Armchair BEA: Beyond Your Blog

Design credit: Sarah of Puss Reboots

Has blogging opened up opportunities for you beyond getting free, advance copies of new books? Has it helped you get offers to write or review elsewhere (maybe even for pay)? Have you gotten invites to special events or places you might not have been to otherwise?

I get asked quite a bit if I am a writer.  Perhaps it’s my age, or the fact that many book bloggers are also writing their own books, but I am not a writer.  I never really got into blogging to try to supplement my income in any way.  It was more a product of my love of reading turned into a serious hobby.  I decided when I started this blog that it would be an ad-free space.  I don’t have any particular objection to people having ads, it’s just not something I’m interested in messing with, to be honest.  (I also don’t think I will ever have the traffic to make it worthwhile.)  I already have a full time job and two kids, so taking on a blog related job on the side would be pretty difficult at this point.  I do know people that have gotten jobs because their book blog opened doors for them.  In many ways, this post could partner with yesterday’s post about networking because I think that the two go hand-in-hand. I would really enjoy writing reviews for a bookstore website and I love writing guest reviews, so perhaps that is in my future.  However, if it never happens, I’m ok with that, too. 

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Kate

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9 responses to “Armchair BEA: Beyond Your Blog

  1. I don’t think I could ever write a book, but I write a blog — and you do to! So you are a writer….

    I’m not in it for the money either. I just enjoy keeping up on my blog, and reading what other’s have to say. Great thoughts! My BEA Post

  2. Great answer. I’ve struggled with the quandary of whether or not I’m a “writer”. I suppose Annette has it right, in a sense we are writers.

  3. I decided not to do overt ads (like banners or google ads, etc.) but I do link up to amazon in my reviews. I pretty much decided that if I didn’t like seeing a ton of ads on other people’s sites then I certainly don’t want to see them on mine. I did try using chitika for a while and they have a setting where only people arriving via web searches get ads. The problem was that it wasn’t consistent, and even I would see ads on my site from time to time – and I certainly wasn’t arriving there from a web search. So I removed it. I’m much happier with my blog since then. 🙂

  4. You are so humble, Kate! You already have quite a nice little following, and I am positive that it will continue to grow and surpass your expectations 🙂

    I, too, would love to write reviews for a bookshop. Heck, I would love to work in one! Maybe someday 🙂

  5. I know how you feel- I have no real desire to be a writer and do not want to write a book. I have tried writing fiction and I was awful! I love blogging though and absolutely love the book blogging community. Since I’ve had my blog, I have looked forward to opening my email and looking at twitter and checking my comments and I never had that before! I am easily excited obviously x

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