Month: June 2018

24in48 With Intention: Focusing on Diversity

Over the past five years, our small corner of the bookternet has grown beyond anything we could have imagined. What started with Rachel and 5-10 friends on Twitter is now a sprawling, international, almost 2,000-reader strong biannual event.

I know, right?!

We love all of you, and we’re amazed and proud of how far we’ve come.

With that pride comes realization of the importance of our platform and the responsibility associated with it.

As the ‘thon has expanded internationally, it’s drawn our thon-specific attention and brainspace to the issue of representation and access, including everything from the books we post on social media to the ratio of U.S./Canada prizes to international ones.

The three of us are each dedicated to ensuring representation in our personal reading lives, and while that has naturally carried over into elements of the readathon, we’ve realized that we’re leaving a lot of intentionality on the table.

That’s why, this year, we’re making some changes both publicly and behind the scenes at #24in48.

Publishing is a notoriously white, privileged space filled with gatekeepers who don’t necessarily represent their readership, and we are not OK with carrying on that status quo when our #24in48 community has created this platform allowing us to not only be vocal about the necessity of industry change, but—hopefully—have a measurable impact.

Part of this effort means calling attention to what we’re doing, so we can be accountable for our actions—both when we hit and miss the mark.

We won’t get it right every time, but we’re sure as hell going to try.

What do these changes look like?

More representative book stacks. Actively seeking out titles to recommend that not only include/ represent/promote authors of color, but also LGBTQIA+, disabilities, neurodiversity, geographic diversity, and more. Including descriptions of our images on social media to facilitate accessibility. Encouraging publishers and supporters to consider these intentions when selecting and donating prizes.

We’ll have a few more surveys for you to fill out this year, including an anonymous survey to help us determine the regional distribution of our readership and a book log to show not only how many books are read over the weekend but also the diversity/inclusion statistics of those books.

There’s more to come, and we have more to learn.

Thank you for journeying with us this far; we hope we won’t let you down.

XOXO,

Rachel, Kristen, & Kerry

July 2018 #24in48 Readathon Sign-ups are Here!

Happy summer reading season, friends! We are back with another #24in48 readathon on July 21-22, 2018 and we cannot wait for you to join us. Back in January, we welcomed close to 1,900 readers and we hope each and every one of you comes back for an excellent weekend of reading.

It’s a perfect way to hang out in a hammock (if it’s not too hot where you are) or chill in the A/C with a stack of great books. However you choose, we hope you’ll spend your weekend reading with us and your 2,000 closest friends.

If you’re new to 24in48, this is the basic gist: beginning at 12:01am on Saturday morning and running through 11:59pm on Sunday night, participants read for 24 hours out of that 48-hour period. You can split that up however you’d like: 20 hours on Saturday, four hours on Sunday; 12 hours each day; six four-hour sessions with four hour breaks in between, whatever you’d like.

And that’s it. The format never changes but it’s always an adventure.

Have more questions? There’s an FAQ page for that. Also, just as we did in January, we’re still accepting donations to help us send more prizes out to international winners through the PayPal donate button on the sidebar. And if you’d like to donate prizes directly, send us an email at 24in48readathonofficial@gmail.com.

Ready to join? Fill out the form below (or if you’re having trouble, click through here) and feel free to list any and all of the places you’ll be hanging out online during the ‘thon. Check out who else is participating. If your entry doesn’t immediately pop in to the spreadsheet, give it a few minutes to populate.

And you can follow the readathon in all the normal places. We’re on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Litsy (@24in48) and you can use the official hashtag #24in48 everywhere to keep up with your fellow readathon-ers.