Tag: Book Blogger

Virtual Book Festival: Event 21 – an interview with book blogger Kelly Lacey @LoveBooksGroup #VirtBookFest #books #bookblogger

writeanne6 Comments

Today it’s event number 21 at the Virtual Book Festival and I’m so happy to have book blogger and blog tour organiser Kelly Lacey as our guest today.

So welcome, Kelly, and let’s get started:

What was it that got you into book blogging and how have things developed since you started?

I started book blogging in early 2017. My mum had suffered a few mini strokes and I was at home looking after her. It was a very lonely time with lots of hospital and doctor appointments. I have always been a reader since I was little, and my Nana Alice would buy me a book every second Tuesday from the John Menzies shop in the Scottish town of Dalkeith. I was escaping from my reality by reading a lot more when mum was poorly. I would close the last page of an exciting book and just wish I had someone to talk to about it. I was incredibly lonely during that period.

I made a very simple site blog and I pushed myself to go to a book launch in Edinburgh and it changed my whole life. 2017 was a very busy year and I went to so many lovely bookish events. I love looking back and seeing how the friendships I hold so dearly today were formed. As mum got better, I could go further a field and I started going to book festivals in Linlithgow and Stirling, in central Scotland.

I upgraded to a WordPress site and I loved it. For the past two and a bit years it has become the core of my life. I grew awareness of my blog and spent hours on social media building up the Love Books Group brand. It is my wee baby and I love it. I am proud of the journey I have been on. I look back at my first reviews and shake my head. It takes time to find your own voice as you review. I have learned just to believe in your own work and don’t try and be like anyone else. Have your voice shine through and be authentic.

I organise book blog tours now for authors and publishers on a daily basis and I love the connections I have made from doing that.

I am also very lucky to review for the theatres in Edinburgh and Musselburgh. That has been a wonderful experience. I have seen some epic shows that previously I would only have dreamed of seeing.

I am grateful for everyone who visits and shares my posts. It really does matter to me and I work very hard at offering a varied content every day.

Book blogging is the very pulse to my life, it has captured my heart.

Anne: My goodness your blogging took off in a big way and has led to other exciting things.

 

How do you find/choose what to review?

I am extremely fortunate to get sent a lot of books to review. I have a schedule for the year and then I fit in the books as they plop through my letterbox. Sometimes I have a week or two where I read purely books, I want to. However, I have discovered so many books that I would not have chosen to read.

I have some guest bloggers on the blog now too, as I was struggling to keep up and I hate letting anyone down. They really help bring a diverse range of voices to the blog too.

Anne: Yes, it would be easy to become overwhelmed by demand. But you seem to be well organised and to have got the balance right.

 

What’s the best thing about doing a book blog?

100% the friendships I have made have changed my life. I have people that I talk to every day and they are my very best friends. They say it is hard to make friends as you get older. But if you find the right people then it really isn’t.

The adventures I go on both fictious and in real life are incredible. I am really very lucky, and I treasure every minute.

Anne: How wonderful l to have found something so meaningful and to have theses great benefits.

 

What is your favourite type of read and do you stick mainly to reviewing that type of book?

I don’t have one genre that I stick to. I try to alternate genres every time I read. I love the freedom that YA books have. They are sometimes more diverse and deeper than adult fiction.

I love a gritty addictive crime fiction thriller and on the flip side I am consumed by an emotional contemporary fiction read that can capture my heart and hold on to it till the last page. If I am weeping mess by the end and in need of therapy, then the books done its job very well.

What is very important to me as a reader is that character connection. I don’t need to like them but I do need something that makes me want to read on to the end.

The question you always get asked as a book blogger is “what is your favourite read this year?” I can tell your readers, Anne, that halfway through the year, at the moment it is Disturbance by Marianne Kavannagh and A Killing Sin by K.H Irvine. I thoroughly recommend adding them to your Summer TBR.

My all-time life book is The Book Thief, I re-read it most years. It is humbling and important to revisit.

Anne: Your recommendations are duly noted. And I’m with you as regards The Book Thief. I loved that book.

 

Apart from posting book reviews on your blog, what other types of post do you like to include?

I have my interview feature that I host, along with exclusive author guest posts. My favourite feature which is new to the blog this year is “#What Book?”. It has been very popular and often emotional too for the authors answering the questions about books that have made an impression on them.

Anne: Yes it’s good to have a bit of variety in amongst all the reviews, isn’t it? And the #WhatBook is a great idea.

Well, thank you so much, Kelly, for your thoughtful answers and for taking part in the festival. It’s been lovely to have you here.

 

More About Kelly:

My name is Kelly and I am the founder of Love Books Group.  I live on the outskirts of Edinburgh with my two cats Pawkey and Poppet. My blog came to fruition in January 2017, I needed an outlet to talk about all things books. I thoroughly enjoy the world it has let me become a part of. Getting to meet new people, authors, readers and fellow bloggers have been marvellous.

It is now an everyday part of my life and I would be lost without it. I have almost hit 250K views and that really fills my heart with so much love. I love social media and connecting with others. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

My favourite book is The Book Thief by Mark Zusak, it’s a very grounding book. When life gets overwhelmed with nonsense, reading a couple of chapters of it really silences the noise and you remember what is important.

I encourage readers and authors to follow the blogs they enjoy.  I think it’s very important.  Plus, it really helps if you share, like and comment.  The more people who read and enjoy my posts makes all the effort and time I put into each post worth it.

I am a big supporter of other bloggers; we are all a unique team and we only rise and grow by lifting others. I am all about positive thinking and uplifting people. I am 100% drama free; I don’t engage with any of the naff behaviour that sometimes raises its nasty head. I believe there is room for us all.

For Authors: I also organise book blog tours for authors. I take all the hard work out of promoting your books with a range of tours to choose from. My average reach on Twitter is 2.1 million.

Don’t hesitate to use the contact form on the lovebooksgroup website (link below) if you think my blog is a good fit for you.

I live and breathe books every day.

You can connect with Kelly online at the links below:

Blog: https://lovebooksgroup.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoveBooksGroup

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveBooksGrp/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCvtAmOAyzrhWVZgXF68UsQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelovebooksgroup

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/Lovebooksgroup/

 

 

 

 

Virtual Book Festival: Event 18 an interview with book blogger Kate Noble @TheQuietKnitter #VirtBookFest #books #bookreviews #bookblogging

writeanne3 Comments

Hello, everyone and thank you for dropping in at the Virtual Book Festival today. For event number 18 it’s my pleasure to welcome book blogger Kate Noble who is going to share with us how she got into blogging about books and what it means to her.

Hello, Kate, and thank you so much for agreeing to take part in the festival. So, tell us, what got you into book blogging and how long have you been doing it?

Book blogging was something I stumbled upon one day. Having just started using Twitter after my daughter was born, I discovered a few people to follow who reviewed books that I loved and soon I was logging on daily to see if they had any new books to recommend. Friends and family would often ask me about what books I’d read recently and what I would recommend, so it seemed like an obvious step to head in the direction of book blogging as I’d had a blogging account for random ramblings before. That was almost five years ago, and I’m still here …

Anne: And it’s great that you are. You have built a first-class blog and brought many books and readers together and long may that continue.

 

How do you find/choose what to review?              

With an eclectic taste in books I find it quite fun choosing what to review. It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for indie authors and indie presses, there’s something so wonderfully unique about the books from these sources and I love being able to champion books and authors that might not appear on everyone’s radars. More often than not, it’s an eye catching cover or a blurb with that “something” special that grabs my attention and I’m hooked!
I’m also really lucky that my name is on a few publisher lists, so that means I occasionally get some books in the post or emails with book details with a review request, which is a huge honour.

Anne: I believe the honour works both ways. It’s an honour for authors and publishers to get a review from people like you who do it out of book love. And it’s great that you’re so supportive of indie writers and publishers.

 

What’s the best thing about doing a book blog?

This is a hard one, one of the nice things is the camaraderie of “meeting” fellow book lovers, who share your excitement about books being published or, for example, fantastic characters that have made you both laugh.
But it’s also really nice being able to open a world of books up to people and helping them find books they might not have previously considered. I’ve been lucky enough to have had feedback from someone who read a review on my blog, the person went on to say they’d bought the book and read it because of my review and they loved it.

Anne: I’m sure there are lots of readers who’ve bought books after reading your reviews and that’s wonderful!

 

What is your favourite type of read and do you stick mainly to reviewing that type of book?

I’m a lover of Cold War settings and things with a Baltic or Scandinavian setting too, so spy thrillers, police procedurals, noir and the likes. But I also adore historical fiction and will happily curl up with tales from Victorian and earlier periods …

However, I have to admit to being a mood reader, and a lot of my reading is influenced by the mood I am in when I pick up a book. Sometimes I just crave the atmospheric Victorian Edinburgh details or perhaps a tantalising tale of German espionage.

Anne: What a great mix of genres there. And I agree mood is an important factor when choosing what to read.

 

Apart from posting book reviews on your blog, what other types of post do you like to include?

I do feature guest posts that an author has penned or the occasional promotional post for books. But if you pop over to my blog on a Friday you will see my longstanding feature Celebrating Indie Publishing, which usually has a review of an indie book and/or an author feature where I torture lovely authors with a few questions so that readers can get to know a little more about the person behind the book. There have been occasions that an author has written something for this feature, perhaps giving an explanation about where their ideas come from or what drives them to write.

Anne: It’s a good to have a bit of variety and it’s good to let readers get a bit of an insight into authors. I doubt any author would describe being interviewed about their work by you as torture. And, as I said above, I love how you’re so supportive of indie publishers.

 

And finally, I know your blog has won awards – tell us about that

I was awarded third place in the Hidden Gem category of the 2017 Bloggers Bash Awards, and I won the Hidden Gem category of the 2018 Bloggers Bash Awards.

Anne: Well-deserved awards! And thank you so much, Kate, for taking part in the festival and for sharing your book blogging story here.

 

About Kate:

I’m an Aberdeen quine who has always enjoyed reading, I try to read as often as I can and it’s a love that I’ve passed on to my young daughter. I’m a mum, a knitter, an average baker and cook, and I’m slowly getting used to life in the countryside, but I’ll never stop excitedly pointing out tractors to my long-suffering husband!

I’m also a proofreader over at Noble Owl Proofreading, so I have a great excuse to have my nose stuck in a book.

 

You can connect with Kate online at the links below:

Blog link is: https://thequietknitterer.wordpress.com/
Twitter is: https://twitter.com/TheQuietKnitter

 

 

 

Virtual Book Festival: Event 16 – a feature by book blogger Mary Picken @bethsy #VirtBookFest #books #bookreviews #bookblogs

writeanne3 Comments

Hello and welcome to event number 16 in the Virtual Book Festival. Today’s event is a guest post by  book blogger Mary Picken of Live and Deadly Book Blog which you can find at  liveanddeadly.net On her hugely popular blog, Mary writes insightful and intriguing reviews of (mainly) crime fiction. And she’s her to tell us more about her book blogging life.

So welcome, Mary – and over to you.

  

Book Blogging  – What is it, why do we do it and who cares?

 

Gentle reader, let me take you back 5 years to December 2014. My memory these days stretches back just about that far. I had taken six months off from my job due to clinical depression. Those days had passed in a blur of pretty much staring into nothingness. I did some reading, always my chosen leisure activity, but otherwise had done very little.

After the 6 months was up, it became clear to me that I no longer had the resilience to cope with the daily pressures and stresses of my job. My brain was working, but my heart wasn’t in it and my head wouldn’t let me get immersed in the mire again.

So I effectively took early retirement. That left me in something of a quandary. I didn’t feel able to work full time and I really did not want my little grey cells to go without a work out. So, I decided that I’d start to record my thoughts on the books I was reading.

At the time, I didn’t really know anything about blogging, far less book blogging, I just needed something that would stimulate my brain and keep it working.

Fast forward 5 years and my blog is still going. That first, tentative post, a glowing review of Sarah Hilary’s first book, Someone Else’s Skin, (if you haven’t read her Marnie Rome series please do, it is fantastic) has grown into a blog with more than 3,300 followers and a reach over continents (mainly though UK and US) that stretches to around a quarter of a million viewers. Many of my colleagues have blogs that are substantially bigger, and more power to them for it. Few of us are driven by our statistics; I’m certainly not.

I have discovered an activity that plays to my need for deadline driven activity without much of the stress that used to accompany my deadlines and I have been fortunate to have been sent books to review.

Not only that, but book blogging has given me my tribe. I have found like-minded friends online and in real life; have been to numerous book festivals at home and even one abroad and now have a life that I love.

So, all good for me, then. But what does it do for book sales and publishers?  I often find that authors have no sense of what bloggers can do for book sales, but there is no doubt at all that publishers know and understand the value.

In a crowded marketplace, word of mouth is a very important marketing tool. Creating a buzz in advance of a book’s publication is a great way to heighten anticipation and create advance sales.

Social media is now a key component of organisations’ marketing strategies and for good reason. 74% of shoppers make buying decisions based on social media, according to the social media marketing company, Sprout Social.

The term ‘social influencers’, which I hate, has been coined to represent individuals who have a significant following on social media. With a large audience seeing these blogger’s posts each day, they’re often targeted by publishers to promote books. Their content has a significant effect on purchasing decisions. Essentially, they contribute to the “bandwagon” effect.

80% of consumers, we are told, are likely to purchase a book based on a friend’s suggestion. If you were on the fence about buying a book, who would you turn to for an unbiased opinion?

This sometimes leads, wrongly, to suggestions that bloggers are the pawns of publishers, overwhelmingly positive about every book in order to feed their free book piles. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most book bloggers I know have a voracious book buying habit; some even buy several editions of the same book!

Most of us choose not to post reviews of books we have disliked on our blogs. If you are, like me, about sharing the book love, there seems little point in publishing on my blog a review of a book that just wasn’t for me. I will post those reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, with as constructive a review as I can achieve.

But I’m often critical in my reviews, pointing out my perceptions of flaws as well as good things, because otherwise how can I expect my reviews to be trusted by those who read them? If there’s no honesty, what on earth is the point of a review?

I believe that bloggers can be a real boon to smaller, independent publishers too. Those who are publishing important books but just don’t have the marketing budgets to make them stand out in a crowd. Investing in a blog tour, where the tour organiser receives a small payment for organising and bloggers remain, rightly, unpaid can achieve real results for a book that might otherwise struggle to find a place amidst the bigger publishers’ noise.

Publishers like Fahrenheit, Tramp Press, Orenda Books, Unbound and Urbane all make a decent sales impact through their use of social media and that can only be a good thing at a time when we need more than ever to broaden the diversity of ideas.

I blog for my own satisfaction and to keep my brain functioning. But I have to admit; there is no better feeling than knowing that someone has bought a book based on my review. It is, for me, the pinnacle of success. If I can help contribute to book sales in however small a way, I will feel that I have made a beneficial impact on the world. And that’s more than enough for me.

Anne: Thank you so much for that fascinating insight into what book blogging means to you – and to authors and readers too. And thank you for being part of the festival.

 

More about Mary and her blog:

Mary Picken reviews mainly crime novels on her blog, though she also enjoys contemporary and literary fiction with the occasional dose of historical and urban fantasy thrown in. She has been blogging at Live and Deadly for 5 years and loves to visit book festivals. Particular favourites include Bute Noir, Iceland Noir and, of course, Bloody Scotland and this month’s Edinburgh Book Festival.

How to connect with Mary online: 

Live and Deadly book blog is here

You can also find her on Facebook at Live and Deadly : (https://www.facebook.com/liveanddeadly/)

On Instagram as @bethsy :  (https://www.instagram.com/bethsy/)

On Twitter as @bethsy : (https://twitter.com/bethsy)