Guest Blogger: Me on writing book reviews

Many thanks to Clark Bjorne, the "barker" of the Book Review Blog Carnival who invited me to contribute a post about writing book reviews.

To those who follow my blog, my post One Person's View of Book Reviewing will be familiar territory, but maybe you are a newbie around here, or you've just dropped in to find out about guidelines for book reviewing.

If you are not familiar with the Book Review Blog Carnival then check out the widget which I have running down on the bottom right of my side bar.

The current Book Review Blog Carnival is running at Breeni Books. If you do write book reviews of any sort why not contribute a link and description of your review on the submissions page? The carnival accepts all categories of book reviews, fiction, non-fiction etc. Theoretically participation should drive a few people to your blog, but there is a certain thrill about seeing your links featured on someone else's blog too.

For those who are here because you read Agatha Christie novels, consider submitting your next review (or all your reviews past and future) to the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Carnival which I developed after I had seen the idea functioning on the Book Review Blog Carnival.

Once again you will find the "live" widget down in the bottom right corner, but you can also go to the home page of the carnival and view the postings there. Your submissions to the carnival are made here. Be sure to put your submission into one of the categories and to write a brief teaser for your review.

Further to my 'good blogging' guidelines

Earlier this week I posted 10 blogging guidelines.
Check the blog post itself for an explanation of these.

1. Decide what the focus of your blog is.
   
2. How often to blog?
   
3. Watch the layout of your posting.
   
4. Use links in your posting.
   
5. Proof read your posting carefully before publishing.
   
6. Don't make your readers jump hurdles to leave comments.
   
7. Get copies of your own postings.
   
8. Feel free to add gadgets to make your blog more interesting.
   
9. Use labels and tags.
   
10. Set up some sort of counter.
    

I'd like to acknowledge some comments left on that post.

1. Mack, Mack Pitches Up and The Listening Librarian, suggested tracking who refers to your blog and registering with Technorati.
2. Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare and Mystery Readers thought she would try to add a sitemeter and make her postings a bit more concise.
3. Maxine (Petrona and Maxine's Book Reviews) said that in relation to the focus of the blog, the personality of the writer is really important.
   

Among the blogs that I watch there is one called Blogging Basics 101. It is a daily blog that often comes up with terrific tips on how to do things. I've learnt lots there. Often they simply link to other blog posts.
Today's tips:

• State of the Blogosphere 2008 via Technorati.
• 3 Easy Ways to Get More Mileage from Your Blog Posts via Findable Blogs.
  
  e.g.
  * Help readers find related information.
  * Share the love with other bloggers.
  * Highlight your best posts - I have to do that manually, but you'll see a little block on the right.
  * Repurpose your blog posts (that's what I am doing here).
  
  
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky via Problogger.
• 7 More Techniques to Make Your Blog Sticky via Problogger.

  A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave. Not because the site owner captures them in a ‘RickRoll’ or a series of windows asking them if they REALLY want to leave - but because something about the site motivates them to explore it further - and more importantly to make a decision to (and takes some steps to ensure that they) return again to it.
  
  e.g.
  * make invitations to subscribe prominent (did you notice mine on the right?)
  * good blog design.
  * make your blog personal (someone said I write 'conversational' book reviews)
  * get interactive (did you see my poll to the right?)
  * monitor your stats.
  * create a debate.
  

• 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level via Chris Brogan
  
  * make the purpose and audience of your blog crystal clear.
  * consider the design elements.
  * grow quality blog posts.
  * promote your blog.
  

So what do you think of those? It is worth reading those links to get some of the detail.
Not everything applies to "amateur" blogs like this one, but there's lots of good advice there.

One of the things that worries me is that my blog is tending to get a bit cluttered. I have lots of gadgets running, and that blog roll now lists 75 blogs. But I think pointing people to what others are saying is important too. And there are things about my blog that I want to highlight. I'm not sure what to do apart from create yet another blog with a lot of the static stuff on it. Blogger doesn't have a "new page" function.
I have already created a new blog that exists only to list my book reviews at Smik's Reviews simply to get the full list off this blog page.
I could try creating my own menu bar across the top of the page I suppose. That might solve the problem.