Bookish March Madness 2018

It’s time to join our challenge! Books have been nominated, rated, and ranked and our book bracket is complete. Now we are just waiting on the basketball teams which will be announced on selection Sunday, March 11, 2018. Books on the book bracket will be paired with basketball teams  of the same rank. Keep reading to learn more about what you need to to do participate. 

Those of you who have participated before know that there is some prep work involved in our challenge. In order to join in and qualify for prizes, you need to have a bracket completed and submitted before the games start on March 15. Here is what you’ll need to  do right now.

1. Join the CBS pool for the reader’s Room Challenge. You need a CBS sports account so please sign up ahead of time if you haven’t already. Click here to join our group. Why do you need to do this? This is the site that will basically track our scores and progress so by joining it and following over the course of the tournament, you’ll be able to see how you are doing in terms of predictions. Please note that you will not be able to see the bracket or fill anything out until basketball teams are announced on March 11.
2. Go to our challenge page. Read all the instructions and leave a comment stating you will be joining the challenge. We also recommend following the blog at least for the duration of the challenge so that you can follow all the updates. I will also try to post updates on Litsy using #marchmadnesschallege.
3. Check out the book bracket. We have posted the book bracket on the challenge page.     You should print out a copy that you can use as a guide once basketball teams are announced.
4. Fill out your bracket on CBS Sports. Starting March 11-12, you will be able to go to the CBS pool and fill out your brackets. To do this, you will need to convert your book bracket into basketball teams (because CBS only lists the basketball teams). This is why I recommend printing out a copy of your book bracket. On March 11, I will post detailed instructions on how to do this for those of you who are new to March Madness challenges.
5. Read your books. Games start on March 15. The fate of your book is determined by how well its partnered basketball team fares. For example assume that The Hate U Give is paired with Duke. Then each game Duke wins, means The Hate U Give also wins. If Duke loses in the first round (VERY unlikely b/c it’s a top contender) then The Hate U Give will be out of the tournament too. You will have from March 15-May 15 to read any books you choose. You will ONLY get points for reading books that advance. So if The Hate U Give/Duke loses in round 1, you won’t get any points for reading it.
6. Keep Score. Your final challenge score will be your CBS pool score (that will be automatically tracked on the CBS site) + reading score. I will post a score card and instructions on the challenge page.

Note: You’ll notice that 8 books are listed on the top part of the bracket and in the regular part of the bracket, the number 16 spots are all empty. This is because the number 16 spot won’t be determined until March 13-14. The eight books listed at the top will be battling it out for the 4 #16 spots. The winning books will be determined by how well their partnered basketball teams do on the first 4 (pre-tournament) games held March 13-14. As soon as they are determined, I’ll update the bracket, but you can still fill out your CBS bracket even if you don’t know which book will be in the #16 spot. The CBS site will create the bracket so that the 16 spot has two teams listed and as soon as the winner of those first games are announced, the site will update with the correct team. Whoever wins out of those 8 books, earns a 16 seed spot in the bracket and will play the #1 seed in the first game. As a hint – a #16 seen has NEVER beaten a #1 seed.

Any questions? Good luck everyone!