Archive for the ‘Blogging Know-How’ Category

Blogging Know-How: Preventing Spam

September 6th, 2012 Vicky

Hello and welcome to the fifth instalment of Blogging Know How! The aim of this feature is to answer some of your blogging, reading, reviewing, and social networking related questions. If there’s anything you’ve been wondering about, you can’t figure out or just want me to help you out with, you can send it to me via the little contact form I’ll post at the end of these posts.

“How do you protect your blog from spam? I recently got this disturbing email from a follower of mine about an indecent Twitter update on my blog but even though I checked on Twitter for that tweet, I could not find it. I even tried signing out and then viewing my blog but could not find it among the Twitter updates.” – Nobonita

As bloggers, spam is something we have to live with. Getting more exposure for your blog means more spammers as well and it’s not something you can get rid of altogether. It’s quite an annoying business but all we can do is to prevent them from showing up on the blog.

Things you can do to prevent your blog from spam if you’re using Blogger:

  • Enable comment moderation for your comments: This is the most important one. It basically means that you’ll have to review each comment before they go live on your blog and either approve it or trash it. When you have new comments to approve, a notification will appear on your Blogger dashboard and you can sort through them. It may sound like a lot of work but unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t have a built-in spam filter yet so this is the best you can do. How to activate word verification? Just go to your Blogger dashboard, then click on Settings -> Comments -> and set comment moderation to ‘always’.
  • Word verification, aka captcha: Captcha’s main goal is to deter automated comment spamming systems by making your readers enter in crazy jumbled-up letters when trying to comment on your blog. Each commenter will have to go through this additional step before they can actually submit their comments. BUT. (And here comes the tricky bit) If you ask me, captcha is single-handedly the most annoying thing I’ve seen on Blogger. Seriously. The words are extremely hard to read, almost illegible which will put off lots of bloggers from commenting. No one wants to spend ages on your blog, squinting at the computer screen trying to figure out what those tiny mouse droppings stand for. And if you’ve already set up comment moderation, it’s also pointless. You’ll have to moderate your comments before they appear on your blog anyway, then why torture your readers?
  • Backlinks and registered users: Make sure to set the backlinks tab to ‘hide’ and the ‘who can comment tab’ to either registered users or users with Google accounts.

(more…)

Posted in Blogging Know-How Tags: , 14 Comments »

Blogging Know-How: How to Handle the Stress of Blogging

April 12th, 2012 Vicky
Hello and welcome to Blogging Know How, a weekly feature here on Books, Biscuits, and Tea. The aim of this feature is to answer some of your blogging/ reading/ reviewing/ social networking related questions. If there’s anything you’ve been wondering about, you can’t figure out or just want me to help you out with, you can send it to me via email or the little contact form I’ll post at the end of these posts.

“How do you handle the stress of blogging? I have so many emails and contacts to make or respond to, on top of my own blogging duties, that I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all!” – Angieleigh

Great question, Angelieigh! It’s actually one of those topics I’ve wanted to talk about for a while, so here’s my story and what I think.

I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always preferred a quiet night in with a good book and a cuppa tea to going out, no matter how sad it sounds. But there was a time when I realised that none of my friends read as much as I do and even if they do pick up a book, it’s not something I’ve ever heard of or would ever pick up. It would have been nice to know someone who had the same passion as me. A few years later I discovered someone’s blog while I was searching for a book on Google – and I thought, that’s what I need! So I signed up on Blogger and joined the blogging world.

During the first few weeks and months of blogging, we all went through a phase where we had no idea what an ARC or a blog tour meant. We loved reading and we wanted a place where we could talk about these things without people telling us that ‘no one cares, love’. Then, slowly but surely we learnt the meaning of these words, discovered NetGalley, and requested our first ARCs. In short, we were in book heaven and we had no intention to leave.

(more…)

Posted in Blogging Know-How Tags: , 38 Comments »

Blogging Know-How: Blog Tours and Getting Followers

April 5th, 2012 Vicky
Welcome to my third Blogging Know How post, my new weekly feature here on Books, Biscuits, and Tea. The aim of this feature is to answer some of your blogging/ reading/ reviewing/ social networking related questions. If there’s anything you’ve been wondering about, you can’t figure out or just want me to help you out with, you can send it to me via email or the little contact form I’ll post at the end of these posts.

“What’s the easiest or best way to become involved in blog tours?” – Rachel

Great question, Rachel! There are many websites out there who offer blog tour services to authors and who are constantly looking for blog tour hosts. Usually, the only requirement is that you have a blog that you regularly update. Some of them approve you right away and some of them look at your statistics (the number of unique visitors you get each day, how long you’ve been blogging, how many people follow you, etc) first, it depends. Here’s some websites you might want to check out:

  • Novel Publicity: Novel Publicity doesn’t have any rules in terms of the length of time you’ve been blogging for, but we do look at bloggers’ statistics.
  • Kismet Book Touring: Even though they are not interested in the number of your followers or your statistics, they require that you have been blogging for at least 3 months before you sign up as a tour host.
  • Bewitching Book Tours
  • Enchanted Book Tours: They are not concerned about how many followers you have or how long you’ve been blogging. Their only requirement is that you have a blog that you regularly update.
  • PJV Tours
  • AtomR Book Blog Tours: Their requirement is that you have at least 300 followers and you’re actively posting on your blog.

(more…)

Posted in Blogging Know-How Tags: , , 50 Comments »

Blogging Know-How: Mentors, blog buttons, and sharing ARCs

March 29th, 2012 Vicky

Welcome to the second instalment of Blogging Know How, my brand new weekly feature here on Books, Biscuits, and Tea. The aim of this feature is to answer some of your blogging/ reading/ reviewing/ social networking related questions. If there’s anything you’ve been wondering about, you can’t figure out or just want me to help you out with, you can send it to me via email or the little contact form I’ll post at the end of these posts.

“I’ve been watching youtube videos and reading other blogger tips/tricks of the trade and a lot of them say to get a mentor. More experienced bloggers must have a TON of help requests. How would a fairly new blogger go about getting a seasoned mentor when they don’t know anyone? And thanks for this feature, I love it! I’ll definitely support it. :) ” – Mandee

Thanks Mandee! Having someone more experienced helping you out is great and it definitely makes blogging and exploring this whole blogoverse much, much easier but I can see why it’s so hard to find someone to help you. It’s not the fact that people don’t want to help or not even the fact that you don’t know anyone. It’s rather that blogging takes a hell of a lot of time and most of us go to school or work full time besides blogging and taking on a mentee would mean that they’d have even less time for reading and well.. everything else. So how do you get started? I’ll tell you what I did when I started my blog and entered the blogosphere, the great unknown for the first time.


Take your time. Blogging and getting the hang of things takes time but you’ll get there. You don’t necessarily need to know anyone to get started. There are lots of websites and articles that may be useful for beginners. For example:

And as the last article says, don’t be afraid to reach out to fellow bloggers for help. All of us were beginners at some point so we know how confusing it is when you’re thrown into the unknown. When I started Books, Biscuits, and Tea I haven’t even heard about blogging mentors. I had no idea such a thing existed and I didn’t know anyone either. But I’m sure you (and everyone else) have some favourite blogs you often visit, and bloggers who you look for inspiration or look up to. You can learn a lot from even reading their posts! And it never hurts to ask for help. I’ve had some people emailing me about review templates and social networking but no matter how busy I was, I always tried to help them out – and I’m sure most people would do the same. :)

The buttons! How do you make them and the links that they use? THANK YOU!!! – Libby

You mean the “grab my button” photo with the code? You won’t believe how easy it is! I could copy-paste the whole thing for you but d’you know what? This website will do it all for you. If you’re having problems with any of the codes, just click on this photo and you’ll see how I did mine. First off, fill in the first two brackets with your blog’s title and its URL. Then, you’ll need a blog button. I did mine in Photoshop using my (previous) blog template. Once you have a button, make sure to upload it on Photobucket or any other image sharing website and copy-paste its direct link into the third bracket. As for container type, click on “Textarea” if you have a Blogger blog. If your blog is hosted by WordPress or something else, click on Pre.
Container’s border colour: #ffffff (which is white, but you can choose any other colours by clicking on that little black box)
Container’s background colour: #ffffff
Font colour: #000000 (which is black)
Then click on preview and get code.

1. Go to Blogger -> Design -> Page elements -> Add a gadget -> HTML/Javascript
2. Copy the blog button code from the website and paste it in the HTML/Javascript box in Blogger
3. Give a title to your widget, e.g. “Grab my button”
4. Save it. That’s it! :)

Easy peasy! :)

What do you think about people sharing ARC’s? All the ARC’s I have received say not to share with other people but I see all the time on other blogs that bloggers let each other borrow ARC’s. Do you think this is OK or not? – Anon

Judging by your question, you don’t approve of people sharing them – and to be frank, I have to agree with you and I’ll tell you why. An ARC (or Advance Reader Copy) is basically an uncorrected proof of a book. It’s a roughly-produced version of an upcoming book that publishers send out to newspapers, magazines, and book bloggers to create a buzz before its publication. It’s important to note that producing ARCs actually costs more than producing finished copies of the same book.

Going back to the original question, I think passing them on is okay as long as the recipient is a fellow book blogger who will review it on his/her blog as well. Lending ARCs to book bloggers is OK since the person you give it to will also spread the word and write about the book.

As opposed to this, I don’t think that sharing ARCs with non-bloggers or passing them on to friends who won’t review it is okay. That’s not why there were produced and sent to us bloggers, after all. Giving them away if you have a spare copy (sent by the author or the publisher) is one thing and it’s perfectly all right. Selling them on Ebay or passing it on to many people is a different story. Just imagine what would happen if everyone who has an ARC passed it on. Then the next person would pass it on to someone else and so on. Who would buy the book if every single person already read it by the time it comes out? That’s right, no one. The aim of this whole ARC business is to make people interested in the book not to let the whole word read it for free. So no, in this case I don’t think it’s okay to pass them on, nor is it okay to sell them on Ebay for a bunch of money.

What do you guys think of sharing ARCs? Do you think it’s OK?

Do you have any blogging/reviewing related questions you’d like me to answer on my blog? Something related to ARCs, social networking, or anything else? Don’t hesitate to let me know. :)

Posted in Blogging Know-How Tags: , , , 18 Comments »

Introducing a new feature: Blogging Know-How

March 22nd, 2012 Vicky

Hello bookaholics! As some of you might have already noticed, I’ve had a poll set up on my blog for about a week now and I’ve been collecting your votes on what you’d like to see more of on my blog ever since. Many of you said that you’d like to see more giveaways, but what surprised me the most was that almost 20 people voted for ‘blogging tips’. In addition to this, some of you have emailed me in the past few weeks asking for advice on social networking, blogging, and book reviews. So I thought about it and decided to start a new feature on my blog, namely Blogging Know-How. If you guys support me and this whole idea then I might make it a weekly feature on Books, Biscuits, and Tea – because… well, why not? :)

How it’s going to work? Each week (or every two weeks, it depends on you) I will try to answer some of your blogging/reading/reviewing/social networking related questions here on my blog. If there’s anything you’ve been wondering about, you can’t figure out or just want me to help you out with, you can send it to me via email or the little contact form I’ll post at the end of these posts. You can stay anonymous if you want to, of course. Easy peasy, right? :) If you’d like me to keep this up then I’ll post my Blogging Know-How answers on Thursdays.

Let’s kick this off with the first question:
How do you get publishers to notice your blog and send you their ARC’s?

- Kimba @ Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer

That’s a great question, Kimba! I’ve been thinking about this a lot when I started blogging. I kept seeing people’s IMMs and I was sitting here completely baffled and clueless about this whole ARC business.

I do have to say, though, that I’ve only been blogging for six months so I’m definitely not a pro or an established blogger, if you want to put it this way. I’ve learned a lot of things about this industry – and about blogging in general – in these six months but there are many things that I’m probably unaware of or I have no clue about whatsoever. That being said, I think the most important things to keep in mind here are:

1. Experience: In the first 1-2 months after you started your blog, you’ll need to learn how to fit in the “blogger society”, to interact with other people and to build up your blog. Find a consistent pattern for your reviews: decide what info you’d like to include in your reviews or whether you’d like to keep them short or you prefer longer posts, and so on. Most people say that you need to have at least a 6 month experience before you can start requesting ARCs and in a way I do see their point. When I first requested an ARC I think Books, Biscuits, and Tea was about 3 and a half month old – I did get a response back then but it was a smaller publisher – I didn’t even dare contacting a bigger company.

2. Be consistent: Make sure to build up a routine – it’s always good if you have a schedule on your blog. Do let your readers know when you’re going to post what (for example if you take part in weekly events or “memes”) and tell them if you’re going away too.

3. Readership: If you ask me what publishers are looking for in a blog, I’d say the combination of these two I just mentioned, plus a steady readership. I don’t think the number of your followers counts as much as a, your experience, b, consistency and c, the number of people who actually do read your blog. Just think about it: you can host tons of giveaways a month and have 3000 followers – but what’s the point if there’s only a handful of people who read your blog and comment on your posts? Whereas there are blogs who only have 3-400 followers but their readers are following them because they’re actually interested in their posts and not because they had to. Try to interact with fellow bloggers, visit them and leave them comments so that they can visit you back and return the favour.

How do publishers notice you?

Well, you’ll have to take the first step. Once you have enough experience, traffic, followers and a consistent blogging pattern, you can go ahead and contact them. Unless you’ve been blogging for a long time and you’ve contacted them before, they won’t send you ARCs – you’ll have to request them. Go on the publisher’s website, check out their catalogue and send them a request. Tell them who you are and tell them a little bit about your blog and why you’re interested in reading that particular title. Most importantly, be nice and patient. Just imagine how many emails they must have to go through each day – so naturally, it takes a while until they get back to you. My advice would be to start with smaller companies first and contacting bigger ones later on. Requesting ARCs usually gets easier once you’ve made personal contacts with some publishers – if you post your reviews on time and let them know your post is up then they’ll know you and remember you soon enough. Starting out is the tricky bit ;)

Do you have any blogging/reviewing related questions you’d like me to answer on my blog? Something related to ARCs, social networking, or anything else? Don’t hesitate to let me know. :)

Posted in Blogging Know-How, blogging tips 49 Comments »

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    Hello! My name is Vicky. I'm a twenty-something book blogger with a passion for thrillers, mysteries, dystopia, and women's fiction. I started Books, Biscuits, and Tea back in 2011 in the hope of meeting like-minded book enthusiasts from all around the world and to give and receive book recommendations. I love chatting with fellow bloggers so feel free to shoot me an email, send me a carrier pigeon, wave, or just... get in touch on Twitter.

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