Grab a Button and Get Booked!

I finally got round to making one of these things so now you can check out the side bar on the right and get the new I'm Booked! button for your blog!

- See more at: http://www.imbooked.co.uk/#sthash.FUFhjsuz.dpuf






- See more at: http://www.imbooked.co.uk/#sthash.FUFhjsuz.dpuf

Fun Fact Friday (#38)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.

This week’s five facts:

1.  There's a cruise ship named "The World" where residents permanently live as it travels around the globe.

2.  "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

3.  The space between your eyebrows is called the "glabella."

4. 11% of the World is left handed.

5. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick.

Why Blog Commenting is Important

Let’s face it. We all love getting comments. They let people know that your blog is alive with active readers that actually want to read what about what you have to say. From the good to the bad, it’s a nice way of knowing people are interested in your content. But did you know the benefits of leaving comments on other people’s blogs far outreaches gratification? There are many ways you, as a blogger, can see positives come from it too.

1.       Making friends: Having friends in the blogosphere is always a good thing. You can recommend books or other products to each other and keep one another up to date on what’s going on in the world of books. A good way of making friends is through commenting as you’re letting the other person know that you like their post and they’ll appreciate that you took the time to comment.

2.       Backlinking: If you’ve commented on another blog before, you’ll notice that your username links back (usually) to your blog or website. This helps search engines to find you, and consequently, your blog. Increasing your traffic.

3.       Engaging in discussions: Some blog posts may lead to a discussion due to interest or controversy. If an interesting topic is raised this is a great opportunity to write to other bloggers and discuss the matter and find out other people’s opinions on it. It can even lead to you developing your own ideas for a blog post of your own.

4.       Branding: Your blog has a brand. It’s different to other blogs because you wrote it and your posts have a unique voice. This voice can also be captured in a comment. A comment that you can leave on someone’s post that you found to be valuable. A thoughtful comment can lead others to becoming interested in your own blog. This is why you should try to leave comments when you actually have something to say because saying ‘Hi (blogger), great post’ and leaving your URL isn’t likely to garner you any favour. In fact it will most likely hurt your brand.

5.       Give and you shall receive: Do you like getting comments? Of course! We all do. It shows that someone wants to tell us that we helped them or that we made them laugh. But if you don’t comment on other peoples blogs then why should others comment on yours? Take a few minutes to comment and share the love. You’ll get noticed and people will want to comment in return.


These are just a few things that I've learned about commenting. Let me now what you think!

Fun Fact Friday (#37)

 

 

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.

This week’s five facts:

1.  In 2002, the average user spent 46 minutes on the Internet per day. In 2012, it was 4 hours.

2. The last animal in the dictionary is the zyzzyva, a tropical weevil.

3.  A 10-Year-Old Goldfish Had a 45-Minute Surgery To Remove A Tumor in 2014.

4.  The first drinking straw was designed to have a diameter slightly smaller than a lemon pip, as the inventor was tired of getting lemon seeds in his mouth when drinking lemonade.

5.  The first colour photograph was taken in 1861 by Michael Sutton.

How to Write a Book Review

Writing a book review isn't too bad once you know what you're doing. You read the book, you write down what you thought and then you publish it on your blog, Goodreads or any other place you can give reviews. When I started blogging I learned from other bloggers that there are ways to make your reviews more informative and also, look easier on the eye. Here are a few tips to get you started if you’re new to the book reviewing game:

1.       Bookmark pages: Keep tabs or stickers on pages you found interesting in the book so that you can easily refer back to it in your review. This has helped me write my reviews faster as it means I don’t have to memorise everything that I want to write. It’s easy to forget interesting points after you’ve finished reading a book and you might not write a review straight away so it can help to keep tabs on key pages and chapters.

2.       Writing the review: Normally I start by saying a general sentence about the book. Usually just referring to the main plot. I’ll then say what I liked and what I didn’t like in separate paragraphs. Normally the final paragraph is a summary of my overall thoughts on the book and then I give a rating. This is a basic skeleton for my reviews which I don’t always completely follow. I like to add a bit of humour here and there to keep it upbeat. Especially if the book gets a bad rating. I normally centre my reviews around these three things:

• Characters
• Plot
• Writing

3.       Formatting: Everyone does this a bit differently so it doesn’t really matter how you do it. The basic components reviews that I’ve seen are similar to what's shown below:

The main things I'd take away are:

• Large Title
• Synopsis in italics
• Book Cover
• Book info (e.g page count)
• Review below

As long as it's easy to read its fine. I've seen really cool review formats from other bloggers like on Candace's Book Blog.  Colour scheme can also be important. Always try to pick a font and background colour that clearly contrast each other so they're easy to read.

4.       Spoilers: If you have any spoilers in your review it always nice to say so in your title so the readers don’t get a shock when they find out their favourite character dies in the book they haven’t read yet.

5.       Give it a rating: This can be fun if you have a new blog but you haven’t established a rating system yet. Most people use stars but I use a rating from 1-5, with 1 being the worst and 5 being exemplary. I’ve seen letters from A-F like school grades and I’ve also seen people use funny things like cats and ice-cream (e.g. 2/5 ice-creams). I try to rate things before I've seen other reviews so my opinion isn't influenced.



These are just a few basic ways to help get your review started if you’re not sure how. If you have any more ideas say so in the comments!