A Book Blogger’s New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve never been a big fan of the New Year’s Resolutions. For one, I don’t need a new calendar year to motivate me to make changes or improvements if I feel like I want to make them. And two, I’m the type of person who prefers to set the bar a little low, and then blow past it — for whatever reason, that’s more motivation to me, than setting a loftier goal and aiming high to just meet it. I like to surpass more realistic expectations. That’s just how I roll.

But with Novel Novice’s 5-year anniversary rolling around this January (!!!!), I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am as a book blogger, what things have been working well on Novel Novice, and what things could use improvement.

It also doesn’t hurt that last year, I was a major blog slacker because I was planning my wedding — and post-wedding this year, I fell back into a really good groove. I’ve been in a good place this year with my blogging, and that makes me so happy. But it also makes me want to improve on areas where I’m still not great.

So with all that in mind, here are my book blogger New Year’s resolutions — or rather, Things I Want to Work on in 2015:

1. Replying to Emails

Between personal & blogging emails, and work emails, I get a ton of messages in my Inboxes everyday. Work emails tend to take priority because … well, it’s WORK. Income. Livelihood.

I always try to respond to blogging-related emails (from publishers, authors, other bloggers, blog tour hosts, etc.) in a timely matter — but it doesn’t always happen. I see a message, get excited about it, but then forget to reply until a week or more later.

So in 2015, it’s my goal to reply to blogging-related emails as soon as I get them — no more forgetting to reply, no more waiting a week or more to respond. Get an email, then reply. I know it won’t be a perfect process — but I’m consciously going to work on being more prompt in my responses.

2. Choosing Contest Winners

I have notoriously been horrible at choosing contest winners in a timely manner in the past. I feel like I’ve been better than usual this past year, but there’s still room for improvement.

This year, I’ve implemented a system of choosing winners monthly — and I like that, because it’s a concise way to wrap up several contests in one blog post, and means I’m not constantly choosing contest winners left and right. But when I announce contest winner’s for the past month, I want to do so earlier in the following month. Need to choose August contest winners? By the first weekend in September, that should be done! None of this waiting until it’s almost October to get around to it.

3. Sending Contest Prizes

Most of our prizes are sent out by publishers or publicity companies who sponsor the contests we run — but every once in a while, I’m in charge of sending out prizes. And it always takes me forever to get those prizes out in the mail.

Thank goodness for all of you winners who are SO patient with me — but you shouldn’t have to wait so long!

The delays come from a few reasons: one, the time it takes me to package up & label the prizes. Two, actually going to the Post Office to mail them. But the biggest delay is making sure I’ve got money in the budget to cover postage. So I need to be more diligent about making sure my husband and I allocate however much money I’ll need to mail out prizes so I can cover the postage expenses when I have contest prizes to send out.

4. Accept or Request Only the Review Books I Can Handle

It’s always so tempting to accept book review pitches or request review books when there are ALL THE SHINY BOOKS and they all sound OMG SO GOOD. But there’s only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a month, and only so much time for reading in between eating, sleeping, working, blogging, spending time with my husband, and you know, seeing friends and family and having a life. (If only someone would just pay me to read books all day!)

Sometimes I am very good about accepting/requesting a manageable number of review books. But other times, I’m too tempted by all the amazing books out there, and I find myself with any overwhelming TBR pile.

My goal is to always be at least one month ahead of myself. Because most of the books I read are ARCs (Advance Review Copies), I try to stay a month ahead of release: ie, I read all the January release books by the end of December; all the February release books by the end of January, etc. On months when I have a smaller number of ARCs to read, I try to squeeze in books that have already been published and that I’ve been waiting to read just for my own personal enjoyment. (Not that I don’t enjoy reading ARCs – I very much do, but there are other books I want to read that I don’t get an ARC for, and I want to find time to read them, as well!)

So in 2015, I want to be more conscientious of requesting and accepting review books — knowing that there are often books that arrive unsolicited and they sound amazing, too, and get added to my reading pile. I just need to make sure my reading list stays manageable more often than not — and there have been a few times this year, where it was very overwhelming.

5. Event Recaps

This is something I’ve almost never done, but always intend to do. I attend lots of amazing book/author events — often as a moderator. I always tweet about the events, and sometimes live tweet if I’m not moderating. I usually take a few photos. But I never do a write-up after the fact.

So in 2015, I want to try doing event recaps more often. This will be a challenge for me, since I usually schedule posts in advance — and event recaps will need to be written and posted very promptly after the event takes place. But I want to push myself, and this is a good challenge for me.

6. Posting Reviews Elsewhere

I know how very important it is for authors to have good reviews on GoodReads and online book retailers. Whenever an author asks if I will post my review of their book on one or more of these sites, I do it instantly — with pleasure. But I am very lazy about doing this on my own, on a regular basis.

I have very sporadically posted my book reviews on GoodReads, Amazon, B&N, and Powells.com — but it’s my goal to do so much more regularly and consistently. It needs to become a habit. I usually write and schedule my reviews ahead of time (as I do with almost all of my blog posts), so the habit needs to come from posting reviews on these other sites AFTER my reviews have gone live here at Novel Novice. But maybe I can make this something I do once a month, and just post that month’s reviews across those other websites.

For the comments: What are your New Year’s resolutions? For my fellow bloggers, what are things you want to work on?