Tag Archives: blogging

Weekly Geeks 2009-40

Posted by melydia on October 19, 2009 1 comments

WG 2009-40 is about the tools of the trade (of book blogging, that is). What keeps me organized and inspired? To be perfectly honest, there isn’t a whole lot of organization involved in my reading life. When I finish my current book, provided I don’t have anything time sensitive on the agenda (such as an ARC to review or a bookring to pass along), I just look at the shelf and see what I feel like reading next. The finished book is either put back on the shelf (which is extremely rare), or placed in a canvas totebag for sharing at the next BC in DC meeting. If no one at the meet shows any interest, it ends up in a box in my car for wild release. That’s about it.

Oh wait, I take that back. I did recently get organized with respect to my literary listening habits. My audiobooks come (almost) exclusively from the library. Though the collection in the county-wide system is excellent, I’ve discovered that my local branch is pretty flighty when it comes to organizing their audio collection: the children’s and fiction audiobooks are shelved in their own separate sections, while the young adult and nonfiction audiobooks are shelved with the regular books. The books are routinely mis-shelved, and the catalog is the furthest from reality I’ve ever witnessed in a library. In addition, the last two books I returned were reshelved without being listed as returned in the system, meaning if I hadn’t noticed it I would have been charged late fees on books I’d already brought back.

Eventually I got sick of dealing with it and decided to abuse the hold system instead. I created a list of audiobooks I’d like to listen to and when I start a new one, I put the next one in the list on hold. No fruitless browsing, no irritation at trying to find a book that’s not there.

Inspiration is never a problem. I love to read, to the point where I feel naked if I don’t have at least one book on the go (usually two, if you count audiobooks). When I’m done, I post a review on my blog. I accept that sometimes I don’t have much to say.

As for keeping track of books I’ve read, I record them on Listography, Lists of Bests, and my BookCrossing bookshelf. My reviews, however, I keep stored at GoodReads because it’s reasonably easy to navigate. I’ve recently discovered that not all the books I’ve reviewed have ended up as blog posts, but I think that was before I discovered the joys of scheduled posting.

And that’s about it. I guess in the end I don’t really consider myself a book blogger. Book reviews just happen to comprise the vast majority of my blog posts. :)

Weekly Geeks

Posted by melydia on October 5, 2009 3 comments

As I posted the other day, Weekly Geeks has returned. WG 2009-38 is about expanding the readership of your blog. This only sort of applies to me: I enjoy blogging and try to post things that might interest others, but I’ll still post even if no one reads it. And while the majority of my posts are book reviews, I don’t consider myself a book blogger. My only requirement for a blog post is that it must contain at least one link. That’s it. Generally I avoid writing about my day-to-day life, but only because I already have a personal online journal (and it’s not all that interesting to people who don’t know me…or most of the people who do, for that matter). I try to review every book I read or listen to, and I avoid posting more than once a day. I don’t really have any goals for it. Maybe I’m being too casual.

That said, of course I want to appeal to more readers. Unfortunately, the suggestions listed in the WG article don’t really help. According to Google Analytics (which I find less than illuminating at the best of times), the majority of my visitors come from Geocities, presumably on the hunt for writing prompts. Twitter comes in a distant second, which isn’t surprising since I have it set up to automatically tweet whenever I make a new blog post. I just recently eased the search functionality by adding titles and tags to all my old entries, which I suppose counts as progress.

I like to think my blog is easy for new readers to dive into. I almost never post something that would make more sense if you had been reading for a while, I don’t use jargon or inside jokes (that I’m aware of), and I have no rating system to explain. If folks care to continue reading, I’m easy to find: I’m first when Googling “utter randomonium” and third for “melydia” (though the first two hits are also me, and contain links to my homepage as well).  The RSS feed subscription button is also prominently displayed near the top of the page.

So I dunno. I’ve read enough blogs and blogging tips to know more or less what I should be doing to increase my readership, but I’m not sure popularity and visibility is all that important to me. It’s just a blog. It amuses me. Hopefully it amuses others. The end.

P.S. – The phrase is “couldn’t care less.” If you could care less, then you must care at least a little bit. Just sayin’.

Titles and Tags

Posted by melydia on October 3, 2009 None comments

When I was back at Blogspot, none of my posts had titles. There wasn’t even a textbox to enter one – I assume I’d unknowingly disabled it. When I moved over here to WordPress, I imported all my old blog entries, all of which were then posted with blank titles. Makes it a little difficult to search for entries.

So I added titles. And tags. To every single post. Even the stupid ones about articles that almost certainly don’t exist anymore.

You’re welcome.

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