Thursday, 2 October 2014
Here on Brook Cottage Books its nice to give something back to fellow bloggers. I am thrilled to have the lovely Rosie Amber guest posting on the blog today as our Blogger in the Spotlight to tell you all about her blog.
Here on my blog
I focus on book reviews and helping authors spread the word about their books.
I began writing reviews of book I’d read and then I offered to review books,
slowly the blog built up and I invited
authors to be guests on the blog and now if I like a book I’ll usually offer
the author a guest piece on the day after my book review. I post my reviews on
Goodreads and Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. I’m lucky enough to also have two
local magazines that I write monthly book reviews for, they both have on-line
editions which is great for my featured authors who are spread across the
world.
For the last two years I’ve taken part in the April A to Z
Challenge and I blogged my way through the alphabet using books each time. It’s
a great way to meet loads of new people from across the world and I have stayed
friends with many of them.
During April 2013 I read Judith O’Reilly’s book A
Year of Good Deeds and I decided to set my own challenge of doing a Good
Deed a Day for a year. Often my deeds are as small as picking up litter, or
writing a book review, but I was so thrilled when I managed a whole year that I
have continued my challenge. I post weekly updates on a Sunday and I have
encouraged others to follow in my footsteps which is really great.
In September 2013 I joined with Stephanie Hurt from USA and
we ran a joint Romance book
tour. Thirty authors got the chance of two posts about their book on their
allotted day, stretched across the world to a wider audience. The concept
worked really well and we are just finishing a second tour. Places on the tour
were snapped up in a week, we had a waiting list and people are already asking
us about next year’s tour which is fantastic.
My next challenge will be a Mystery book tour in November
and I have almost filled all the days. After that I plan on joining the 2015
April A to Z tour and I want to run a beach reads book tour in June.
I really believe in the value of book reviews helping to
sell books as we move more and more into buying books online. In June 2014 I
ran a book review challenge for a week with posts giving advice on book
reviews, guest book reviewers, authors and a publisher all talking about the
need for more written book reviews. I had authors offer free copies of their
book and challengers were invited to read the book and try writing a review. It
went down so well that on the back of this I set up a book review
team. This is a no pressure team who review books they choose around their
busy lives. They commit to reading and reviewing a book within a reasonable
time and we posts reviews to a minimum of two sites plus I get a copy of all
reviews to go on my own blog. That way authors get access to several reviewers
at once and can get some good feedback on their book.
I love blogging and offer a busy blog for people who love
books in all sorts of genres. I’m passionate about reading and I’m always
recommending books to others or passing on copies of books I’ve read. Plus I’m
happy to get other people who love reading involved with my book review team.
Thank you Rosie for this great guest post. Wishing you every success in your blogging adventures. x
Thank you so much for this.