BOOK BLOGGER HOP: August 23rd-29th

THE NEW BOOK BLOGGER HOP


I'm a tad bit late to this week's blog hop, now  hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer, but I didn't want to miss this week's question (submitted by kero.)

The question is:

Book blogging is more than just reading. Who helped you set up or run your blog? Or did you do it all yourself?

My answer is:  I am technology fearful. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. This is the path I go down every time I attempt something new on the computer. So the mere thought of setting up a blog put me in a bad mood--even though I wanted to be able to blog. Not only am I technologically. . not exactly incompetent but mentally lazy when it comes to it, but also, I don't have a good artistic eye. So, I was envisioning something ugly that would never work right.

Who helped me avoid that disaster? Maddee at  XUNI.COM, my extremely helpful website designer. She set it up through blogger and reassured me that the rest would be easy.

I maintain it myself. Most of the time that just means posting. Every once in awhile, I have to do something like figure out how to put up one of those percentage bars to track my challenges. Or I have tried doing FORMS for giveaways, but that was way too tricky to repeat. I'd rather make my own spreadsheet later. The thought of figuring out rafflecopter gives me the willies. And whenever google changes something on blogger, which happens too frequently for my comfort, I fume for a week and consider quitting, but eventually settle down and figure it out, after going through the anger, hate and suffering stages.  Sometimes, I even feel a burst of pride. Look at what I did!!! (My kids roll their eyes.)

But the most important things about running a blog I've learned from other bloggers. I've learned about blog hops. I've learned the necessity of prominently mentioning any time a book comes to me free from an author or publisher (rare for me but it does happen from time to time.) I've learned about "challenges." (and read-a-thons, although I haven't taken part in one of those yet, one day I will.) So even though I run my blog "all by myself," I don't think I would keep doing it if I didn't feel like I was part of a larger community of book bloggers, a community of readers who still love books enough to shout about them to anyone who will listen.