Four Things that I Wish I Knew when I started blogging
If you are just starting up a book blog this is the post for you!
Welcome from all the blogging community! This is a post about
1. Blogging is really hard work!
At first, I thought that I would be able to output content three times a week, with properly in-depth posts. However, I soon realised that this was a lot harder than expected. For a start, I had just started a secondary school, and it wasn't easy to balance more homework, tiredness and blogging all in one. It didn't help that to blog you needed to read. Like lots of bookworms, I often forget what I liked and disliked about a book a couple of days after I read it. So if I read a book and then couldn't review it that night, I often ended up not reviewing it. The only thing that I could do was to keep at it, and not give up If I hadn't done that this post wouldn't be on this screen. So keep it up!
Compare it to this post, you can see the difference can't you!
2. Do not expect ARC's and for Authors to give you free books!
If you search around a lot you can find posts about Publishers contacting bloggers about ARC's within a few months after starting their blogs. However, if you look at the time stamp of these posts, you can see that they are normally from quite a while back. This may because there are a lot more book bloggers now than there were back then, and therefore a lot more choice when it comes down to publishers choosing which blogs to send books to. I didn't receive my first ARC until well over a year after starting the blog. I consider myself to be quite lucky that I have received any at all, as they are definitely not a given, like some blog posts on the subject would have you believe.
3. There are others out there!
This might seem like quite an obvious tip. I mean, your reading this blog, right!? However, some people don't realise this and start a book blog thinking that it is something never done before. Whilst this isn't exactly what happened to me, I did think that there were a lot fewer bloggers than I now know there are. Seriously, the blogosphere is massive and getting bigger. You wouldn't believe how many book bloggers there are. So don't be surprised if your blog doesn't take off straight away.
4. Social Media is key!
As a blogger, I use Twitter constantly. I can use it to connect with other bloggers, as well as authors and publishers. As well as this, I can advertise knew blog posts with it. You may even be reading this post down to it! Other websites that I use are Facebook (you can see my facebook page here) and google+. If you are using Blogger to write your blog, then Google+ is especially useful, mainly because it is super easy to share your posts.
So there you have it, four things that I wish I knew when I started book blogging! I hope that you learnt something, that might help you if you are a new blogger! And, if you already have a blog, are there any other tips that you want to leave to future members of the Blogosphere? Whatever your thoughts, leave them in the comments below!
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