Thursday Thirteen: Things That Make My Life as a Reader/Book Blogger Easier

Thursday Thirteen is a weekly meme with a simple theme: each Thursday you blog a list of 13 things. What kind of things? Any kind! Just come up with a list theme and run with it.

I got this week’s theme from this week’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish). I love seeing what other tools and resources fellow readers and book bloggers find helpful and wanted to share mine as well.

 

Brianna’s List:

1. My iPad Mini. I use my iPad for everything. I love being able to multi-task and I am constantly doing that with this gadget. I do most of my reading on my iPad via the Kindle app, I check my email, hang out on Twitter, chat with J9, and much, much more.
2. Goodreads. This is on just about everyone’s list. I mainly use Goodreads to track my reading and catalog books.
3. Amazon. I am always on the hunt for Kindle deals.
4. NetGalley and Edelweiss. Where I get most of my eARCs. Edelweiss has the bonus of having publisher catalogs on its site.
5. WLW. If you are on a PC and using the Blogger platform, you should be using Windows Live Writer. I am a huge WLW pusher. It’s a FREE blogging program that I use to format and schedule blog posts. (I haven’t formatted and/or scheduled a blog post on Blogger since 2009.) Before I get long winded here (because really, this could be a post all by itself) let me just say that the #1 reason I love WLW is the Dynamic Template plugin.
6. Rafflecopter. I love this giveaway widget. I’ve tried other giveaway widgets (PunchTab and PromoSimple) and I always come back to Rafflecopter. And blessed the day Rafflecopter came into my life and I no longer had to use Google Forms!
7. EmailMeForm. I found this site a little over a month ago and LOVE it. I had been using Google Docs/Forms/Spreadsheets for my contact forms but the worse part about the process was viewing the submissions. I absolutely hated looking at the spreadsheets in Google because it would never fit on one page and when I scrolled down to see the rest of the cell, it took me way down, past the cell/row I was looking at. With EmailMeForm, when someone fills out one of my contact forms, I get it straight to my inbox. I love viewing the submissions now and I can easily reply to the person right there from my inbox.
8. Google Calendar. I had used the paper and pencil method for so long but I finally merged to an electronic calendar a few months ago and haven’t looked back. I love color coding so I can see at a glance what still needs to be done.
9. IFTTT. An awesome site that helps you automate your online life. I will be doing a tutorial and hosting a mini-challenge on this next month, see keep your eye peeled.
10. Calibre. Oh, Calibre, how I love thee. Calibre is an ebook management program.
11. Pocket. This is the ‘read it later’ app I use. I am always finding stuff on Twitter and in Feedly that I want to read, but for whatever reason can’t right that second. So I save it in my Pocket and read it later. We do an ‘In My Pocket’ feature here periodically. I also did a tutorial on using Pocket.
12. Twitter. Twitter is what I like to call my playground. It’s a place where I can hang out with my fellow readers and book blogging buddies. You can find out what’s going on in the book community, what books people are reading and recommending, ask questions (seriously Twitter is becoming a more personal approach to Google search), and so much more. (Which is why I need #11.) Oh! And it’s also a great place to see/share Kindle deals and freebies.
13. IMO. This is a chat app that’s available on both iOS and Droid that I use daily with J9. Because we’re on two different OS platforms (she’s on a Droid, I’m on a iOS device), we needed to find a way to communicate and IMO was it. (Yes, we can email but you should see how much J9 and I chat each day. It’s obscene, how much we chat on a daily basis.)

 

J9’s List:

1. E-books! I don't have to turn my house into a maze with book piles everywhere.
2. My Kindle.
3. The Kindle app which syncs my Kindle with my Droid so I can pick up reading wherever I left off when I'm on the go.
4. Being able to email books for review directly to my Kindle account so books are on both my Kindle and my phone.
5. Changing from a Nook to a Kindle for reviewing so that my NetGalley books never expire like they did with the Nook format.
6. Developing relationships with publishers' marketing staff for easy book review requests.
7. Goodreads because it offers better crowd sourcing for good books than Amazon's skewed ratings (in my opinion).
8. Twitter to get book recommendations directly from other readers.
9. Brianna's M/M Romance Kindle Deals feature (in the sidebar, under ‘Kindle Deals’) so I can get deals!
10. Following MM publishers on Twitter so I get their "flash-sale" tweets for cheap(er) book buying.
11. ARe because it has a buy 10-get-1 book free deal that I utilize all the time (and yes, the books have to be eligible but nope, no price limit for the freebie that I've yet found!)
12. Blog comments because they often give me recommendations.
13. The Book Vixen herself because she does all the hard part of blogging and I just read and review books!

 

What are some things you use that make your life as a reader/book blogger easier?