So I am still new to the world of book blogging, and while I really enjoy finding new authors and getting to try books I might not have found otherwise, I've also learned some valuable lessons. I figured I'd share them here for two reasons. 1) Others may benefit from it. 2) Others may have even better advice as to how I can put these lessons to good use!
Lesson #1: Stick to my preferred genres
I like to venture out of my comfort zone from time to time, but I started to make a habit of excepting books for review when the blurb wouldn't have jumped out at me at all had I been browsing in a bookstore. The result has been me dragging through short novels because I simply don't enjoy them. I don't want that, and my readers don't want a constant deluge of mediocre reviews and stretches of time where I don't highly recommend anything at all. I've stopped powering through books that I don't like. I will e-mail the author to apologize for accepting the book when it wasn't something from one of my listed genres and cancel the review altogether.
In this same vein, when I have a dozen books that I have purchased that I know I want to read, I'm not going to keep moving review books in front of them just because they were free and the author wants a review. I'm still going to ensure that ARCs are reviewed before the release date, but others will likely get mixed in with my purchased books or others that I've received as gifts.
For me, this was a major decision. I'm one of those people who is always feeling bad about things I have no business feeling bad about. I started this blog because I enjoy reading. I love that I can often receive free books to review. But I am not going to allow reviewing books to stifle my love of reading.
Am I the only one who made this mistake? How about some of your veteran bloggers, did you go through a period like this?
I make mistakes of entering book giveaways and I'm not even interested in the book. Then the author is so excited to send me the rest of the books in the series but I can't even finish the book that I've won because it's so painful to read along with the grammatical and spelling errors. I'm all for supporting new authors, but I don't appreciate all the little errors that should have been edited before the book was published.
ReplyDeleteI understand that too. I was entering giveaways a lot for a while, because I'm used to not winning! Then I had a lucky streak and I haven't even gotten to the first one yet. Unless it's already on my wishlist, I usually don't anymore.
ReplyDelete