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My 2014 Blogging Goals
I’m a little late on the blogging goals band wagon, seeing as most bloggers posted their goals early this month, but better late than never. One advantage of posting later is that I’ve had time to reflect on other peoples’ blogging goals and to see if I want to adopt some of them. So what exactly are my blogging goals this year?
1. Reach 1,000 followers. (WordPress and email combined.)
I started out the year with 633 followers and at the time of writing this post I have 687 followers. In 2013 I acquired 455 new followers so I’ll just have to stay on pace with my average of about a follower per day. So why do I want 1,000 followers? Why not 900 or some other high number?
Well, the answer is that on NetGalley most of the large publishers like Penguin are only accepting review requests from blogs with 1,000+ followers. Some of my favourite books are published through Penguin, so by reaching the 1,000 follower milestone I’ll be able to request them. It’s not guaranteed that I’ll be accepted, but with my really high reviews to requests accepted ratio it’s not going to hurt my chances.
2. Publish one well-researched article per month.
I’m not talking about my rants here. I’m talking about articles like The Portrayal of Cleopatra in Historical Fiction. In other words, articles that take a little more research and a little more thought than rants do. Besides, rants are spur-of-the-moment sorts of things and I rarely schedule them more than a couple of days ahead of time. I want my research-intensive articles to be a little more thorough and I want to schedule them a couple of weeks in advance to give me more time to reflect on them as well as make corrections.
3. Reach 650 reviews total.
Right now I’ve written 464 reviews, meaning I’ll have to read and review 186 more books, short stories and novellas this year. That means I’ll be writing a little over 16 reviews per month, which is doable for me. It’s about 4 reviews per week for the rest of the year, which is also quite doable. I read a lot and review pretty much everything I read. Besides, I like hitting big milestones like this.
I figure that if I reach my goal of 650 here in 2014 I can hit 800 in 2015 and (if I’m still around the blogosphere) reach 900 in 2016 and 1000 in 2017. My review production is going to slow down in 2016 and 2017 due to general life stuff but I’m hoping to at least hit 1,000 reviews in total for The Mad Reviewer. I don’t want to quit anytime soon, so I don’t have any plans for shutting down my blog for a long time yet.
4. Control my review requests!
I will clear my waiting list. No ifs, ands or buts. There is no excuse for me to still have the books authors requested I review on my list here in 2014. After I clear all of the pending requests, I will be initiating an open submission call for no more than a month, close down requests until I clear them again and then doing the same thing. This will be far more manageable and I’ll also have a new form for authors to fill out so I can weed out those books that really don’t interest me.
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These are my blogging goals for 2014. What are some of yours? What do you think of mine?
Look What Just Arrived! (#16)
This is not the best of pictures but I did have to fit ten different books into it. Here are the names if you can’t read the titles:
- Stork by Wendy Delsol
- Frost by Wendy Delsol
- Flock by Wendy Delsol
- Evermore by Alyson Noël
- Blue Moon by Alyson Noël
- Caesar’s Women by Colleen McCullough
- The Wise Woman’s Tale by Phillipa Bowers
- Daughters of the Nile by Stephanie Dray
- Crewel by Gennifer Albin
- Altered by Gennifer Albin
As I mentioned before, my local bookstore is going out of business. So I’ve been stocking up and you may notice that I bought way more books than I usually do. This is because my last trip was likely the last time I’ll set foot in the store so I dropped around a $100 on books. I wanted to get the full series of books as much as possible because I know I won’t be buying books for a long time.
Anyway, I read Daughters of the Nile pretty much on the same day I went shopping. It’s much longer than the other books in the series but I absolutely loved it. Caesar’s Women is the fourth book in Colleen McCullough’s First Man in Rome series and I can’t wait to start it! Crewel is the first book in Gennifer Albin’s Crewel World trilogy and I was thoroughly impressed with it. It was so different from most YA with an entirely unique premise that you can’t help but love it. I’m now reading Altered and have a hard time putting it down.
As for the Stork trilogy I can honestly just say I picked them up for the covers. They’re beautiful and interesting but the blurbs intrigued me. It sounds like Wendy Delsol has a great premise on her hands and I want to see how she carries it out. Evermore is yet another book that’s floated around in the blogosphere forever and I never got around to it. So when I saw it and Blue Moon in the used section I couldn’t resist. I have some high hopes for this one! The same goes for The Wise Woman’s Tale.
Well, these are some of the things I’m reading. What are you guys reading lately? See anything you like here?
Discussion: Things That Make You Happy
After learning that yesterday (Friday) at noon, the nineteen year old family cat died I think I need some cheering up. He died peacefully in his sleep and of course I’m sad but it’s also a relief as well. He wasn’t doing very well these past few weeks and I’m glad he’s no longer in any pain. And in a way, I sort of had a feeling the end was coming on Friday. Call it intuition but I wasn’t all that surprised to hear the news. I know he was just a cat, but Tommy was with the family for pretty much as long as I can remember and I’ll miss him.
That’s why the discussion for this week is entirely selfish. I want to know this: what makes you happy? Music? Family? Pets? Friends? Simple things, like sleeping in on a Sunday or re-reading your favourite book?
“The Spread of Kidness” and More Weird Search Terms
Last time I did a post like this, it was called “Why do people hate naked men?” and Other Weird Search Terms. This time, the naked people are back for round two! But apparently no one hates naked men this time.
Here are some of the weirdest search terms I’ve had lately:
i read one pages in a hour
weird things guys do when nude
weird thing people do in naked
naked people
weird naked games
mattybraps
the spread of kidness
naked people illinois to make people
bykl
weird naked girls
zodiac read mad
i read 4 pages an hour
how do i make cardboard snakehead
And, finally, the crowning glory:
looking at naced pepol
By posting about these weird search terms I’m definitely just adding fuel to the fire, I know. But even before I posted articles about weird search terms I got some seriously disturbing ones. (Just check out the first article!) At least none of these search terms are about sexual assault this time around.
Discussion: Your All-Time Favourite Book
For people who read a lot of books it’s almost impossible to pick just one favourite. Anyone who asks me what my favourite book is will usually get a blank stare followed by an explanation of how much I actually read in a year. It’s nearly impossible to pick a favourite book, especially if you’re put on the spot.
All-time favourite books are slightly different from just ‘favourite books’ for me. An all-time favourite is one that had the largest effect on me at the time, the one that I read over and over again, etc. All-time favourite books have staying power, whereas favourite books can change in a couple of months if you read a lot.
I can pretty much guarantee that I’ve read more than 1,000 books at this point in my life. Out of all of these books I’d have to say that my absolute favourite is Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. I read it as a pre-teen and it taught me a lot about love, life, self-esteem and the beauty of losing yourself in a magical world. Harry Potter is definitely my all-time favourite series, but on an individual basis Inkspell (the second book in the Inkworld trilogy) will always hold a special place in my heart.
I still have my old beat up copy of Inkspell and even though the binding has almost totally fallen apart and the pages are yellowed from being out in the sun so much, I refuse to throw it out and get a new version. Memories live on in the pages of books and there are so many good memories for me in Inkspell.
What I want to know is this: If you had to pick an all-time favourite book, what book would it be? Why?