Books and Music, Crime and Journals

Books and music, crime and journals get top billing at some fantastic websites.

If you like reading great books and listening to great music, largehearted boy is a must-visit. To quote the website, “largehearted boy is a literature and music website that explores that spot in the Venn diagram where the two arts overlap.” Authors create and discuss a music playlist that correlates to their recently published book. For example, here’s Celeste Ng’s musical selections for her Little Fires Everywhere. Also featured are book reviews, contests and giveaways, daily downloads and more.

Do you enjoy crime thrillers and real crime? Then, check out The Crime Hub. This UK-based site has information-packed interviews with those who work directly in the criminal justice system. Interviews with writers of crime fiction also fill the site. Find audio of short stories in various subgenres of crime fiction. I will be listening to some of these.

Finally, on a totally different note: Do you like to write snail mail letters to pen pals as much as I do? Do you like to journal? Then consider planneramaparty.co. This site overflows with ideas about how to coordinate your offline letter writing and journaling.

So, lovers of books and music, crime and journals, can find nirvana online. For other websites dealing with books of mystery and crime, see my previous blog post here.

 

Book Blogging – Guest blog post

Book blogging takes time—time to read, ruminate and write. Then it’s time to find a jpeg or graphic of the front cover, edit what you’ve written and boost the SEO. I recently wrote a guest post on book blogging for Mary Fiacco, owner of Filles Vertes Publishing (FVP), a traditional independent publisher. Her first book, Using Curse Words: Finding Unusual Solutions to Life’s “Worst” Problems, will be published in the near future.

My short post speaks about what I like about being a book blogger. Although reading the book, forming an opinion and writing the review take time, it’s not all hardship. As publishers produce more and more books each year, plenty of candidates from many genres vie for my attention. Currently, I deal mainly with mystery novels. In the future, I plan to include some literary fiction, poetry and nonfiction. I frequently request Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) through www.netgalley.com, www.librarything.com and www.goodreads.com.

I foresee myself book blogging for quite a while into the future. Here’s to meeting new literary friends in real life and through the pages of their books.

 

Book Blogger Platform

The Book Blogger Platform, 2nd Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Book Blogging
by Barb Drozdowich
© 2016

Book Blogger PlatformFor anyone new to blogging and who wants to blog about and review books, The Book Blogger Platform, by Barb Drozdowich, gives a solid overview of the main blogging platforms. The book is aimed at those who are not totally tech savvy. Ms. Drozdowich discusses WordPress and Blogger, the two most popular blogging platforms. She discusses the posts, plugins, gadgets, widgets and sidebars that are part of every blog. Also discussed are backing up your blog and monetizing it.

Since this book focuses on book blogging, Ms. Drozdowich discusses where and how to get books about which to blog. Netgalley and Edelweiss are mentioned as prime sources from which to request advanced reader copies (ARCs) and as places to post reviews.

Book bloggers can also guest post on blogs of other book reviewers/bloggers. Other sites to post book reviews are GoodReads, LibraryThing, and Booklike. Ms. Drozdowich is also a proponent of posting to the major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Instagram.

Overall, this book is a good overview of how blogging software works, where book bloggers can find ARCs and suggestions for other places to review books and get your name out there.

The author can be found online at:
http://barbdrozdowich.com
http://bakerviewconsulting.com
http://sugarbeatsbooks.com/