Here’s something no one really tells you (and even if they do, you kind of don’t believe them) – blogging takes time. And book blogging takes even more time, because you have to actually read the book before you can write the review. I really want to be able to contribute to discussions that do the rounds on my favourite book blogs; about gendered reading, the importance of covers and my bookish confessions (super appropriate considering the name of my blog!) but I’ve not been able to due to a lack of time and the pressure I feel to be reading and reviewing. Add this to my already busy schedule and it makes for one stressed out Book Geek (who has only been blogging for around 3 months – how do you guys do it?!).
So – my solution:
1. I’m going to continue with Top Ten Tuesday, because it is immense, and I love seeing a large part of the community come together to cover the same topics.
2. I’m also going to start doing something like Thoughtful Thursday (as seen on Reading is Fun Again) as an outlet for all of these opinions and discussions I want to be having! I may follow the meme topics or go off on a tangent, who knows?? This feature will be called The Book Geek Rants.
3. You might have noticed that I’ve started doing Book Blitz posts and Book Tour posts. I will only participate in a Blitz or Tour if it is for a book I am genuinely interested in myself, and in most cases if it offers my readers the chance to take part in a giveaway. I don’t want this blog to become inundated with sponsored posts. So you can hopefully expect to see some more sporadic author interviews, giveaways and interesting content on Book Blitz, Tours and Giveaways.
4. I will continue with my monthly Stacking the Shelves posts. I can’t do these weekly, partly because I just haven’t got the time (see rant above), but also because a weekly post encourages weekly purchasing. If you could see my current TBR pile you’d understand. So monthly it is, and I am perfectly OK with that.
5. Before I started blogging I set my Goodreads Challenge at 52 books for the year (which was a big step up from the past few years when I’d hit a reading slump), I’m currently around 4 books ahead of schedule (at one point I was 8 books ahead!) and I think due to blogging the amount of reading I was doing went up a gear. That’s great. Except I haven’t got time for it with work, and studies, and maintaining a social life and this blog. So I’m sticking with 52 books and I’m aiming to post one review per week. If I do more, that’s great too, but I’m aiming for one.
6. I used to participate regularly in Five Friday Favourites and I haven’t been able to in a while. This is both a time issue, and also because the topics over the past few weeks haven’t been ones I’ve instantly been able to think, “Yes! I have so many opinions on this topic!” So, if a future FFF topic grabs me, I’ll be all over it, maybe in a different format (rant post etc.) but it will be suitably linked to Amanda for providing the inspiration and archived in my Features drop-down.
This is my bookish-OCD attempt to schedule and plan this blog better and to ease the blogging-pressure. How do you guys manage your blogs and your reading? Do you schedule posts in advance?
Confessions of a Book Geek 
Learning how to balance it is such a pain in the backside, purely because it feels like it shouldn’t have to be balanced! But you’re right, keeping up with everything that goes on is physically draining, even if you feel you’ve not got very much going on compared to other people. Having a routine definitley helps!.
My routine is: 2 reviews a week, 3 memes a week and weekends off. So I post reviews on Mondays and Thursdays, On tues/weds/fridays I do memes (TTT/WWWWednesday/friday fairytales) and I take a breather at the weekend. It’s taken me 6 months to establish this routine because it just got so overwhelming!
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Super quick commenting!!! 🙂
How do you find the time to do a post every evening?! I get in from work, make dinner, tidy up a little and it’s like 8pm already – and by then I should be opening a book so I actually have something to review! I have to take a bit of a step back and realise that I can’t read ALL the books and I can’t write ALL the posts, I need to pace myself. I’m working full-time and studying part-time for a Diploma (which involved a HEAP of reading!) and I need to dedicate more time to other things, so I’m hoping if I plan the pace I’ll still feel a sense of achievement from sticking to it, and I’ll actually have some content to post without initiating a panic attack!!
It’s great you’ve found a schedule that works for you (there’s hope for me!). Do you schedule posts in advance too??
R x
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Basically yeah, I write my posts up at the weekends when I get an hour or two to myself and post them first thing in the morning when I can. I used to work in an airport so I rarely sleep past 7am anymore ( that is a lie in for me)
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Hmmm… I might need to consider this scheduling malarkey then. I have a long-term relationship with my bed – I fully intend to get up earlier to fit in more reading/revising/blogging, but at weekends I’m fond of a lie-in!!
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I’ve been blogging for about the same time as you and I feel like I attacked it too hard to start with and have had to drop back. I’m keep the skeletons going at the moment, but I’m starting uni again next semester so I’m going to drop other projects, and schedule my time much better. I think my schedule will be my Monday Musing (like an ‘article’ I write on reading), Teaser Tuesdays, and maybe Friday reviews? I’d like another meme but I haven’t found anything that grabs me, yet. On occasional Saturdays I’ll post some fiction I’ve written (That is after all what my blog was named for). Luckily I don’t have many followers yet, so a dramatic change in my posting doesn’t affect too many people. I want it perfect before I start mass-marketing haha.
But honestly, the hardest part for me is finding time to read other blogs. I can’t expect people to read mine if I don’t read others but it takes so much time!
You’re doing awesome, though! Don’t stress if you miss a post one day. Everyone has busy lives and you can’t be expected to blog like a robot 🙂
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Hi, thanks for commenting!
Yea, I feel the same way, the initial burst of blogging was just so keen and eager and now I’m thinking, “hold up, I actually have other priorities!”. The big difference for me was when I started doing the part-time course with working full-time, the course has exam elements, so I have to put around 10-16 hours in per week. When you take out the 40 hour working week, and things like sleeping and eating, you aren’t left with much! I definitely can’t give up my Top Ten Tuesday, so many of the blogs I read get involved and it’s so engaging. I never really had much in the way of a tight schedule before, so I guess I’m just tightening it up now so I’m not left floating and wondering if I’m posting too often or too little. I feel free-er already!
I definitely wanted to do my discussion/rant posts, but very rarely are the ideas for these original, so it’s easier to schedule them in when someone else is doing a blog-hop on it (things like eBook vs paperback, male protagonists vs female etc.). I do follow quite a few blogs religiously and have started building up some really lovely followers – I can’t always comment on them all, but I try to at least “like” them when I find them interesting (I dislike blogger for this reason, the lack of a like button!). I used Bloglovin. I find it is soo much easier than following by email, all the new posts are in one place and if it is something you are definitely not interested in reading you can click “mark as read” and remove it from your feed. I’d be lost without it. I think I’m close to 100 followers at the minute across email, wordpress and Bloglovin. When I hit the milestone I’ll do a giveaway.
Thanks for your lovely comments at the end, perked me right up 🙂 R x
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I’ve been using the wordpress reader instead of bloglovin. It seemed too confusing, but maybe I should give it a look.
A giveaway is a great idea! I was considering doing the same when I got to 100. 🙂
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Oh definitely, I used to use the WordPress reader and I think it’s worse! Once you get used to Bloglovin’ it’s a breeze, and you can follow all sorts of blogs on it, and claim your own too. Give it a go sure.
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You are so right about doing weekly book haul posts! It does encourage weekly shopping. I need to curb that, stat. I don’t do any memes regularly, myself; I tend to pick the topics that I participate in. This week’s Top Ten was the first in months (maybe even in years) since I started blogging three years ago. Lately, I’ve just been focusing on reading (I’m 17 books ahead of my Goodreads goal of 150), so yay! And I really need to concentrate on reading because my TBR pile is ridiculous.
Anyway, thanks for the update, Rachel! Good luck with everything. 🙂
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150?! Wow. Go you! I’m going to share a photo of my TBR pile soon – it has gotten so silly! And that’s just the physical pile, not the mental wishlist! I’ve definitely taken this “I’m going to read what I want, when I want stance” after only a few months of it getting out of control through blogging.
Not that this is the time to be mentioning it… but I’ve just posted some Bank Holiday discount codes… I tend to wait until there are some fab offers on and make one monthly purchase. But my incoming rate is still greater than my reading rate, #geekproblems!!
I’m (im)patiently waiting on my dad building me a bookcase (I’m soo close to just running to my local Ikea!), so I feel like doing some before and after photos of my little book piles all over the place…
Thanks for commenting! R x
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I LOVE THIS POST! Book blogging takes so much time, especially when you need to take time to read the book. I have only one or two posts scheduled. As soon as something comes up in your social life then blogging takes a hit. I’m supposed to be doing this week Five Fri Favs too, but couldn’t schedule it last night as I was visiting family. So it will be done now, at 9pm instead. I never realised how time consuming it would be. I have pushed myself. I do Top Ten Tuesday, Thoughtful Thursday and Films for Thoughts on Thursday, Five Friday Favs and weekly STS posts. WHY?!!? I feel I need to do what you do and cut back but I love all of those 😥
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Thanks! It really does take more time than people give it credit for, especially to build up proper community relationships and provide interesting content. And with me I’m very, “go hard or go home”, so if I don’t want to give 110% I don’t do it at all. I’m starting to get into the scheduling – I’ve just finished a post for Monday, and I think that will definitely help. With book blogging I put a lot of emphasis on the reading and reviewing of books and new releases, and I think I can safely say it is so much more than that. Most of the blogs I love provide a wide variety of content, so I’m hoping I can do that too. I’m definitely aiming for one review a week, and I used to think I had to review ALL the books, whereas now I might do quick overviews of ones I haven’t got a lot to say about. I’m also going to do DNF posts and throwback posts to books I’ve already read as I can schedule these in too.
You do have a very tight schedule!! I do monthly STS instead of weekly, and you could consider doing your Thursday posts every fortnight?? I’ve also amalgamated my TTT and FFF under the one heading in my Features drop-down. I do TTT weekly because with such a large audience and so many participants it’s a great networking opportunity and also provides great discussions. With FFF I found the last three or four to be topics that I wouldn’t have a lot to talk about – I’ve only recently got back into reading in a big way and often end up listing the same books. So I’m only doing FFF posts if it’s a topic I can really get into.
I definitely felt like I wanted more discussion/opinion posts on my blog and I wasn’t getting the time to do them, so I want to focus more on that side of things – and those I can easily do when I have free time and inspiration at weekends and schedule. You should have a think about it, the last thing you want to do is burn out or feel like you need to take a break. I’m only three months into this and I felt I needed to get it more under control – I neeeed to keep seeing your posts so don’t go anywhere on me!!
You could look at hits on the posts and use that as a deciding factor? If they aren’t proving popular with readers then they could be cut? (Though in that case my reviews would disappear seeing as they are usually the least read – the irony!). R x
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I have themed days, that are basically the same every week. I only post 4 days per week, with Wednesdays & weekends off). I have my posts planned out for the next month or so (topics chosen, Top Ten Tuesday lists started), and I have my posts for next week written and scheduled (except for my Weekly Recap, which I write a bit at a time over the week and schedule on Thursday evening to go up Friday morning). I write my book reviews as I finish a book, but I don’t post them right away – I have 1-2 in reserve, in case I’m a slow reader one week. 🙂 I’ve also cut WAY back on my television viewing, in favor of blogging & reading.
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ONLY 4 days per week?! That’s very impressive, there’s no “only” about it! I think that really must be the secret, to look ahead and start planning some of the posts – I might start some drafts for TTT so I’m not rushing to put it together… My reading time has become non-existent lately with work and studying (and the demon that is Netflix!), so my reviews have slowed, which is why I’ve decided to do a throwback to books I’ve already read that I’ve loved, at least until I can get into the swing of things. I gave up a lot of TV time but for the past few weeks I’ve been on a massive escapism binge, I usually have a show on in the background while I’m revising. Just going to have to plan more and accept that things are slower at the minute 🙂
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Haha! Well, my best blogging buddy, Maricel, posts every single day, so 4x per week seems small in comparison. 🙂 Doing a little advance planning really helps me a LOT.
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I think blogging is like a monster that eats up all your time! I do love it though but for my sanity I take little breaks now and again so that when I come back I’m refreshed and full of love for it again. Scheduling is my friend and I couldn’t manage without it. I read daily (doh!), write my reviews as I go and schedule and comment at the weekends when I have my more time and it works for me.
Your plan sounds good, hope it all works for you 🙂
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I’ve started scheduling this week (it seems amazing so far – why have I never done this before?!), so that even if my reading time is greatly reduced at the minute at least I can keep providing good content without awkward long pauses between reviews! Thanks for commenting! R x
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Hi!
I’m just starting a book blog and writing posts really does take a lot of time, but I enjoy doing it so much! So it’s good to hear that there are people who find strategies to cope with the demands on their time. Thanks for sharing yours, it helps 🙂
I think that perhaps even more time goes into keeping up with the new and the community. That’s a huge drain on my time, anyway. Do you have any ideas for coping with that?
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No problem 🙂 It might sound harsh but I don’t feel pressured to follow everyone, I follow blogs that I actually like, either the content is great, or the personality of the blogger is like someone I would speak to in real life. I use Bloglovin to manage the blogs I follow, the feed functionality is brilliant, and if the title or excerpt doesn’t grab me I can click “mark as read” and it removes it from the feed so I can stay on top of news posts, it also stops you from getting 15 million email notifications a day. I check it regularly so it doesn’t get out of control. If I like a post but don’t feel the urge to comment, I like it (wordpress blogs anyway as blogger doesn’t seem to let you do this), and I comment on things that interest me when I can. Even if I haven’t got much to add I let the blogger know that I appreciate the post. It seems to be working well so far. Me keeping up with other blogs definitely wasn’t as much of a time issue for me as posting content myself because of this. Thanks for commenting! R x
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I think you’re doing amazingly! I hardly participate in anything other than reviewing the books i read, and it’s really something i need to work on. I want to do more!
(I recommended/nominated your blog. Feel free to participate or ignore at your preference!)
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Thank you for your comment, and kind words! And the nomination!! I’m mad busy at the minute, but I’ll do a post this week 🙂 I don’t like to ignore nominations – I know a lot of blogs do now, but when someone takes the time to recognise your blog I think it’s only right to acknowledge it, and I enjoy doing question posts 🙂
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