When I was 13, I started up a little blog called The Book Addicted Girl, devoted to reviewing children’s and YA books. I really had no clue what I was doing: all I wanted was a place to gush about books I loved and, hopefully, to gush with some fellow book lovers. Creating The Book Addicted Girl is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. If you love posting reviews on the Guardian children’s books site and are interested in setting up your own blog, this is pretty much a how-to guide. I really hope it helps!
First off, I’d recommend starting by getting in touch with already-active book bloggers (I’ve helpfully chosen my top 10 plus plus here). No matter how big their blog might be, all bloggers are lovely – it’s like some kind of inherent trait! We love helping new bloggers out and it’s never a pain or annoyance. So definitely get in touch with us bloggers if you have questions: we always love to talk books!
Now, choosing which blogging site to use is very much a personal preference – there are loads out there, the big ones being Google’s Blogger or Wordpress. There are loads of debates over which is better, but in the end it’s up to you!
Coming up with a catchy, original name can be much harder than it seems. I came up with The Book Addicted Girl fairly quickly and was lucky enough to find it hadn’t been taken. Other bloggers I know went months without finding the perfect name, while others keep changing theirs to find what feels right. When choosing your name, remember that if your blog gets big enough, it could end up on the back covers of books, so people have to know it’s you!
Next up comes designing your page. Now this can either be really, really easy or really, really complicated, depending on you and your computer knowledge. Whether your skills are minimal (like me) or you have crazy tech skills, keep in mind that you could have the coolest-looking site ever and it would be useless if you did nothing with it: your reviews, words and bookish enthusiasm are more important than your tech skills. Trust me!
Next step: creating pages on your blog. This can help a lot: it organises everything and makes it easy to find, which is always useful! Many bloggers opt for About Me, Contact Me, My Reviews and Review Policy pages to begin with. In the About Me section, just give a little bit of detail: your favourite books and authors, the country you live in, etc. Never, ever put your home address, mobile number or anything personal like that on your page. In the contact page, you want to put all of your blog’s social networking sites (more on that in a moment) and your blog’s email (I’d suggest getting your blog a separate email account, just to be safe) so fellow book-lovers, publishers and authors can get in touch with you. The review page is fairly obvious: post links to all your reviews, organised however you want. Finally, review policy page. Basically, you want to list the kinds of books you will and won’t review on here, which country you live in, how to get in touch with you (email), what you include in your reviews and where you post them. This will help publishers and authors find out what books to send you – and will get you books! Yay!
Now: get networking! Us bloggers, we love our social networking and bookish sites. I have Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Bloglovin’, Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository and more… I use these as extra places to post reviews or as ways of building awareness via links. I’ve got to recommend GoodReads: I love this site. It’s devoted to books and has places to post reviews, tag books you want to read, join book clubs and even win books. It’s awesome! Before we move on, though, I just want to suggest that you set up separate accounts for your blog: I have separate email, Twitter and Facebook accounts for my blog – let’s face it, you can never be too safe.
You’ll want to find out about all the bookish memes next. A meme is a weekly post that starts on one site and spreads to others, all with a link back to the original blog. Memes can also be called a feature. Some bookish favourites include Waiting On Wednesday or Top Ten Tuesday. Bloggers love memes!
We all have something unique about us as readers: a specific bookish peeve or love, a weird fixation on a certain genre, a love of certain plot lines… Now, with a blog, you have to use these weird little quirks and let them make your blog huge, let them seep into your reviews and make them totally yours. Bloggers are all about diversity and we love to see all the different viewpoints in the world. What makes you you will be vital when writing your reviews and getting a following.
Now I know reaching out to publishers is something lots of bloggers are excited about, along with the holy grail of blogging: the ARC – an “advanced readers copy”, meaning you get a book before it’s published. For blogs, however, this won’t happen right away! Most publishers have conditions: you can generally check this out on their sites since it varies between them. But don’t be impatient! Get comfortable with blogging and reviewing, network and get followers and then make some emails. If you get in touch with bloggers, we generally have a kind of template of what to write to publishers. You’ll probably get some indie authors emailing you to review their books – I have and I’ve loved lots of the ones I’ve reviewed!
So by this point your blog is up, you have a name, you’re in the know about memes, ARCs and social networking, you have some blogging buddies and soon(ish) you’ll have some publishers sending you goodies! Soon you might even be invited to book launches, blogging brunches and book parties! This is the life of a blogger: very glamorous!
Seriously, though. Blogs are hard work but they’re worth every moment. You make the best friends, get awesome books, find books you would never have tried and you’re part of a tight-knit little community.
Now, have fun!
Ready to start honing your reviewing skills? Join the Guardian Children’s books site and send us your review!
