The Blogger Recognition Award

Just to prove how bad I am at keeping up to date with tags. I was nominated for this by a bunch of people. I didn’t realise how many I had until I was going through my bookmarks. I feel rather greedy 😂 Anyway! A huge, huge thank you to Izzi @ Ravenclaw Book Club, Sammie @ Bookshelves & Biros, Jill @ Rant & Rave About Books, Fatima @ Noteable Pad, Katherine @ Fabled Haven, Maya @ Maya The Book Explorer and Lindsey @ A Piece of Paradise. All of these people are super lovely with wonderful blogs and you should definitely go give them a follow ♥.

Rules:

• Write a post to show your award
• Give a brief story of how your blog started.
• Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
• Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to.

How my Blog Started

I originally made this blog quite a while ago because I wanted to start requesting Netgalley books. However, not long after that I fell into The Great Reading Slump and it kind of never amounted to anything. I stopped reading almost everything except comics for over a year. I always missed reading, but I just didn’t have the motivation or attention span to get back into it. At the very end of last year I heard about Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff. I can’t even remember how. I think I might have seen something on Tumblr? I downloaded the ebook and I started reading it and found it really interesting, but my attention span made me put it down and I didn’t pick it back up until the end of January, this year, when I was on six hour bus trip. This time around something just clicked and I fell in love with it. For the first time In a really long time I wanted to read again. This book means the world to me.

Two of my favourite people ever (and who are probably sick of me talking about them), Sheridan @ Sleepless and Battleworn & Vivian @ Inked in Pages, then helped inspire me to fully get back into reading. Vivian was posting these beautiful Bookstagram photos and reblogging book-ish stuff on Tumblr. Sheridan was texting me about these books she was reading and I was just like I MISS THIS SO MUCH. I was so out of the loop with what books were around I did a lot of Googling for recommendations. This led me to YouTube and I stumbled across Sasha @ abookutopia’s BookTube channel – except at the time I had no idea BookTube was a thing. I watched more of her videos and found other BookTubers. I was obsessed with watching The Unpopular Opinions tag 😂 All of this, along with Illuminae, just cemented that I wanted to get back into reading and books. I’d been reading ever since I knew how and before that my nana would read to me or tell me stories and I never realised how much I missed it.

This was the first BookTube video I watched. 

I wanted a place to share my love for rediscovering books and I didn’t want to make YouTube videos so I decided to come back to this blog. I honestly had NO IDEA what I was doing. I still don’t, if we’re being honest. I didn’t even know if I was going to stick with it. I thought I’d be shouting into the void forever (I mean that would be okay, but I love interacting with all you beautiful people). I spent ages stalking Goodreads, Google and Blog Directories trying to find bloggers to follow and advice for new bloggers so I could make a decent attempt at doing this. Anyway, because this is already way too long winded and was supposed to be ‘a brief story‘ – starting this blog was the best decision I ever made and it’s helped with my anxiety and gaining confidence!

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Some Advice

Firstly, considering that technically this blog is only a few months old I don’t know if I have any right to be giving advice 😂 I have noticed that reading advice from other new bloggers was a lot more relatable though because we’re in the same position. So I shall try!

Fake It ‘Til You Make It – Like I mentioned above I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I’m not new to social media by any means, but I’d never blogged about books before. This whole concept and community was new to me. I didn’t even really know book blogging was a thing. I see lots of new-ish bloggers say they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t worry! I guarantee most of us didn’t. Just act like you do, roll with it and eventually things will start coming naturally. It’s important to remember that everyone was new once. Even those bloggers out there now that are extremely well known – they didn’t start out like that (well most of them maybe?)! Don’t feel like you’re failing because you don’t have crazy high traffic and stats. You’re not! Follow bloggers and learn from them and add your own twist. You shouldn’t be fake about your personality though. I know how cliche this sounds, but being yourself is one of the best things you can do.

Interaction – This is a given, but interacting with your fellow bloggers is so important. I know it can be hard especially if you’re like me and feel extremely anxious about social situations. I don’t think I’ve ever initiated a conversation in my life. I saw all the blogging advice posts talk about how commenting is a must. So that’s what I did. I stalked a bunch of link up posts like Top Ten Tuesday and Stacking the Shelves and started following and commenting on a bunch of bloggers who I knew I had similar interests with. Of course you don’t need to like all the same books, but when I started I wanted to be in my comfort zone so. I was so nervous when I was commenting – I thought everyone would find me annoying. I was so wrong though because everyone was absolutely wonderful. I felt so welcomed. It was kind of overwhelming how lovely everyone was. I think something everyone should take into consideration though when blog hopping ect. is to try and have some actual substance and personality in your comment. Don’t just drop a link to promote yourself. Take the time to read the posts and be personal. As a side note, whilst I followed most blogs for their content, the first thing that caught my eye was their theme. Having a nice design is really important. You don’t need a paid account or anything fancy to do this. I know there’s not a lot of choice with free accounts, but just set aside some time to go through all the theme options and choose one that suits your blog. It’s also super important to have a blog that’s easy to navigate. It’ll give people easier access to fully explore your blog!

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Nominations

God, I feel like every person I follow has already been nominated for this. If you have (or don’t want to do this!) it’s all chill. Just ignore me.

Beth @ Betwixt These Pages • Vivian @ Inked in Pages • Lila @ The Bookkeeper’s Secrets • Hollie @ The Hollie Blog • Jaed @ The Bibliophile Blogs • Bri @ Paperback Bri • Felicia @ Fell For Books • Fadwa @ Word Wonders • Astra @ A Stranger’s Guides to Novels • Casey @ adoptabookaus • Megan @ Pitch Black Sky • Becca @ Rebecca Reads • Luna @ Luni Reads • Carianne @ Cuppa ‘n Critques • Nicki @ Up ‘Til Midnight • Amylee @ The Book Lagoon • Yasaman @ Following Muses

I hope you’re all having a fantastic day xx