diff --git a/doc/MAKING-RELEASES.md b/doc/MAKING-RELEASES.md
index b225696b1..864e4af47 100644
--- a/doc/MAKING-RELEASES.md
+++ b/doc/MAKING-RELEASES.md
@@ -24,10 +24,12 @@ Here's a checklist for the release process.
    & coolness.
 2. Use `devtools/changelog.py` to collect the changelog entries from pull
    request commit messages and merge them into the manually maintained
-   `CHANGELOG.md`.
-3. Update the CHANGELOG.md with [Unreleased] changed to v<VERSION>-rc1. Note that
-   you should exactly copy the date and name format from a previous
-   release, as the `build-release.sh` script relies on this.
+   `CHANGELOG.md`.  This does API queries to GitHub, which are severely
+   ratelimited unless you use an API token: set the `GH_TOKEN` environment
+   variable to a Personal Access Token from https://github.com/settings/tokens
+3. Create a new CHANGELOG.md heading to v<VERSION>-rc1, and create a link at
+   the bottom. Note that you should exactly copy the date and name format from
+   a previous release, as the `build-release.sh` script relies on this.
 4. Create a PR with the above.
 
 ### Releasing -rc1