Chris and I launched Book Lovers, Get Your English On! (GYEO) one year ago. We didn't really know what we were doing--we just knew we loved reading books and we loved talking about books. We decided we wanted to share our talks with more people, so we started GYEO.
Our goal was to post twice a week--we've posted 117 times. That includes 86 actual reviews and 31 random chit-chats about book-related things. So we surpassed our goal. I know that sustainability is a huge problem for bloggers--once you create this hungry monster, you have to keep feeding it. Our decision to launch the blog together turns out to have been pretty clever--when one of us is busy with other life-related matters, the other one has been able to fill in and cover. It definitely takes the pressure off, and it continues to be a joy to post rather than a chore.
My husband was chuckling the other day as Chris and I were talking about the blog on the phone. When I asked him what was so funny, he said, "My wife writes book reports for fun!" I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but he's right. I guess one man's nightmare is another woman's bliss.
As we reported recently, our blog has been visited by people in all 50 of these United States and 51 countries. When we started this, I never really envisioned that someone in Monaco, Namibia, or Malaysia would be reading what we've written. That has been a huge thrill for us.
Another is the fact that many of visitors keep coming back--our visitor loyalty rate makes us very happy. Thank you all, and you know who you are better than we do, for coming back time and again.
Hearing from authors we've reviewed has also been an enormous rush. Having them say kind things about our writing--it just doesn't get any cooler than that for us.
What's next for us? Chris and I look forward to creating a website that will give us more flexibility with our posts. With our current blog format, we can't create the lists we want. Every time we get together, the ideas just keep spilling over, so we are anxious to learn the necessary technical aspects involved so we can turn the ideas into realities.
So please keep reading and commenting. I expect when we reach our second anniversary, we'll have learned more about blogging, read many more books, written lots of reviews, and we'll still be dreaming of what's to come.
2 comments:
It has been a fabulous year, Carole! I can't wait to see what happens next!
To enhance to your image of Carole, when she was in high school, she and her father used to work algebra problems for fun, too. I could only shake my head. I mean, they actually ENJOYED doing this! As my mathematical ability floundered when confronted with fractions in fourth grade, this was simply bewildering to me. She definitely doesn't get that from MY side of the family. So the leap to writing book reports for fun took no great effort. I hope I can take a bit of credit for fostering a love of books, but that math thing.....!
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