A Day in the LIfe of a Book Blogger by Heather

Today's guest poster is the wonderful Heather from the Book Blog BURIED IN BOOKS.  Heather is an avid reader and a writer, and we are thrilled that she found us!
 

When I was asked to write a guest post for the YA Muses blog you can’t imagine how excited I was! And then my nerves hit. I planned to have this to Talia by the weekend, but I just counted and I have ten drafts so far. You see, in my world, authors are Rock Stars. Sure I enjoy music, but I just listen to it, it’s background noise. I don’t write about it, cheer for it, visit websites, enter contests and follow blogs for musicians. I’m just not that interested in them. But authors....if I get a tweet, a request to read their book, an email, a mention anywhere I’m flying for days. It’s like being published in the newspaper for me. So when a Rock Star asked me to write something of course I wasn’t going to turn her down, but then, nerves.

So here is my best. Here’s hoping it is interesting to you. I found the YA Muses through the YA Mazing contest, the first one that was held. I hadn’t even heard of the Apocalypsies and being a book blogger I thought that was kind of terrible. So, I became a frequent visitor of the authors, especially the ones I liked. I participated in a weekly meme called Waiting on Wednesday (WOW) which featured upcoming books and would search the Apocalypsies site for new books. I kept popping over here and started reading the posts. Soon I wasn’t coming just for a WOW but because I wanted to see what they had to say. I loved that each author wrote on a different day and everyone wrote on the same topic. I was a lurker for a long time. Remember, they are Rock Stars to me. Writing on a Rock Star’s blog is scary. But eventually I commented. I loved the post on the Lucky Charms, especially Talia Vance’s My Lucky Charms. I didn’t know about elephants being lucky until I read that week. But I was glad to know other writers were as superstitious as I am. I have a picture of my dog Baylee that watches over me as I write.

I thought I’d write about book blogging since that is what I do mainly. Of course I read the book and then I write my opinion of the book. I schedule the post usually for midnight to go up the next day. Hopefully, Blogger is working. Maybe though, I’m setting up a guest post like Talia is today. So I copy and paste it. But the author wants his/her picture and bio on the post. All their links, the summary of the book with a picture of the book, links for buying the book and the guest post.

Do you know how long that is? And if you didn’t include all the links for me I have to look them up. And even more often, there is a giveaway of their book with this type of post. Even more space added. It takes me a good hour to set up a post like this. Maybe because I’m slow, I don’t know, but people aren’t going to read all that information.

And then there are the interview posts. I don’t do them often. I’m not good at them. I don’t have insightful questions to ask and I don’t care if you like white chocolate or dark chocolate when you are writing. My friend Jenny asks the best interview questions and I asked her secret. She told me she just asked what she thought she’d like to be asked. It helps some, but I have to have at least to read the book before I can ask you interview questions. Some authors don’t get that.

I don’t DNF books. If I didn’t like it, I will tell you and give you the option of me not reviewing it. I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings and I am not looking to publicly humiliate someone. One author told me to go ahead. I was still able to find many things that I liked about the book regardless of the anachronisms in the book. And one thing authors should remember is that people read negative and positive reviews and take both into consideration. I read one blogger that is a friend and have realized that we pretty much like the opposite in books. That’s okay. I still like to read why she didn’t like the book. It’s probably the same reason why I will like the book. With Net Galley, I just let the publisher know I don’t write DNF reviews and send it on. I’m always relieved when I’m not the only one, though. I look at Goodreads to see if I should try harder to read it.

I also do blog tours which are for lesser known presses or indie or self published books. I agree to those if I’m interested in the book premise. I usually just do a review of them. I’ll do two to four of those a month. I also purchase books that I want to read but rarely get a chance to read those as I also get one or two requests from authors or publishers to read books and I’m up to 12-15 books to read a month by then. That is my absolute limit. I only have so much blog space to post and between reading all day and blogging usually from 8pm to 2am sometimes 4am it has turned into a full time job. There are also Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

Reviews have to be posted on my blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, and Library Things. If it came from Net Galley, I have to provide links to all those places, and my review and then clear that book as a completed review. Then it’s comment time. You see the comments don’t magically appear on my blog. I go around to other blogs and read their reviews and make meaningful comments on their blogs. Then hopefully they’ll come back and comment on mine. So if it’s your book I’m reviewing, your book will get more attention. The more comments, the more people actually took the time to read what I thought about the book. Of course, my stats tell me that plenty more people came by to see what I thought, but those comments mean a lot.

And that is a day in the life of a book blogger.

Bio: Heather, mom to two sons and wife to one genuine saint of a man! Book Blog Buried in Books. I have been blogging for almost two years and read a lot. I review MG and YA novels of all types except self help. I also have a writing blog that I write on sporadically. Not many people have discovered it, One Toe in the Water.