This week marks 5 years since the start of Let’s Talk Bookish. In celebration of this, I’ll be diving into the rich archives of this meme from Monday to Friday and choose several old topics to either discuss for the first time or revisit. Today I go back to August 23, 2019 where we discussed advice to give new bloggers. I’ve done this topic as our current host Aria revisited this in September 2022, but today I’ll agree or disagree with Rukky’s advice from 2019.

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, the meme moved to another host, Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

#1. It’s okay to worry about stats

I both agree and disagree. Yes, I’ve been worrying about stats as I pay for my hosting. However, stats can really stress you out. Whenever you’re self-hosted, I think you should slightly worry about your stats though as that’s an investment, but it’s also healthy to let it go and just blog for the fun of it. For this blog I definitely don’t have to worry about my stats as I see it growing and growing each month. What else explains around 100 displays on days I haven’t posted? Also, old reviews seem to be found, which is great to see. So I’d say, it’s okay to worry about stats and learn what works and doesn’t work. However, remain a healthy balance between blogging for fun and blogging for stats.

#2. It’s okay to ask for help

Definitely agree on this! I mean, I didn’t know a thing when I went self-hosted for the first time. However, I always could ask other bloggers for help, but I always made sure I couldn’t find the answer myself on Google or other documentation. I strongly recommend you to first try and look up the answer yourself as we all have lives outside of blogging, but it’s definitely okay to ask for help whenever you’re really stuck.

#3. Hiatuses? Late replies? Late blog posts? It’s absolutely 100% okay

I both agree and disagree on this. Yes, you should have to blog without feeling pressure, but late posts when you’ve assigned to a commitment such as hosting stuff or blog tours, is not ideal. Yes, bloggging is a hobby, but whenever publishers et cetera are involved (in case of blog tours), it’s not okay to bail on the commitment. You at least should let them know whenever life gets in the way. Personally, I haven’t taken much hiatuses, only when I’m out of the country. I think my last one was short in March, but that was because I didn’t have my laptop on holiday and hate to blog on phone LOL.

Other advice I’d add:

• Write your blog posts in an editor such as MS Word, Pages or Notepad, you never know when your CMS editor (probably WordPress) or hosting crashes. Rewriting is just too much work.
• Are you using certain blocks on multiple posts? Create a reusable block. I always detach them when I write the blog posts I add them in. This is such a time saver and also creates consistency. I use them on my book reviews for example. Sometimes I delete the headings though.
• If you can afford it, the Ultimate Book Blogger plugin by NoseGraze is a life saver. Even though the Goodreads API key is not working anymore, it still is since you don’t have to toy around with your review format. You just have to retrieve the book information. It only works on self-hosted blogs though.

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What advice would you give to new bloggers?