Finally! It’s back again! We’re in our fifth year of doing this readathon thing, and it has just gotten better and better each time.

Now that we’ve appropriately welcomed one of the two best weekends of the year, we’ll go through some of the basics of the weekend. First of all, introductions: my name is Rachel and I’m the creator of the 24in48 readathon. Kerry and Kristen are back again to help me with hosting duties and we’ll be trading off posting responsibilities all weekend. You’ll also be able to catch us on social media all weekend. We’ll be taking turns on the official social handles — Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Litsy (@24in48) — and the official hashtag #24in48.

Before I get into some of the nitty gritty for this kick-off, I wanted to just remind everyone of the donate button over there in the sidebar or click on this link to be taken to our donation page. 100% of your donations (minus PayPal’s fees) will go toward helping your fellow participants who are not US-based the chance to win prizes. We’ve gotten a few donations but as we get more throughout the weekend, we’ll add to the prize page so as many people as possible can win. Thank you to all of you that have already contributed.

It is midnight ET according to the official time clock and we’ll be posting updates every three hours until we wrap this thing up on Sunday night at midnight ET. It is definitely not too late to sign up, which you can do here, and you should sign up whether you think you’ll hit 24 hours of reading or not. You’ll have the chance to win prizes just for participating, as well as in challenges that will be posted here throughout the course of the weekend.

One major change for this round of the ‘thon: rather than entering challenges by leaving a comment, you’ll be asked to fill out a Google form instead. Hopefully this will make life much easier not only for you, but also for your readathon hosts. Note that challenge entries only added in the comments will not count toward prize eligibility. (Speaking of prizes, have you seen the prize list for this round?)

For more tips and instructions, check out our post on how to readathon.

Let’s start with our re-vamped Intro Survey — fill out the form below to enter and check out your fellow participants’ answers in the spreadsheet. You’ve got until Hour 24 to enter to win.