Starting a Blog

[nona]

ok off subject but I noticed alot of people here have blogs, how did you guys get started just thinking I would be interested in starting my own.

[Divia]

I went to a conference and they were saying "its web 2.0" and its the latesting thing. To be honest it doesnt seem like a lot of teens use blogs, so I'm not sure who reads my blog...but apprently people do.

I thought it would be fun to make a blog to review young adult books. It's part of my job and I thought I would get some interaction. While I have a lot of lurkers I only have a few posters. However, I have gotten 3 free books in my first year (not too bad) and have had numerous authors leave comments.

what type of blog do you want to do?

[nona]

I'ld like to center it around historical fiction books but thats the thing I don't know the ins and outs of it.

I've visited alot of peoples blogs including yours and they are all so nice, and I just thought with all the books I've read if I could collect all those reviews and share those then hey it would be great.

[Alaric]

I started one a couple of months ago because I had nothing better to do at the time. :p I did mine through wordpress (http://www.wordpress.com) and it's really easy to set up, no technical know-how needed or anything of that sort.

[Divia]

You should totally start one. I'm always interested in what people think of books and whats coming out etc.

if you have a gmail account you can create a blogger one. If not I think I can intvite you to gmail and then you can start one. They give you templates to pick from..its wicked easy.

Go for it! :)

[Carla]

I set mine up using Blogger, and as Divia says it's very easy. No technical know-how required at all. You just sign up, pick a template and start posting.

The things I'd say are:
-have an idea what you're going to post on it (I do mainly book reviews and history articles [usually related to research for my novels], one recipe a month because that proved surprisingly popular, plus anything else that happens to interest me);
- try to have some articles in stock so that you can keep posting reasonably regularly even when you're busy;
- don't underestimate the amount of time it takes!

It doesn't cost anything, so you could always try it for a bit and see how you get on.

Good luck!

[Divia]

Thats a good point..make sure you update it regulary. Nothing worse than going to your fav blog that hasn't seen activity in two weeks. I try to update my weekly. I wont lie, sometimes its hard becuase I haven't read a book in a week so I have to either find a story like Carla said or pick a book that I read a year or so ago.

[Rowan]

Nona, if you'd like to "try before you buy" you're welcome to join my friend and I who have a book related blog. We don't focus specifically on historical fiction, though that's all I've been reading lately, but you're welcome to try learning everything.

Also... with a "group" blog, the pressure isn't all on you to make consistent posts. You have others who are reading and posting. My friend reads a lot faster than I do, but I do what I can.