Welcome Back, Booklovers! Today's post is a little bit different than my norm. As someone who to see books by BIPOC authors highlighted I've crafted my space here to talk about the books I wasn't seeing enough people talk about. I wanted a place where I could share my thoughts but also introduce people to the books they aren't seeing promoted. I love that I have new people reading here every day. The past few months I've seen a spike in readership with my highest month boasting 14.5k visitors! Which is amazing! It feels great to know people are liking what I put out.
Being a book content creator consists of a lot of free labor. And it's something you really do because you're passionate. And there's been multiple times during this hectic year where I felt like I was doing the most trying to keep a balancing act going of running multiple book related platforms and still having somewhat of a life outside of the house now that we're post pandemic.
It takes time to read the books needed to make consistent content. I work a full time job so most of my reading is done outside of work hours. While I try to read at least a few pages every day sometimes I start reading later than other nights depending on my mood. I used to write a review for every book I read. But when you read over 100 books a year you sometimes read books that you don't have strong feelings about. It's not that the book was bad, but it wasn't very memorable. I don't ever want to post a review on here I feel like doesn't really tell readers anything. I was starting to feel like I was falling out of love with reading.
This year I've jumped back into writing beyond just blog posts and reviews. And I've settled on a story I'm passionate about. After months I've finally found my group of writers who motivate me to keep going and have settled on a consistent writing routine of writing every night for about an hour and a half starting at 9pm.
So I've had to make decisions about where I want to cut back. And I realized that filming long form videos was taking up the majority of my time but I was less passionate about being in that space than some of my other spaces. Sitting down and filming a 10 to 20 minute (sometimes longer) video is work. There's the planning of what I'm going to say, making sure my hair and makeup looks good, working around the right lighting all before even sitting to film. Just like it's work to go in an edit it, insert book covers, create a thumbnail, and then schedule it. And then there's the trends. Reading sprints and other live shows are the way to bring in viewers. But that also takes a lot of time out of the day. And focusing so much on making sure I get 1-2 videos out a week and pre-film content was taking time away from this blog and I felt like I was using most of my content ideas there.
Part of realizing that I cannot do it all also meant realizing I need to cut back on how many new releases I request. It was getting to the point where I had an arc with a release date of almost every Tuesday. And I'd be racing to finish the books to get my review up and post something about it during release week. And then if I had a physical version of the book I'd try and take pictures of it in advance, always thinking of different places to stage them and how to get them to look just right so I could post them a long with my review.
So here's to embracing not having to do it all and finding a healthy balance in 2024!
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