4 Years of Book Blogging: How I organize my blogging & stay motivated

Hello readers!

I just realized it’s been 4 years today since I started this blog! Yay me! Queen of commitment, consistency and quality content (please stop laughing). I love blogging. I love reading. I really hope I will keep book blogging for a long time, and right now I have found a good system that works for me and I find joy in the way I blog. So I thought I’d share my terrible system with all of you!

There are THOUSANDS of book blogs, and each of us have such distinct personalities and ways to stay organized. I love seeing people talk about how they do their scheduling, how often they post, how much time they spend blogging etc, so I thought it would be a cool idea to write this post as a mix of discussion and tips. I don’t expect my tips will work for everyone, I think I’m actually a bit of an exception when it comes to the way I do blogging – I am more of a “write all my posts for the week in a day” kind of blogger, I love starting and not finishing posts right away and tend to not do much editing work. It just works for me – I like doing all the work in one go for hours than a little bit every day during the week; this stimulates my writing and creativity brain cells and I tend to write more creatively like this. On the other hand, this means I often spend half my Sunday blogging instead of, I don’t know, getting a life or something.

1. I write down my main impressions about a book on my phone or journal

Because I tend to do all my blogging on Saturdays or Sundays, this means I end up writing reviews for books days (sometimes weeks) after I’ve read them. I don’t review every single book I read, but still it’s hard to keep up. The details of what I read and my impressions start to fade pretty quickly. For this reason, I do two things to make sure my thoughts are fresh when I am ready to review:

• I use either my journal or my phone’s notes app to jot down my main thoughts while I read the book, OR:
• I sometimes will also sneak in other books in my reading week so that I finish the book I want to review closer to the reviewing day. I know, basically cheating.

2. I like to have dozens of drafted posts in different stages of readiness

To me, this has several advantages:

• it helps me quickly write down some ideas for a post before I forget;
• it gives me time mature my thoughts with no pressure to finish or polish my writing (I speak ESL, so I’m quite paranoid about sounding silly in English);
• it takes off the pressure of coming up with new posts every week, because if I have no books to review or no time/energy/creativity to come up with a new post, I can just post a draft that is basically ready;
• it helps me stay motivated to keep blogging, because I have something to look forward to posting.

WordPress Block Editor: Quick Tips for Book Bloggers

Hello readers!

Welcome to the WordPress Block Editor: we hate it here. In case you just got it (like me) and have more or less understood how it works but insist on using the Classic block because Who Has the Time, I thought gathering a couple tips that helped me actually almost enjoy (gasp!) using it by now would be a good idea. They’re simple things but maybe you find something that helps!

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1) Use a fixed toolbar

If you click on a block and every time it drives you crazy when the toolbar hovers over it, you can fix it to the top instead: click on the “…” on the upper right corner of the screen and select “Top Toolbar” (image on the left). See image on the right on how it will look like. The toolbar will stay fixed on the top of the screen even when you scroll down, so no need to scroll back up to use it!

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2) Use keyboard shortcuts

If you hate clicking and searching all the time, you can use a few shortcuts to make your life easier:

• Enter / to search blocks, for example, if I type /image it will show the options below. Click on any of them to add as a new block.

You can see all shortcuts by clicking on the “…” on the upper right corner of the screen next to the green symbol, and then “Keyboard Shortcuts”, or by clicking Shift + Alt + H.

On a similar note, if you want to write a text and add blank lines, but don’t want to create a new paragraph block for every empty line, just use shift + Enter.

Book Blogging: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Hello readers!

Today I’m writing about something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Book blogging is a unique experience for each one, but there are some things about it that are quite universal, and I wanted to know what you think about it. I intend of keep blogging for as long as it’s feasible and enjoyable, but I have changed my approached to book blogging a few times, and I’m right now also in the process of trying to change my reading, my TBR and my posting schedule.

The Good

You discover SO MANY great books

I have no idea how many books I’ve only read the past few years because of blogging. My source of inspiration before used to be mostly lists that came out on Buzzfeed or Washington Post or that were Booker winners, but now I get to read many, many unique books I wouldn’t have found otherwise! It’s surely one of my favorite things about it. At some points I even ran out of books I wanted to read, which NOW is never an issue (quite the opposite).

ARCs

Being approved for an ARC is still one of the best feelings and it never gets old. It’s so great to receive a copy of a book you’re really excited about, and it saves a bit of money too, considering how many books a blogger reads per year.

Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers

Hello fellow book bloggers,

Blogging slump is no fun – we end up writing so many posts it’s hard to come up with new ideas sometimes. I get  stuck in “reviews + weekly wrap ups” a LOT and no other posts at all, and don’t always feel very creative. That is totally fine and you totally don’t have to create new content all the time, but it’s really fun to do so, and if you’re trying to get more traffic, it’s also an interesting way to get new readers.

So I gathered a list of ideas for bookish posts and I hope you guys find it useful! I sure had fun writing this list (and it took a lot of time).

1. Seasonal posts

This is a classic book blogging strategy. Every year I create a draft for some of the holidays or special days and compile lists of recommendations for, or some other bookish discussing around the holiday. For example:

January

• Releases of the new year you’re looking forward to
• New year resolutions, bookish or otherwise

February

• TBR/Recs for Black History Month
• TBR/Recs for Romance Week (Valentine’s day)

And so on! For more ideas, read my post ideas for bookish posts, month-by-month.

Examples: Winter & Christmas Book Recommendations, International Women’s Day: 10 Book Recommendations, 10 Book Recommendations for Fall

2. Anti-TBRs

What are the books you plan on NOT buying and why? Some I wrote: #1, #2, Hyped Books Released in 2019 That I Am Not Going to Read

3. If you have Instagram, show off your aesthetic

Or how your Instagram aesthetics has changed over time. Bookstagrams are so pretty and really nice to look through. You can also show the behind-the-camera and share tips and tricks for photographing books!

4. Write about books that are coming soon

Quite often through the year, there’s a cycle of new releases hitting the shelves, and it’s really fun to look through those and pick a few that catch your eye or that you heard of before. You can do that per week, per month, per season etc.

Examples: Happy New Year! + Books Published in 2018 I Look Forward To, Books coming out August/2017 I’m dying to read, Books Coming Out on 2019 I’m Looking Forward To, Upcoming 2020 Releases I’m Looking Forward To

5. Create a quiz

I am not very good at creating quizzes, but they are SO MUCH FUN. If you have a paid version of WordPress, there are some plugins you can use for creating better quizzes: WP Beginners – 9 Best Quiz Plugins for WordPress (2019). Some quizzes to answer if you want to get inspired: Fun Quizzes for Bookworms!

Some quizzes I created (on the free WP): How Similar Are Our Reading Tastes?, Which Overly Specific Typical YA Couple Are You Based on the YA Books You Pick?, What Kind of Book Blogger Are You?

Seasonal Posts: post ideas for book bloggers for all year around, month-by-month

Hello readers!

This is the first post I write for the Blogging Tips category (you can see other posts on the “Blogging Tips” link on the menu on the right). For this one, I’m giving some ideas of seasonal posts for book bloggers, meaning posts you can write for each month of the year, every year (if you want to! Obviously, that is not mandatory at all), to help out for when you run out of ideas (which we all do). I linked some of my blog posts to give ideas of how to do it! I’m also adding important holidays and some author’s birthdays.

I haven’t added memes and readathons to the list. This is mostly focused on holidays.

Link on the comment sections some of the seasonal posts you liked writing, or some themes I might have forgotten!

January

(2) US National Science Fiction Day

(18) US National Winnie the Pooh Day: Share your favorite childhood books

(Fourth Wednesday in January) Library Shelfie Day

(27) International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

World War II is not that far away – lots of us have grandparents or greatgrandparents that went through those terrible times. Sharing some books that are placed in WWII can help people understand the impact of the Holocaust and how it still affects people today.

(28) Pride and Prejudice is published, 1813

Releases of the new year you’re looking forward to

Books Coming Out on 2019 I’m Looking Forward To

New year resolutions

Bookish or otherwise. Alternatively, you can post your reading challenges, or both!

My Bookish New Year’s Resolutions

Re-organizing your books

If you feel like new year, new bookshelf, you could try organizing your bookshelf in a new way to make it easier to find your favorite books! It’s very popular to organize them by color, but you can try by author surname, by genre, by size… whatever you like!

Books released last year you want to get to this year

Because we can never read everything we want in the timeframe we would like.

Uplifting reads to cheer up on Blue Monday