Category: Site Announcements
Changes to my Posting Schedule
I’ve been thinking long and hard about my schedule for The Mad Reviewer and I’ve decided to change things up a bit. So now my typical week will look like this:
Monday: An interview, article or a review (I’m going to aim for more interviews and articles)
Tuesday: Review
Wednesday: Review
Thursday: Review
Friday: A book blast for a blog tour or a review
Saturday: A discussion!
Sunday: Open threads for promotion, site announcements, a bonus discussion or other random posts
My regular readers will notice a couple of changes:
1. I’m going to be aiming for writing more articles and/or doing more interviews with authors on Mondays. I like writing articles and doing interviews but I don’t always have time to do them for my preferred Monday deadline. However, I’m going to make time from now on to do these things. Failing that, on Monday it will be a review of a book I want to highlight for the author.
2. On Fridays my traffic is usually insanely slow (people have lives on Fridays?). Believe it or not I’m actually signed up for several book tour sites and I would actually like to participate more as a tour host. So that’s why I’m going to be confining all posts for book tours (except tour-related reviews) to Fridays.
3. Yep, discussions will now be a regular Saturday feature. You guys seem to love them and I love reading your responses, so this is going to be a regular thing.
So now I have a couple of questions for you guys related to my posting schedule:
1. Would you like me to do a post on Sunday that talks about what you can expect for the week? (It would sort of be like The Sunday Post meme.)
2. Are there any features you don’t like? Are there ones you do like but don’t see here? I’m very open to suggestions.
Submit Your Questions for Reader Request Week!
After an unsuccessful attempt in previous years I thought that now I actually have a decent following that I might do a reader request week. Basically, I’m leaving the forum open to you guys. This week you can ask me anything you’ve ever wanted to know about my blogging, books, reading and personal stuff (to a point) and I’ll answer it in a post either next week or the week after that. If it’s a long question I might take a whole post to answer it or if there are similar questions I’ll do one post addressing that particular grouping.
Do you have something you’d like to ask me? Comment below! And if you don’t feel comfortable leaving a comment out here in the open, use the form on my Contact page to drop me a note. I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can.
I’m Taking the Weekend Off
Basically: I’m tired and behind on my reading. I’m going to take the weekend off to read and focus on other stuff in real life and then on Monday I’ll be back with an article and my usual number of reviews. I’ll still be replying to the comments on my discussion post, but that’s about all you’ll see of me for a while.
See you guys Monday!
Discussion: Why do you blog?
Basically, this discussion is for my fellow bloggers who read this site. ‘Why do you blog?’ is actually a question I get quite a bit in real life when I mention that I blog. Most people wonder what the point is, what benefit I get out of writing for free.
The truth is I blog because a) I like sharing what I have to say with a like-minded audience and b) I like the benefits of being a book blogger with a fairly decent following (714 at the time of writing). In regards to my first point, being in an extremely rural community with very few bookish people gets lonely. That’s partly why I took to blogging: to connect with like-minded people, share recommendations and discuss books we have in common. As for the second point, there are certain benefits to having a following over 500, mainly in regards to how many ARCs I get accepted for. I haven’t had much time to actually request print ARCs from many publishers but pretty much all the ones I’ve requested I’ve been accepted for recently. Basically, blogging fuels my reading habit.
What I want to know now is this: If you’re a blogger, why do you blog? If you’re not a blogger do you think you would ever consider starting up your own blog? Why?
The Mad Reviewer is Now Active on Goodreads
As you guys may or may not know I actually have a Goodreads account. Shocking, I know, considering how I never actually use it all that much. I haven’t exactly been the most active in the past, as all four of my followers have noticed. I only really used it to cross-post reviews for publishers and authors, particularly for books I received from NetGalley. Having a Goodreads account was always an advantage when it came to getting ARCs that other people didn’t.
But now I’ve decided to actually put some work into this whole Goodreads thing. I’ve gone back and posted several reviews of books I bought myself or borrowed. The funny thing now is that I’ve received several likes on Goodreads within hours of posting all those reviews. I still have to post another 200 or so reviews but I’m pretty happy with what I have up currently.
Do you have a Goodreads account? If so, check me out on Goodreads for reviews and reading status updates. I’ll be on regularly from now on.