On getting involved in the book community, online. Guest edited by Ria and Erin at Blogger's Bookshelf. Hi, Ria & Erin here and we co-run a book blog called Blogger's Bookshelf!
Back in 2012, the two of us were looking for an outpost to share book reviews and other literary inspired content online. Our solution was to set up an entirely new blog and assemble a crack team of bloggers to help us out to create a space to rant and review books. A year later we've now expanded out our posts to cover literary events, author and blogger interviews and group discussions, but getting involved in the online book community doesn't have to be that complicated!
We've come up with a few tips on diving into the world of book blogging, vlogging and literary chatter!
1. Goodreads Is Your New BFF - As well as being a handy way to keep track of both your past and future reads Goodreads is also the perfect place to network, so if you haven’t already got an account what are you waiting for? Make friends and connect with other bloggers by joining groups, adding contacts and taking part in readathons.
2. Tweet About It! - Another great way to get involved in the community is through Twitter chats such as #BookADay, #bookbloggers, #amreading & #UKYA. All the well-known publishers can also be found on Twitter so if you want to keep up to date with all the latest news follow some of our favourites, including @HotKeyBooks, @randomhouse, @penguinUKbooks, and @BloomsburyBooks. Often these publishers run regular Twitter giveaways, so you can score some freebies too if you're lucky! Authors are also some of the loveliest, funniest and most interesting Twitter-ers around. YA authors in particular are now more active on Twitter so it's worth searching some of your favourites up.
3. The World Of Booktube - as well as Goodreads & Twitter, YouTube is a great place to find fellow book enthusiasts! If you’re new to the world of ‘booktube’ we'd recommend the following to get you started: The Readables, Books & Quills, Bookables, Jessethereader, polandbananasbooks and littlebookowl. Alternatively type the name of a book into YouTube’s search box and you’ll be sure to find lots of videos to watch!
How about BookTubing?. 4. Other Ways To Get Involved – the book blogging community is a friendly place so why not reach out to your favorite bloggers directly? A simple tweet or comment on a review you enjoyed is a great way to join in and make new friends who may one day become your readers! If you want to work together perhaps suggest a collaborative project, find out if they accept guest posts (FYI Blogger’s Bookshelf does!), join in with memes or even team up and create a blog together like we did!
5. You Don’t Have To Be Rich – similarly to other blogging genres there seems to be an illusion that you need to constantly be spending out on new books to have great content – this isn’t the case! Whilst its not always easy to resist the pull of a hyped up new release just remember, you don’t have to cover every single one, be selective and only opt for titles that really appeal to you.
6. Grow Your Profile As A Reviewer - As your blog grows with it may come opportunities to receive ARCs (advanced reader copies). You can even seek these out on your own by joining a site like Netgalley where you can request titles from an online catalog – the more you receive, read and review honestly the better your chances of your future requests being approved. You can find out more about Netgalley in this post.
Now over to you guys! Have you discovered any other ways of delving into the online book community? Who should we be following?
