Novel Reaction

As I am sure all of you are aware , I spent last weekend participating in the Book Bloggers & Authors Online Conference. Not only did I attend I had the opportunity to be a moderator (that is a fancy term for I spoke with some of my favorite bloggers). I thought I would share with you some of what I learned; realize that I learned so much more than I could possibly share here.

Be Brave! I know I said on the last conference that the only thing holding me back is me, once again I was reminded that I need to be brave. There are so many great bloggers out there doing so many great things that I need not be afraid to try new things and not be afraid to ask people to do things with me.  What is the worst that will happen, they will tell me “no”? I always come away with some blog envy and inspiration to be bigger and better.

Networking is Important. I need to network with other bloggers, authors, and publishers. I met some great authors and bloggers at the conference, some I reconnected with from the last conference (hey Jojo!).  But I realized that with all these great bloggers that I connected with, most of them are paranormal/urban fantasy bloggers and my site is mostly focused on Historical Romance and YA novels. I need to start making connections with other bloggers in my focus genre while maintaining the great connections I have already made.

Connecting with Readers. The entire reason I started this site was to help other people find books that they love and to talk about books.  In order to actually have discussions about what I love I need to make an effort to respond to my reader’s comments, to get reader feedback on what I am doing, and connect with other bloggers by leaving meaningful comments on their sites. How can I expect others to comment on my site when I don’t comment and engage on their sites? This is not be used as a shameless promotion for my site but to talk to other readers about what they are reading.

Critique of NovelReaction.com. I swallowed my fear and posted my site for comments from others in the industry. They were very kind (kinder than they should have been) but they gave me some great suggestions so expect NovelReaction.com to get a little bit of a face-lift in the near future.

If you missed the conference this time you are not too late.  You can still pay the fee and access all the recorded panels and listen for yourself for the rest of this month.  It is well worth the money in my opinion! The tips on getting my blog postings rated higher in Google are in and of themselves incredible and worth the money, not to mention the many other great tips and advice I obtained from the conference.