Hello everyone,
It is my first discussion post of 2022 and today I am talking about themed months in book blogging, where you publish blog posts more frequently than normal, or even every day.
We recently reached the end of the most well-known of these, which is called Blogmas, and I take part in that one every December. But such is the creativity within the book blogging community that there are lots more ways in which we mark different months and seasons through our own little corners of the internet.
What Kind Of Themes Are There?
As far as I am aware, there are two themes in book blogging spanning entire months, which are Blogtober in October and Blogmas in December. Many book bloggers may decide to prepare posts for every day of those months, often with more than the occasional reference to Halloween or Christmas.
However, the rules are super flexible! If you take part, it is up to you how often you post and what content you would like to share. It is all about putting your own stamp on a particular topic and posting more regularly and more thematically than you would in an average month, but only whatever you feel able to do without the unnecessary pressure.
The posts can vary from lists of books that are ideal for a certain time of the year or a seasonal tag. For example, in Blogtober you might have a go at the Finally Fall (Autumn) Book Tag or the Halloween Creatures tag, and as part of Blogmas you may see the Naughty Or Nice Tag doing the rounds.
There are lots of book blogging themes that happen at other parts of the year too! We are in January where many of us are setting goals for the year ahead, and we often look at our progress halfway through the year and then again at the end, while creating lists based on all the books we have read in that time, or upcoming TBRs.
Elsewhere, there are countless readathons that take their prompts from the seasons or the times of year in which they take place. There are memes and initiatives such as the current #BeatTheBacklog, and in November several book bloggers take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and chart their progress.
How Do I Approach Blogmas?
I do a lot of the seasonal tags and various check-ins, usually at fixed points throughout the year, but my busiest time as a book blogger is in December when I take part in Blogmas. I have just completed Blogmas for the fourth successive year and each time, it feels like a huge undertaking – and definitely daunting at the beginning!
For Blogmas, some book bloggers choose to post each day or every other day for the whole of December, or up to and including Christmas Eve, like an advent calendar. But as for me, I always aim for about 20 posts over the course of the month, some of them looking ahead to Christmas but most looking back on the books I have read over the course of the year. They are dotted across various days in the run-up to Christmas, and the final four are published in consecutive days between the 27th to the 30th.
In preparation for Blogmas, at some point in November I write down a list of ideas for up to 20 posts which I aim to write for December. Luckily this is a fairly quick process, as the themes and categories for these posts remain largely the same for each year. The hard part is actually choosing which order to publish these posts and making sure that I have the time to write them all!
Here is a list of posts I usually do for December every year:
- Three book reviews
- Festive book tag (since 2018)
- November monthly wrap-up
- Top Kindle Highlights of the year – split into two parts (since 2018)
- My Top 5 character-driven books of the year (since 2018)
- My Top 5 most powerful books of the year (since 2018)
- My Top 5 beautiful book covers of the year (since 2019)
- My Top 5 most dramatic plot twists of the year (since 2018)
- My Top 5 most memorable endings of the year (since 2018)
- The best settings I read during the year (since 2020)
- Book blogging friends – split into two parts (since 2019)
- Review of the year (2018, 2019, and 2021)
- Top 10 Books I Read during the year (since 2018)
And some other posts I occasionally do for December:
- Discussion post
- Festive poem
- Blog tour post
- Goodreads Challenge Summary and Stats (I used to publish this on New Year’s Eve, but more recently I have done this on New Year’s Day)
I am really pleased with how all those posts have turned out since I came up with them, and it absolutely goes to show that these seasonal events in the world of book blogging are a great opportunity to be creative!
Let’s Chat
Do you take part in events such as Blogmas or Blogtober? What kind of post ideas do you come up with? Let me know in the comments!
Happy reading :)
Stephen Reads Books 