Tagged: blogging
Discussion: Posting Schedules
If you’re not a blogger like most of the people reading this are, you probably don’t know how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep a blog organized, especially for book bloggers. Even small book bloggers like myself with a little over 500 followers are sometimes booked up one or two months in advance! So how do I keep everything straight and make sure the right posts are published on the right days?
I have print out calendars and actually pencil in the posts I’ll be doing for each day. Yes, I’ve tried doing this digitally but it doesn’t work. Having the calendar staring me right in the face helps because I can easily ignore digital calendars. So every Sunday I sit down and pencil in what posts I know I’ll have to do for the week. If I’ve sent out a review to an author who requested one, I’ll have to pencil in that review for exactly one week later. If I’m doing a blog tour, I have to make sure that I have a) read the book, b) written the review for it and c) make sure I don’t schedule anything else for that day. Sometimes it’s hard.
So what I want to know is (whether you’re a book blogger or not): how do you keep your posting schedule straight? Do you have a physical calendar like I do or are you more tech-savvy? Do you even bother having a formal schedule for your posts or do you just have certain days you know you’ll post and wing it?
Discussion: DNF Reviews
For those of you that aren’t fluent in reviewer-speak, DNF reviews are reviews where the person did not finish the book. Thus the abbreviation DNF. DNF reviews are a little controversial in the blogging world and I’ll break down the two main points here:
Against: You can’t really judge the quality of a book if you didn’t finish it. If you’re going to do a review you should be able to discuss all elements, including major plot points that may appear later on, character arcs, etc.
For: DNF reviews are a useful tool for reviewers to let people know that they gave a book a try but really couldn’t finish it because they hated it, were bored, etc.
Personally, I’m on the fence with this one. If you’ve gotten half way through a book but can’t physically force yourself to read it anymore, I think a short DNF review is acceptable. However, if you’ve only read a couple of chapters you should just chalk it up as a waste of time and not leave a review. After all, you can’t really criticize everything about a book if you haven’t read all of it.
But now I’m curious: What do you guys think of DNF reviews? Love ’em, hate ’em, couldn’t care either way? If you’re a reviewer, do you ever write them or would consider writing them? Why or why not?
Help Me Improve The Mad Reviewer
It’s been a while since I’ve done a survey of you guys, so I thought I’d do yet another one. As always, writing a blog is a constant journey and you’re always finding ways to improve your readers’ experience. When I look back at some of the early posts and reviews I did it’s a wonder I got as many followers as I did. Yet I feel I’ve improved over time and have found ways to add new blog features without changing The Mad Reviewer all that much.
I digress, as usual. Basically, if you’ve taken the time to read that reflective paragraph, please take the time to answer these questions so I can improve your blog-reading experience:
Just as a note if you voted and feel comfortable discussing your choices, I would definitely love to hear the reasons why you voted the way you did.
The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself
I’ve been book reviewing for one year and seven months now. Comparatively I haven’t been around for very long in the blogging world, but I have been around long enough. What’s ‘long enough’? Well, I’ve been blogging long enough to have trolls try to start flame wars and authors attack me for having an opinion and expressing said opinion. I’ve learned to deal with it because, hey, most authors and commenters are awesome people. I was also blessed with a thick skin as well as an iron-clad commenting policy that I’ve always followed.
Compared to the experiences of some book bloggers I’ve had it pretty good. Some book reviewers have faced far worse than I have, others have faced far less. For the most part I’ve put up with it and have not called out authors publicly because I didn’t think their behaviour constituted public humiliation.
Until now.
Discussion: The Ugly Side of Book Blogging
A lot of my readers here are book bloggers as well and as we know, book blogging isn’t all roses and sunshine. There are disputes with authors, jealousy within the community, pressure to write good reviews for publishers, etc. But overall, in my personal experience, I’d say that authors are the best and worst part of book blogging.
I have met some absolutely incredible people through my book blog that I never would have otherwise. You guys know who you are. At the same time, I have been subjected to nasty comments, author meltdowns (only in private emails so far) and generic emails by authors who think they’re entitled to a review without remembering basic courtesy. So yes, authors are the reason why I’m doing this and the reason why sometimes I feel like saying “screw it!” and not accepting review requests at all. (It’s very tempting at the moment, believe me.)
My question for my fellow bloggers is this: what’s the worst part of book blogging? What about the best part? Did you ever have an incident so nasty you almost considered giving up book blogging?