Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started Part 2 - Creating Content & Engagement

Ad: Titles with an asterisk (*) were provided to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started

Part 2: Creating Content & Engagement

I'm continuing with my Guide to Blogging with the second part of Getting Started, which is focusing on starting to create content. If you haven't yet, be sure to read the first part, Setting Up Your Blog, because until you've set up, you can't move forward.

Ok, so you've set up your email address, decided on a blog title, chosen a platform, have your theme and template, and your first few pages. Now it's time to work on your content and engagement.

Continue reading Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started Part 2 - Creating Content & Engagement

Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started Part 1 - Setting Up Your Blog

Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started

Part 1: Setting Up Your Blog

On Saturday, it will be my book blogging anniversary! I will have been blogging for 13 years. It's mad, it doesn't seem like quite so long. Blogging still brings me a huge amount of joy, and I can't see me giving up any time soon. I've learnt a few things over the years, and as I've had some questions about blogging recently, I thought I'd put together a few guides to book blogging for anyone thinking of starting.

This first post on getting started with blogging ended up being far too long, so I've split it into two parts. This one is on setting up your blog. Once you've read this, you can check out the second part, which is on Creating Content & Engagement.

Continue reading Guide to Book Blogging: Getting Started Part 1 - Setting Up Your Blog

Some Things are Bigger Than Blogging

- On Taking an Hiatus & Giving Yourself a Break

I'm here with a different kind of post today. I've been wanting to write more personal posts, the "get to know the blogger behind the blog" kind, as I haven't really done many of them, and while this isn't exactly what the kind of thing I was hoping to write, it's something I feel is important to discuss.

Continue reading Some Things are Bigger Than Blogging - On Taking an Hiatus & Giving Yourself a Break

We Book Bloggers Need to Recognise Our Worth

Book Bloggers Need to Recognise Our Worth

Last month, YA author Courtney Summers sent out her third newsletter of the year, "She knows she's talented," about her path to realising she's good at what she does, acknowledging it, and, ultimately, that her success is down to her hard work. She was particularly talking about herself as an author, and other authors, but it got me thinking about about how I think of myself as a blogger.

"I waited years for someone or some milestone to signify I'd earned my career. This in spite of the countless hours of work I'd put into my craft, the talent I knew I had, the deadlines I'd met, the accolades my books received, and the audience I built. While I waited, I often apologized for or disclaimed the utter audacity of my having them. Do that enough, self-doubt creeps in. Doubt yourself, you'll act accordingly." From "She knows she's talented," by Courtney Summers.

Continue reading We Book Bloggers Need to Recognise Our Worth

Five Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Started Book Blogging

It can be difficult to be a book blogger when you're first starting out. I've really loved all the posts there's been on how to request ARCs (like this one on JennieLy and this one on Books Nest) and the various terms in book blogging (like this one, again, on Books Nest and this older one on Feed Your Fiction Addiction). So helpful! I didn't want to just do the same thing as there are several of them out there, but I thought I would share five of the things I wish I had known before I started book blogging!

Continue reading Five Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Started Book Blogging

Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers

Book blogging is a lot of work. It takes a hell of a lot of time and effort to come up with engaging content and thoughtful reviews. But having been a book blogger for ten years now, there have been a few things I've learnt over the years that help cut out some of the time. It may only be a few minutes, but those minutes add up. So I thought I'd share with you a few hacks that may help you, too.

Continue reading Time Saving Hacks for Book Bloggers

What Do We Want From Reviews?

Recently, I have been reading reviews - on blogs, on Goodreads, on Amazon - for specific books and becoming quite frustrated. Which led me to ask on Twitter, "Does no-one else read reviews to find out more about a story?", to which I got more responses than I expected, and I realised that a lot of us actually want very different things from reviews.

A good number of years back, I discovered three Aussie blogs that I absolutely adored; Eleusinian Mysteries, Saz101, and Read Me Bookmark Me Love Me, all of which are sadly no longer running. Run by Brodie, Sarah, and Lisa, these blogs were everything. They're reviews were fun and full of passion, but they also wrote long, detailed reviews that answered every question I could ask. Loving their reviews, my review style changed. I didn't copy their review style, my reviews are very much me, but my reviews got longer, more detailed. The reviews I have from before discovering these blogs are pretty crap, but they're still here, if you wanted to look back far enough.

Continue reading What Do We Want From Reviews?

How I Approach Blogging to Reduce Stress and Pressure

Inspired by Cerys at Browsing For Books' post Feeling Pressured to Read - Why the YA Community Can Be Toxic and Isla of Whisper of Ink's Do You Genuinely Love the Content You're Creating and Consuming?, today I want to talk about how I approach book blogging. I've had this conversation before on Twitter and in the comments of other people's blogs, but I've never written about it here. I've been book blogging for ten years now, and the main reason I'm still here is because I've found a way of blogging that works for me.

Continue reading How I Approach Blogging to Reduce Stress and Pressure

Why Authors Should Respect and Appreciate Book Bloggers

There have been a couple of things that happened a few weeks ago that really upset and angered me. First there was the news that Kathleen Hale, an author who stalked a reviewer who wrote a negative review, is having a book published about said stalking. Then there was author E.K. Johnston tweeting that she writes in ARCs, "This is an ARC. I hope you didn't buy it", if the person wanting it signed doesn't want a personalisation, implying that pretty much everyone with ARCs, but especially bloggers, will sell on ARCs. Then there was author Dahlia Adler - but also the blogger behind LGBTQ Reads - tweeting about authors not promoting content on blogs that they requested/were involved in. All of this showed that there is a lack of respect for bloggers. And it really wound me up.

Continue reading Why Authors Should Respect and Appreciate Book Bloggers

How Blogging Has Changed My Reading

Today, inspired by Laura of Boats Against the Current's post, Has Blogging Changed Your Reading Habits?, I thought I would share with you guys how becoming a book blogger has changed reading for me.

I Read More

Before blogging, most of the time, I read books belonging to my Dad, as it's through his high fantasy books that I discovered reading, and he let me borrow whatever I wanted - but he only had so many book, and I didn't like the sound of everything he has. Then I discovered urban fantasy, and would be buying books as I discovered them, and when I could afford them. But then I became a book blogger, and after a while, started getting sent ARCs pretty regularly. There was no more waiting until I had money to buy a new book, I had books to choose from whenever I finished a book.

Continue reading How Blogging Has Changed My Reading

On Negative Reviews & Book Blogger Integrity

Today, I want to talk about negative reviews and book blogger integrity. It's a conversation that I'm sure has happened many times before, but I don't think I've ever stated what my thoughts on negative reviews are on my blog, and as it's something that came up - briefly and quietly - not that long ago, it's something I've been thinking about.

Firstly, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a book blogger disliking a book they've read. Even if it's a book that was sent to them by a publisher or author, or something they got through NetGalley or Edelweiss+. Just because you've been sent a book doesn't mean you have to like it. And let's be real, what we enjoy and what we don't is so subjective, we're just not going to enjoy everything. Sometimes, book bloggers may get sent unsolicited books that they may not have accepted were they asked beforehand if they would like a copy. I know there are some book bloggers who feel they should read all books they are sent, even unsolicited ARCs they don't like the sound of. You don't have to, but if you choose to, it's fine if you don't like the book. Sometimes, book bloggers will request/accept ARCs of books they think they will enjoy, and then find out they're actually not enjoying it when they're reading it. This is ok, too. As long as we all know we don't have to accept every book we're offered, and we don't have to enjoy the books we do get sent, we're fine.

Continue reading On Negative Reviews & Book Blogger Integrity

Six for Sunday: Reasons I Love to Blog

Six For Sunday is a weekly feature run by Steph of A Little But a Lot. You can read all the Six for Sunday prompts for the rest of 2018 here. This week, we're talking about reasons we love to blog.

This is a really interesting topic, because I've been book blogging for nine and a half years now, and the reason I love blogging now are undoubtedly different to the reasons I blogged when I first started, and it will be the same for others. Really looking forward to everyone's reasons, but here are mine.

A Place to Share My Thoughts
I have always liked talking about books. When I was younger, I pretty much solely read my Dad's high fantasy books, and I would discuss them with him, and talk about my theories, or how surprised I was over certain aspects. When I broadened my horizons to include urban fantasy, and later YA, I no longer had anyone to talk to, because no-one else I knew read those books. So I started a blog to share what I thought. At the time, I didn't know that I was book blogging; I didn't know that was a thing. I just needed to say what I was thinking. Then of course I found the community and discovered more about book blogging, but primarily it was to write down what I thought of the books I read, and that's really still the main reason I blog. I love talking about books, and I love writing, so book blogging combines the two.

Continue reading Six for Sunday: Reasons I Love to Blog

Eight Years a Book Blogger: How Blogging Has Changed Me

Thursday marked my blogging anniversary; I've now been book blogging for eight years. I have in the past celebrated my anniversary by talking about blogging milestones, and features and blog events I've held, but this year - inspired by Suzy of From the Fringe and her A Mushy Love Letter About Blogging - I want to talk about what book blogging has meant to me.

When I've thought about it, book blogging - have a little place online where I can rave and gush about books - has always been a hobby, something I do for the simple pleasure of combining two of my passions; writing and reading. But looking back over these past eight years, although book blogging is still a hobby, it's also become a huge part of my life. I've talked before about the opportunities book blogging has led to - being a panelist at The London Book Fair in 2013, how being a book blogger led to me getting a job, how my reviews have been quoted in the praise pages of numerous books - but I want to talk about what blogging has done for me, as a person.

Continue reading Eight Years a Book Blogger: How Blogging Has Changed Me

If Book Bloggers Were to Get Paid

Recently, Phillip Pullman wrote a short piece for The Guardian; Enough's Enough - Authors Can't Work For Free. A number of authors elaborated on what he said, talking about how they get paid very little from the sales of books, and that any work they don't get paid for away from writing takes time away from when they could be writing, which earns them their money. (Links go to Tweets from C. J. Daugherty and Melinda Salisbury.) Which is pretty awful. I personally never realised that authors didn't get paid for such events. It's ridiculous. All that time and effort they put into events for us, their fans, and they don't get paid for it; that not one penny of the money we spend on tickets to see them actually makes it's way to them. I can't believe it, and think it's atrocious, really.

But further tweets got me thinking about something else. Melinda Salisbury did comment that she doesn't consider what she writes for book bloggers as something she should be paid for:

I am so happy to donate time to write blog posts and do blogger pieces - after all, bloggers don't get paid either!

— Melinda Salisbury (@AHintofMystery) January 15, 2016

Continue reading If Book Bloggers Were to Get Paid

Booktubing Isn't For Me, But Could that Be My Downfall?

Over the six years that I've been blogging, I've seen things evolve. New bloggers, new features, new ways of blogging.

As vlogging in general has become more popular, the way readers communicate our reviews to potential readers has moved forward into booktubing. As booktubing has progressed, it's been wonderful to see this new way of getting our thoughts about books across to people, and reaching a wider audience.

There are so many bloggers I know who have started to incorporate videos into their blogs, or have created group booktube channels, like Bookish Brits, and it's got me thinking about where things will lead. At the moment, booktubers and book bloggers exist in harmony. Booktubers have become so popular that publishers' publicity campaigns also include ways of getting booktubers involved as well as bloggers, which is fantastic - we share the same passion, and we should share in the wonderful perks that publicists give us.

Continue reading Booktubing Isn't For Me, But Could that Be My Downfall?