I’ve been writing bookish things on this blog for over a year. Honestly, time flies and it feels like it was only last week that I was posting every day of October (something I will talk about later because wow that wasn’t such a good idea). With a year’s knowledge comes a year’s load of lessons learnt so I want to go over a few things with you all. This might be helpful if you’re looking to start your own blog, or this might be a nice educational exercise for you as a reader. Either way, I hope by the end of it you have something to take away from this post.

First, let me start by thanking you. Whether you read my posts occasionally, visit on a semi-regular basis, or you’re subscribed and get emails whenever I post, thank you for supporting me. It really means a lot. I am able to read and write and do what I love because of you guys. I want to be able to give recommendations to you when I come across a fabulous read. I want to be able to talk about themes and topics and critical analysis of books. I want to be able to inform and entertain and you give me the ability to do that, so once again I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now, onto the lessons.

To start is always the hardest thing.

Before having this blog, I used to write my reviews for books in the captions of my Instagram posts. As you can imagine, not only was that incredibly difficult to articulate all my thoughts in such a small space, but the nature of a long-winded caption led to many skipping over the work I’d done anyway. I have had many sweet mutuals comment and engage with my posts, praising a review or discussing their take on the book in question, and I’m grateful for all of them past and present. I knew that I wanted to move my reviews off Instagram due to the turbulent algorithm anyway – it’s always so tedious keeping up with the changes and mood swings of the platform. So, in Feb 2023, I created this blog and started writing up reviews of the books I’d read, diving into my reading journal to remind me of the finer points to talk about and giving me the opportunity to finally – finally – write a full review without my words getting cut off. Of course, I had to relearn how to write a full review since I was so used to condensing my thoughts. I even had to start analysing my writing to determine whether or not the work was substantial enough to warrant posting (that period in October has some doozies).

In short, I struggled to get anything down even though I had read so many novels to write about. There was always a fear that it wouldn’t be worth it, that I wouldn’t feel proud of the pieces or gain any gratification for having hit publishing milestones. I was still thinking that the numbers were the most important thing and it held me back from starting or promoting myself even though that’s exactly what was called for with having a blog. I’m glad I know differently now. The start is always the hardest part but as soon as you find a flow it becomes so much easier to manage, and dare I say it, fun to do.

Forcing yourself to read will run you into the ground.

Ah, now it’s time to talk about October. For context, I had a bit of a messy publishing schedule for a month or two until I worked out the days that worked best for me. I would post sporadically, sometimes going ten days without a post only do two posts within days of each other (as is my norm now). By July, I had it under control for the most part, but I wanted to do something to boost my blog and push it out there. I thought, as with the Instagram algorithm, that daily posting would give my blog a chance to get pushed to more WordPress users and visitors of the site in general through my bookstagram links and my Tumblr links (sharing to multiple platforms is a godsend when it comes to blogging). So I planned to do a Spooktober review-a-day challenge. Little did I know it would be a challenge in more ways than one.

Before my brain became completely fried, I made the smart decision to start my spooky reads in September and get a reading schedule of a book every two days. Achieveable for me at the time, believe it or not. It started well and my post schedule looked like it would pan out. I allowed myself to DNF if I didn’t like the book, I got out about ten more books than I needed to through the library to compensate, and I reminded myself to relax and try to enjoy it as much as possible because I do like a good spooky element to ta read. I had thrillers, dark fantasy, horror, gothic classics, dark academia, and a few more genres to avoid burnout (spoiler – did not work), and I even started with decent depth in my reviews. When the 10th of October hit, I knew something wasn’t working though (spoiler – it was my brain. Just kidding, I had overwhelmed myself and refused to acknowledge it until this point). The next twenty-one days could only be described as the night before an assignment with 50% weight for my overall grade was due. I DNFed more books, barely giving some a chance because of one or two minor details in the beginning. I would write up summaries or reviews that barely hit 400 words. I honestly couldn’t wait for October to be over, but I also knew that I would need to resume my normal post schedule in November so I had to read more to regain the buffer posts I’d used up.

So word from the wise – don’t do that. Don’t throw yourself into a daily posting schedule unless you are well-prepared, passionate about the books/content you are going to be writing about on the daily, and ready to hit several snags along the way that may set you back a few days, resulting in a feverish final few days to make sure the end is met.

Popular books don’t immediately mean popular posts.

Another thing I learnt from Instagram is that popular books are clickbait for you, so use them well. Maybe that’s a mean way to say it because they are still books at the end of the day, and often people’s favourites, but hear me out. There’s this quote from Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop that I remember, paraphrased it’s goes something like this – popular books will be popular. It fits for movies as well. The basis is if a film gets watched by 3 million people then people will say “Oh, this movie has been watched by 3 million people, we should go watch it.” The number then snowballs, making the popular movie more popular. The same goes for books. When the top 10 books are the popular books that everyone has read, is recommending, talking about, etc. then they will continue to be popular. So I thought “Well, there is no point in fighting it.” and hopped onto a few bandwagons and reviewed books I quite frankly didn’t like for the sake of using these popular titles. What I failed to consider was that given the books are so popular, my addition to the pond was like a drop of water in the middle of a rainstorm. I ended up reading – or rereading in some cases – books and series I didn’t enjoy and getting nowhere with them.

Heading into 2024, I already knew I wanted to steer clear of books that I wouldn’t enjoy even if they were popular because my outreach wasn’t big enough to make any splashes in that regard. I would much rather read what I want and have a smaller (much smaller) readership than force myself to consume what doesn’t satisfy me. Fun enough, this has had the pleasant effect of limiting the content about these popular books that come across my feed and I have grown to understand that “building my own bookshelf” and curating my reads is better for me in the long run. This point is linked to one of my reading goals where I don’t have a number of reads to reach. I like it. It gives me the freedom to read for myself without the pressure of reading from the genres that I have grown out of for the sake of boosting my blog and bookstagram.

Before this gets too long let me finish up with some of the changes you may notice on here. I will be removing any of the reviews I have posted that I’m not happy with content-wise. This relates to books I didn’t enjoy and the things I wrote about them. That means some of my reviews will disappear (good riddance). I won’t be shifting away from YA completely because there are many YA series I plan to reread as part of my physical TBR rereads and series I haven’t even touched yet that are out there in the world. It may mean you see less of them, but only time will tell.

I also may start writing more discussion posts about writing topics, whether it be about how characters are written, the strength of the worldbuilding in some novels, how books are plotted and framed for the reader, etc. These will tap into my degree knowledge (about time I used that) and hopefully, they will help you discern what makes your favourite books favourites. They also might help you work out why you like reading the things you read, why we settle into some genres and patterns and how there’s nothing wrong with that. These discussion posts will be a happy break from reviews and reading books so I am relieved to find ways to give you better content that doesn’t always require reading more.

Thank you for reading until the end. I hope you have a lovely day!