What do I want to accomplish this year with Young Readers? This first assignment is supposed to give us a chance to share by "writing a specific list of things you’d like to achieve in the design and content of your blog."
I'm mostly happy with the design (template, color scheme) of Young Readers. I'm still happy with my header too. So I'm not looking to make any changes there. At least not at this point! But I am considering making a few changes with my sidebar content.
I have been considering adding a 'labels' feature to the sidebar since I discovered that you can select which labels appear. I never knew that before. I thought if you had 'labels' in your content, you'd have each and every one. Which would just be chaotic nonsense in my case. So today (as part of this project) I went ahead and added the labels feature to the right sidebar.
I have been looking for a way to clearly share with publishers links to the reviews I've written. Why is this important? Well, almost all the books I review at Young Readers are review copies. (This isn't the case with Becky's Book Reviews.) So I've been *trying* to use publishers as labels in my posts. I haven't been doing this long, so the listing is NOT complete by any means. I hope to be diligent about doing this with each and every post from now on. [I also clearly mark each post with a 'review copy' or a 'library book' designation in the labels section.]
I'm *considering* going back through older posts to add this information. But it would be a big project. I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to such a big project. But maybe if I took baby steps, I could get through it by the end of the year?
Consistency. I was so HAPPY to get a good start to the new year. I was able to post 29 times in January. With 28 of those posts being review posts!!! Of course, one month does not a whole year make. And I'm not taking this "new" consistency for granted. Not at all. So my goal is still to work on making sure I get reviews posted on Young Readers.
Variety. What do I mean by variety. I don't mean variety of posts necessarily. I mean variety of reviews. I also mean diversity in titles, authors, subjects, etc.
I'm hoping to be reviewing for a variety of publishers. Of course there are some publishers whose books I just don't have access to, or the same access to as others, but I can try to represent a good variety of publishers. So that the blog doesn't just cover one or two publishers all the time.
I'm also hoping to review a variety of children's books. I want to cover board books, picture books, activity books (like touch-and-feel, lift-the-flap, pop-up books, etc), early readers, chapter books. I want to try to cover these somewhat equally. Though that won't always be possible. I seem to have more picture books at hand than early readers. But I can try to seek out books.
It's also important for me to review more nonfiction (and poetry perhaps?!) on the blog. So I'll definitely be on the look out for that. I was disappointed in how few nonfiction books I read last year. So my goal is to participate each Monday in Nonfiction Monday.
© Becky Laney of Young Readers
1 comment:
You have some great ideas there! I think improving interaction with publishers is an interesting task. I would be interested to see how you go about that. There is a a lot of scope for improving the link between us, but I have no idea of the best way to go about it. Good luck with everything!
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