faq and kind of q a thing and i think possibly the simplest way to think about it is when you're thinking oh should i count this think about if someone was on another team to a different team and they counted it would you feel a bit miffed if you would maybe don't count it but i think that kind of covers the can i read this does this fit all of that the overall answer is it's completely up to you whether it fits just don't be a dick especially with the prompts which are to encourage you to read diversely because then you're kind of completely missing the point okay that was quite a negative note to start off on but it's just i really wanted to clarify that because i don't want people feeling like they're limited in what they can read the whole point is that you read whatever you want but just don't claim things if you're not reading the correct things okay so i'm going to go through a couple other questions off the top of my head that have come up a few times and then i will start going through comments and the discord channel and stuff and find specific questions so one i've seen come up a couple times which completely valid is how many points is host favorite worth this is completely my bad i did have a mistake on the graphic it has now been updated host favorites are worth 50 points not 25. i did say it correctly in the announcement video but my graphic was wrong because that was a last-minute change and i'd forgotten to update my graphic that is now updated apologies for that if you look at the scoring graphic now it does now say 50 points which is how much our host favorite is worth similar to that i have already explained that you can read any of the 30 host favorites irrelevant of what team you are on and you can read any book in those series so for example jade put drake's blade which is one of the books in the great coat series by sebastian d castell you could read any of those four books and count them however this has led on to another question which you're all sneaky i haven't thought of this steph and india both have one of the books in the brown sisters trilogy on their favorites list and so you could count all three in the trilogy because they're in the same series you don't however get double points when reading any of those books because they're on two lists that's not how it works for two reasons number one because just doesn't feel particularly fair to me and um number two because i don't know how to make that work in my spreadsheet so no you do just still get a 50 point for it being a host favorite just because it happens to be two hosts favorites kind of can't avoid that we actually all had to coordinate what we were saying as our favorites as there was a lot of crossover so i know the once and future witches night circus strange the dreamer every heart a doorway and a couple others wants to be on multiple people's lists but we worked our way so they were only on one person's list each um but i didn't consider that with the brown sisters because india and stuff chose different books in the series so no if it's any of the ones on the graphic even if it was on two people's lists you still only get 50 points sorry the other question i've seen a lot which i did cover in the announcement video but i'll cover again here is can you get like different areas of points for one book yes so just to explain this you get a hundred points every book you read up until your goal you get 200 points every book you read past that on top of that you can also get a hundred books for its lgbtq plus and 50 points if it's a host favorite and 25 points if it's in your team genre and up to 75 points which is the equivalent of three prompts for if it fits prompts the reason that is capped at 75 for the prompts is simply because there are 15 prompts if you happened to find a book that fit all 15 you would get 375 points which in my opinion is a little bit too much um so i have a capped it at three you can personally assign it for as many prompts as you want so if you want to say you've ticked off all the prompts reading one book fab but you will only get 75 points worth of prompts each book so yeah 25 per prompt maximum of three so the maximum points you can get for a book and this is if it's a host fave lgbt fits your team genre and fits three prompts is 350 points good luck trying to do that i think some of you are finding ways somehow but yes you can get all of them you can get all of those in one book do as much as you want another question i've been asked is can you count it for a prompt if you thought it was when you started and you were wrong i would say yes and no so if for example you wanted to claim it's lgbt when it wasn't i would say no please don't even if you thought it was going in i know it's frustrating but we really want to try and support lgbt books here however if it was something like i'm talking about my other prompts even are like you thought your five star prediction doesn't end up being five stars or you i'm trying to remember i don't have many which like to do with plot devices but you know whatever it is if you thought it was going in and that's why you picked the book and you ended up being wrong yeah you can still count that don't worry too much about that but again when it comes like the diversity ones so poc disability mental health and lgbt maybe not because then it kind of defeats the purpose of it okay so i'm going to delve into the discord now and kind of go through some more specific questions so one which i've actually seen a few times is assassin's apprentice is on ashley's list can you read any elderling book or just the farseer trilogy i am going to limit that trilogy i know they're all interconnected but again be sensible otherwise it just gets a bit mad with how many you can claim one someone else was saying they're not a booktuber and don't have a tbr game how are you meant to do the tbr game prompt what i was envisaging for this is you watch someone else's tbr game and pick any prompt that comes up for them and use that so that should be easy to do irrelevant of having your own tbr game someone's saying can you read in any language yes absolutely i would never expect people to read in english just because i do and because a lot of books are published in english read in whatever format whatever language you want this is very much where the whatever you want rule comes in okay this is a really important one someone asking i can't remember what i've pledged i can't remember what name i've used what do i do right i knew this would happen i warned you all to remember your name and i knew this would happen but that's absolutely fine so on the google drive i have also created a personal score tracker this is because i cannot update you on how you're scoring throughout the month but if you want to keep track of your own score there is a spreadsheet on there where you can like tick off what things it fulfills and it will give you your overall score and your rank so far so youngling acolyte major deity that is in the google drive in that spreadsheet there will be a tab which is called like sign ups or something once a week i'm going to copy and paste across every single person who has signed up and what book how many books they've pledged and that will go into that sheet you can then look in that sheet and it will update every week and this will be through to the end of june it will update every single week and you can look in that sheet search for your name search for your pledge and you can find out please do this if for whatever reason you cannot find yourself in that list you can send me a message but i cannot make any promises about getting back to them i'm already getting so many messages on twitter and i'm doing my best to keep up with them but i do have a full-time job so i can't make any guarantees but that's what's going to happen so every week the spreadsheet which is titled like whatever thon tracker i will link it specifically below this video separate to the google drive there is a sheet in that spreadsheet which says sign ups that will have all those names and all the list of pledges you can find it there that is your go-to point please use it and also every time you fill in the tracking form or not every time the first time and then remember it or write it down whatever look at exactly what you wrote you need to write character by character the exact same thing as you wrote in that original sign up form or it will not count any of your points throughout the month so check it you have a way of checking make sure you do another question i've seen a few times is does patreon count for more points no absolutely not page count doesn't matter you can only earn points in the ways already discussed which are you know lgbt host fave genre fitting a prompt things like that however i will for a bit of fun be releasing how many pages we've read as a collective by the end of this readathon and how many pages each team has read but that's just for fun it doesn't actually contribute to a winner in any way another question i did mention in the announcement video but i will cover again here is can one prompt be used multiple times across multiple books yes absolutely i know buddy read i think i'm doing like three buddy reads in the month so i'll be counting all of those i think i'm reading quite a few which look like a pride flag to me so i'm going to count those every time so yes 100 you can use any prompt as many times as you would like and you can count it every single time another one i've kind of already briefly covered but i'll just say again is if there's an overlapping genres can you use it for either yes but again kind of that same logic as before of if you think another team could use it maybe not so for example i see people saying like if you have a high fantasy middle grade would you count that to epic and high i would say no i would say that really counts as middle grade um but again it is up to you i can't stop you just don't be a dick about it the the ethos here another question is for host favorite does it have to come from the graphic yes or it has to be in the same series as those books there is a separate prompt which is a bookish creator's favorites list that you can look at any bookish creator book talk bookstagram booktube book twitter find a favorites list and any book that's on any of those counts but the host favorite it has to be their ones from the graphic you can't just like look at one of their previous favorites videos and read that one it has to be one of the ones from the graphics to get the 50 point bonus but of course you could get the 25 point bonus for it if it's on any of their favorites lists similar to that another thing i've seen asked is can you count if it's like by the same author so for example becca has put crescent city on her list could you count acotar no just the series that's on the graphic it's linked down below another question i've seen a lot is like we're not going to question just a thing as people really starting to choose their team that's fine you don't need to choose now however if you would like to be in the discord before choosing your team just dm the twitter account whatever thon again it's linked down below and i will send you the discord link because i do realize that if you've not decided on a team yet it could be a bit frustrating to be missing out but yes please just dm the twitter and i'll send it across to you just let me know that you've not decided your team yet and want it a bit early and that's absolutely fine another question i've seen a huge amount is do i have to read the genre that my team says no absolutely not like if you want to join middle grade monarchs and then read adult books all month absolutely fine choose your team for whatever reason you can choose your team because of the genre you can choose your team because you like the color you can choose the team because you like the hosts you can choose the team because you like the name just dropping the dreams and drama queens is a really cool name not that it's my team or anything so choose whatever team you want for whatever reason and read anything the only bonus you're going to miss out on is that 25 point bonus which honestly doesn't matter like i'm not reading all within my genre i have like four contemporary books lined up for june which i'm going to read because i really want to use it to mood read do what you want if you want to get really invested and plan out tbrs and get points which a lot of people have been doing fab if you want to do what i'm doing a mood reader see where you end up also fab either is completely fine another question i've seen a lot is are there going to be reading sprints yes they're 100 are going to be reading sprints i don't know when exactly i don't know who will be hosting them there's not specific plans yet i will be doing my best i think we will be doing our best to have like every host hosts some reading sprints throughout the month my current plan is at the like sunday or whatever saturday sunday each week i will announce the sprints for the next week that's the plan because planning further ahead than that is really difficult but there will be lots of sprints i can't guarantee how many i won't be able to do mid-week sprints for a couple of the weeks because i obviously have work so i'll only be able to do weekend ones but i am sure between 10 hosts we'll have quite a lot of sprints going on for you the other thing to account for is on the 31st of may to 1st of june that night there is going to be like a little kick-off launch live with maybe some sprints i doubt it'll be too long because quite a lot of us would quite like to sleep before too late and i don't think everyone will be making it because obviously people have work and it is on a tuesday but that's the thing to keep your eye out that like 11 p.m midnight uk time there might be a live show coming up to kind of kick off this whole readathon another question which i think is a really good question is for the buddy read prompt does it have to be like an officially organized buddy read no if you're taking part in any book club or read along or anything like that that 100 counts as a buddy read feel free to count it also if you do want to take part in a buddy read and don't know who to ask to organize them in the discord there is two channels to do with buddy reads there is one where people are organizing them and there is a whole channel of the buddy reads that have already been organized which you can just go through and look at the list and join whichever one you want so plenty of ways to get involved with that prompt another prompt specific question is for the prompt that the last letter of a title needs to be the same as the first letter of the next book you read which book do you claim that prompt for the second one because that's the book that was decided based off the title of your previous book so like the one you are reading where the previous title last letter is the same as the first letter of the title you're currently reading that's the book you claim it for you don't claim it for both though again i can't stop you another question i've seen a few times which i have got back to people on but i will mention here is people with sort of dyslexia or partially sighted or using screen readers all of this there is a document in the google drive with all of the information on the graphics written out just in completely plain sans-serif font in like a pdf word document style thing if that is still not accessible for people please please please let me know i thought that would work better for screen readers and people who struggle with the fonts in the graphics and stuff if however that is still not very legible for people please let me know and let me know what format would be good for people because i've never used a screen reader i'm not completely sure but as far as i know that should work but do let me know if there's any other accessibility things i can do for the graphics to make them better another couple of questions that kind of tie together is to do with what you pledge firstly what you pledge is not a limit obviously you can read more than that you will get more points for books you read more than that not saying pledge low to try and get that because the core chunk of your points is always going to be from achieving your goal and then you just get a few extras for books past that but also people have been asking about changing their pledge i am going to say this with the strongest possible emphasis on do not do this unless you absolutely have to if looking at the list of names you can't remember what you signed up for or if you really need to change your pledge and i don't mean like oh maybe you want to change it like something dramatic has happened and there is just like your life has completely changed other than that please don't do this you can just use the sign up form again with a different name it will just mean that your first one doesn't pull into the tracking form and it won't be counted that is possible however this will warp my perspective of how many people are taking part because there'll be more sign ups than people taking part at the end of the readathon when i'm working out the scores i will be going through and anyone who hasn't tracked a single book will be removed from the averages just to keep it fair but please please please do not sign up again unless you absolutely have to like completely unavoidable because it will really warp things but it is an option if it needs to be just to add to this super quickly if you do for whatever reason have to change your pledge and you do end up signing up a second time please dm the whateverthon twitter account and tell me what your original signup was so i can delete it that would be greatly appreciated again please don't do this unless you have to but if you have to at least let me know so i can delete your original pledge so that i can get a full picture of how many books we've actually pledged as a collective just because it's a bit of a shame to overestimate that and then us really not hit it so let me know thank you okay i think that covers the majority of the questions that i've seen i'm trying to rack my brain for things that has come up in sprints or in other places but i think that is everything again if you have more questions comment them down below i'll do my best to keep on top of them the easiest place for me is definitely the discord just because i check it daily whereas i don't always have time to look at youtube comments unfortunately just to my job just due to my job so discord ideally twitter if you need to comments as a last resort do you leave any questions that are unanswered but again there is an announcement video there is now this video there are some graphics they should explain pretty much everything you need so check those first keep me sane because with 1500 people asking me questions i might be losing my mind just a little bit though i obviously cannot stress enough how excited i am and how blown away i am by the responses readathon has received and how many of you are wanting to take part and be competitive with me it is incredibly exciting and i'm unbelievably grateful but it's also just just a touch overwhelming when being asked the same question 200 times so you know try it try and look it up before asking there are also mods in the discord and obviously your hosts are quite familiar with all the rules and a lot of people in the discord do like understand everything quite well so someone should be able to answer your question pretty easily but i think that covers everything so we're gonna stop here for today if there is anything else that i really need to say i'll find a way to put it on twitter i would definitely recommend you follow the twitter i'm doing my best to keep updates going on there as well as the discord but i'm gonna stop talking now so thank you so much for watching if from all of this you are now interested in taking part in the readathon obviously everything will be linked down below to have a look at that like i said you enjoyed it comment down below i want some of your team please drop the heart emoji in your team color like down below i want to know i want to see how we're all doing subscribe if you like see more content from me links down below are links to obviously everything to do with this readathon as well as all the social medias and readalongs and readathons that i host as well as my patreon and my wishlist if you want to check out any of those but that's it for the video so bye and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: book browsing blog

Views: 4,858

Rating: 4.9632182 out of 5

Keywords: whateverthon, whatever you want a thon

Id: trBrCFDLQSI

Length: 26min 12sec (1572 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021