Top Ten Tuesday : Tips for New Bloggers

Hosted By The Broke and The Bookish

1. Do It For The Right Reasons: When you decide to start up a book blog, start because you love to read and you want to express your feelings about books, not because you want free books. Hell when I started, I didn't know there was even a community or that you could request ARC's.

2. Experiment at First: Don't  be afraid to try new things with your blog, until you find what feels right for you. There are plenty of things I tried and changed, until my blog worked the way I wanted.

3. Create an Identity: When You have an identity, you become more recognizable

4. Prepare to Invest Time: Reading books and blogging about them is VERY time consuming, if you want to become a more serious blogger, be ready to spend the time doing so, it is almost a second job.

5. Don't Sweat The Stats: I am stealing this from Jamie's post on The Broke and The Bookish, but is true, something I still struggle with. Some blogs gain more followers then others, more comments, etc. It can make you crazy and make you compare, but truth is you didn't (of shouldn't have) begun blogging to gain a lot of followers.

6. The Rules are There are No Rules: Honestly, do whatever you want! Every blogger has a different thing they like or dislike about other blogs. So don't worry about it, and do what you want. Although, common etiquette is nice.

7. SOCIALIZE!: Comment on other bloggers blogs, use twitter, make connections. Most of the community is REALLY close, you may feel like an outsider. You may feel like there is a group of the "popular" bloggers and you are the outcast. But truth is most of them a really nice, don't be afraid to make an effort. Although, I have yet to find my Blogging BFF, I still talk to other bloggers semi regularly.

8. You Don't Have to Have An English Degree to Blog: This one worried me when I began. I am not some Literature Whiz, I don't really pay attention to prose and stuff like that. I write, how I speak and my English teacher would be disgraced. However, that doesn't mean you can't blog.

9. BE HONEST!: If you start reviewing every book you read like it is the BEST book you ever read, people are going to start calling you out on it. Especially, if you start reviewing ARC's. I know, it is hard when and publisher or even an author (which is even harder) gives you the chance to review their book. You don't want to write a bad review, in fear of ruining that connection you made or hurting their feelings. But really it is just better to write it like you see it.

10. Don't Ruin It For Other Bloggers: How you as blogger act, does affect other bloggers. Remember, although our "job" as bloggers does help publishers and authors promote their books, The authors and publishers do not have to allow us to have access to their books and their are Authors and Publishers etc. out there who already don't like book bloggers, So when you do something to take that from the rest of the community, it sucks. Even though it isn't a job, act with some sort of Professionalism.