Book Blogging

[Susan]

I am hoping that someone can answer the question.
I have 2 book blogs that I made about 2 months ago.
I know there are a few of you out there that are book bloggers too.
I would like to know how you get the word out about your book blog.
What is the proper channels for you to get listed on other book blogs.
I feel like I am hitting my head on the wall beating myself up. Because I see other blogs have so much traffic. I don't know how to get traffic on my blog. Can anyone tell me how to start. Are book contests the best way to publicize a reading blog. If so, where do the books come from? Are they purchased by the blogger. Or are they books that you have read, and then given away??? Also tell me about the Meme and how that works.
Are you suppose to be invited or can anyone join. I have been wanting to understand the book blogging community. But it seems like it is a select group and I am getting frustrated. I feel like I want to close it down. But I enjoy sharing with others the passion of books. I visit many different blogs and I learn and share about books. But I need some help.
Can anyone clue me in what I am doing wrong. If you want to see my blog to give me some hints I would appreciate it. Please reply here or comment on my blog 38thdivareaders.blogspot.com.

[Corinne]

I think part of it is joining challenges and then posting your reviews on the challenge website - other challenge do-ers will stop by to check out your reviews and if they like it, hopefully will stop by again. I use the blog A Novel Challenge (http://novelchallenges.blogspot.com/) to help me know what challenges are out there.

Once you do a couple challenges, you may want to host your own - I've started following a lot of blogs that way, when I do one of their challenges.

I think also, if you comment on other people's reviews, they'll head over to your blog to see who you are. I know I do that if someone I don't know comments on my blog :)

Hopefully that helps. Good luck - don't be discouraged.

[Susan]

Thanks for your help I will try the suggestions you offered.

[Susan]

Thanks for the tips and the suggestions on my blog.
My blog when I first started was suppose to gear to my book club only.
But I really want to gear to others beside my book club. So, what you suggest is a good idea to rethink my layout. When you said to link to what you are reading are you talking about resources. Such as the author's website, synopsis of the book, other review links? When you are talking about what you plan to read are you talking about on a post or the sidebar. What I have been doing is only listing what I am reading now in a post . Is it important to have alot of links to blogs. This is what I see at most of the blogs. It is contagious. Or have I turned intoa blog junkie. It seems I am surfing webs more than I am reading since I started my bog two months ago. It is cutting into my reading time. How do you balance it. Does everyone do this or has it kind of spun out of control.

[Anysia]

Well, I tried looking at your book blog and Blogger tells me it doesn't exist. Can you check the address?

Other than that, try hanging around the blogging and ARC groups on LibraryThing.com. Many bloggers post their latest reviews in a thread to get traffic.

[Susan]

Thanks for trying but bermudaonion got on. So if you could try again because she was able to visit. Let me know. If you are still unable to visit. I will send you the blog address again.
Thanks Susan at 38thavedivareaders.blogspot.com

[Bermudaonion]

I just looked at your blog and it looks great! Another suggestion to get readership up is to read other blogs and leave comments. People will generally take a look at your blog after that.

[chrisbookarama]

Visit others blogs and leave comments, join a blog ring, participate in a meme like Booking Through Thursday. Hmm...that's all I can think of now.

[Antonette]

I just started a book blog earlier this month. I've been watching the stats, and they are kind of low, but hey, it's a new blog.

send me a link to your blog. I can and it onto my links page.

My problem is that even though I'd like to post on my blog daily, sometimes it just doesn't happen. I'm still trying to figure out how often I am going to try and post.

If anyone is interested in checking it out, I'm open to feedback.

http://01crazymomma.wordpress.com

[Judi - Sidhe Vicious]

You've got some good advice here so far. I noticed that no-one's mentioned tags yet. Make sure that you tag your reviews by author, the book title and the genre it is, so that when people are searching for any of those "terms/tags" your blog will come up in searches (engines). Sorry I don't have time to list more ideas. I have to go and get ready for a wedding rehearsal, but I thought I'd mention tags because I get traffic that way.

I hope it all goes well for you! :)

[Shoshana]

I'm a little clueless. I have a book giveaway site, and I'm real grateful that a few people come over to play. IT's at http://thisbookforfree.com

I was just reading over the replies and they're great suggestions.

[Nymeth]

Like everyone else has pointed out, joining challenges is a great way to meet other bloggers and to get them to visit your blog. Also, leave comments on other people's blogs - if they start seeing your name in the comments, they're likely to visit you too and comment back. Another good idea is to participate in events like Booking Through Thursday, Weekly Geeks, the Bookworms Carnival, etc.

As for giveaways, in my experience they don't necessarily bring you new readers. You might get a lot of people entering, but they won't necessarily come back or become regular readers. But they are fun, though.

Don't give up! It might take some time, but you'll get more readers than you imagine.

[Bookchronicle]

Time and community.

It's taken me a little more than a year to get my blog where I want it and there's really no easy or definite way to increase traffic. My suggestion is to start with a handful of other bloggers that truly interest you and start commenting regularly. Get yourself added to some other blog rolls this way and slowly but surely interest will pick up in your site. As mentioned above though, definitely use tags.

Something I don't recall seeing is that you can also post reviews and links elsewhere. For example, I post links to all of my reviews at Library Thing.