2013 Book Blogger Love-a-Thon || Schedule

The 2013 Book Blogger Love-a-Thon is almost here! This Saturday, join me, Katelyn and a bunch of other bloggers as we spend the day celebrating book blogging, book bloggers and book blogs all over the world. There's nothing I like more than a celebration, and the book blogging community definitely deserves to be celebrated!

Just to keep you posted on the fun stuff that we've got planned, we're sharing the schedule (in EST) for the event on both our blogs today! See below to find out what awesome activities are in store for you. If you've signed up, this schedule can be used to start setting up your posts! And if you haven't, there's definitely still time for you to do so by visiting this post. We hope you join us!

12 A.M. 

It's time for a welcome post! Katelyn & I will be introducing a list of all the participating blogs for the 2013 Love-A-Thon. You should schedule your interview swaps to go live at this time. If you missed the deadline to sign up for an interview partner, that's okay - you can use this time to share a little bit about you and your blog!

12-3 A.M. 

Use this time to visit all of the blogs that have signed up for the Love-A-Thon. Some might be old favorites, some might be new, but now is definitely the time to check them all out! You can check out the interview swaps, book reviews, author interviews and all their other posts - and leave some comments! If there are links to their social networking sites, be sure to add, follow and like as wanted. Don't forget to share your favorite blogs and posts via Twitter (and be sure to use the #LoveAThon hashtag, so we can check them out too!)

3-4 A.M. 

Mini Challenge #1! It's time for the first mini-challenge (and your first chance to win an awesome prize!). Since it's a bit early on in the day, we'll make it easy for you. Here's how it will work: There are four categories - best reviews, best book discussion posts, best blog design/layout and best random category (which you get to make up!). Your post should go live at 3 A.M. with 3-5 favorite blogs for each of these categories. There will be a place for you to link up to these posts on my blog and Katelyn's blog (and it's the same linky, so feel free to link on just one of our blogs!). You can then hop around and see who everyone else picked out for this challenge!

4-7 A.M. 

Use this time to visit NEW blogs! You'll probably find some via the first mini-challenge, but you can also check out my "Blogroll" tab, and Katelyn's "Bloggers to Check Out" tab. Leave comments, connect with them on social networking sites and perhaps even tweet about your new friends!

7-8 A.M. 

Mini Challenge #2! This is your second opportunity to win something from us! For this challenge, we ask that you get deep and poetic (or not-so-deep but still poetic!) This is how the challenge will work: Grab some of your favorite books (it can be any amount) and make up a poem with the titles alone! That’s right people, we are doing some book spine poetry. We ask that you have this post set to go up at 7 A.M. There will be a place for you to link up this challenge, just like the previous one. If you have time, please go around and look at what others did for their book spine poems! 

8-10 A.M. 

Use this time to visit blogs, especially author blogs! Authors not only entertain us with their books, but also with their awesome blog posts. From what we've seen of author blogs, they can be wildly entertaining and do not see nearly enough love! Please don’t forget to show them some comment love, connect with them on social networking sites, and share their awesome posts with the world!

10 A.M.-12 P.M. 

Twitter Break/Social Networking Break! By this point, we'll probably feel drained from being up since midnight, so it's time to revive and regroup by chatting on Twitter or Facebook or chat! (A break for some coffee and sugary snacks might help too...) You can interact with the other participants by using the Twitter hashtag #LoveAThon!

12 P.M.-1 P.M.

Congratulations, you've made it halfway! Feel free to create a recap post letting us know how you've been doing, who you've met and what posts you've enjoyed during the morning.

Mini Challenge #3! For this mini-challenge, we are going to ask you to pump up the music with a book playlist post! Book playlists can be done in any number of ways. First, they can be made up using Spotify, YouTube, or just a list of song titles on your blog. Second, they can be one you made up for a certain book, one you made up for A LOT of certain books, or it can be one that an author made up for their book that you happen to be a fan of. Regardless of which way it is done, share your book playlist with us on a post set to go live at 12 P.M. As always, there will be a special place on both blogs for you to link up. Feel free to visit the other participant’s blogs to see what playlists they came up with! 

1-4 P.M. 

Use this time to visit your favorite blogs! You probably don't get a chance to stalk, err, comment on some of your standbys very often, so this is you chance to do so. Check out posts you might have missed out on, leave comments and remember to tweet away about what you discover!

4-5 P.M. 

Mini Challenge #4! Write a letter to your blogging self and post it on your blog at 4 P.M. For the blogging oldies, you can write about whatever you’d like - advice you would give your younger self, things you would tell yourself to stop doing, things you’d tell yourself to continue doing, or things you’d tell yourself to start doing. If you're a newbie blogger, your directions are a little different. Write a letter to yourself in the future. Talk about the stuff you like so far and what you hope to accomplish in the future. Once you have this posted, you can link up on either of our sites and then go around and check out everyone else’s letters! 

5-8 P.M. 

Use this time for whatever you’d like! If you want to go back and check out some more of the participating blogs, spend more time on new-to-you blogs, or if you didn’t get to spend enough time to check out your older favorites, you can do so during this time. If you find anything that rocks your socks off, share it with us on Twitter so we can check it out! 

8-9 P.M. 

Mini Challenge #5! It's relatively simple, this challenge. All you have to do is share about your top blogging moments so far! It can be the events you’ve gone to, the reviews you’ve written, the connections you’ve made because of blogging, or whatever else comes to mind. Once you have your post go live at 8 P.M., link up on either of our blogs and visit everyone else’s posts to see what their favorite blogging moments were! 

9-12 P.M. 

This is another round of randomness! If you want to show your own blog some love during this time, please feel free to do so! If this is the route you’d like to go, you can make up a post with some of your older (but awesome) blog posts that you feel need some love or you can share the posts on twitter (be sure to use #LoveAThon so we can check them out). If you still have some blogs you want to visit, comment on, gush about on Twitter, you can also use this time to do that! 

12 A.M 

Wrap-Up Post + Major Giveaway! At this time, both Katelyn and I will be writing up our posts about the event. If you want to share about your own experiences, you can also do the same. You can include stats, your favorite parts of the day, your not-so-favorite parts of the day, the blogs you enjoyed visiting and so on. It's not a requirement, but it would be awesome for us to know how you feel about the event! 

This is also the time when Katelyn and I will link up to all the giveaways for the Love-a-thon, so that everyone can have a chance to win all the awesome prizes. We have a massive, and very exciting giveaway for you - and the prize is seriously awesome. It's going to be really easy for you guys to enter - all you'll have to do is answer a survey about the event, telling us what you liked and what you didn't!

This is also the time to 1) congratulate yourself on spreading so much blogger love and 2) pass out because I am sure you will be tired as heck by this point! It will have been an exciting and awesome 24 hours spent sharing the love - and that's always a good thing.

So that's the schedule for the 2013 Book Blogger Love-a-Thon! If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email at alexalovesbooks (at) gmail (dot) com - and I'll be happy to answer them. I can't wait for Saturday, and I hope everyone joins us!