Shop Diary: August 2024 Monthly Wrap Up

So this monthly wrap up for August 2024 is a bit late, but it’s still getting done…so, success!

Trying to simplify for September, but at the same time get back into the swing of things. Some of my more helpful habits fell by the wayside in July and after the break I feel like I definitely need to add some habits back. It’s back-to-school vibes over here; so refocusing on goals and taking more action for September 2024!

August 2024 Reads

Reading in August was a bit tiring for me. I enjoyed what I read…but I can definitely feel myself hitting a wall. At this point I’ve read over 50 books this year, and it’s starting to catch up with me. My goal was to read 40 books this year and then I hit that goal so I decided to increase it to 75 books. I figured I had the time to read that many books. But it’s A LOT, especially when you’re a greedy reader with 2 library cards, a NetGalley account, Edelweiss account and a flowing TBR list.

I’ll definitely be more conservative about my ARC requests next year. Because I really, really, really want to read the backlist of titles that I have on hold with my libraries. I have to keep putting them on hold because of all of the ARCs I have on my reading list (I have at least 1 ARC a week until early January). I know, not a horrible problem to have. It just makes me want more hours and energy in the day and maybe a faster reading/comprehension speed.

Anyway, I can feel a slump coming on, which is making me want to be more of a mood reader. I’ve questioned a few times whether I should even make a TBR list if I’m going to keep going off script. But I like having a plan, so I’m going to keep making the art and planning out the list until it really no longer serves me.

September 2024 TBR List

The Fallen Fruit and My Vampire Plus-One were on my August TBR list. I wasn’t quite ready to read The Fallen Fruit when I planned it on my list, much like when I read Kindred I had to prepare myself for what was going to likely be a painful reading experience. My experience with ARCs is starting to make me think I need to read the books as soon as I’m given access to them. I think that will appease my mood reading tendencies. The Fallen Fruit has been on my e-reader since February…around the time when I read Kindred. I’ve started reading The Fallen Fruit now, and I’m happily watching the story unfold and glad I finally took the leap – but I still feel like it’s gonna make me cry in the end.

For My Vampire Plus-One I wanted to read Jenna Levine’s prior book, My Roommate is a Vampire, first to have a sense of the world and not be spoiled on anything by reading the books out of order. I’m glad I read the books in the correct order. I look forward to reading My Vampire Plus-One to go back into the vampire rom-com world.

While I’m reading The Fallen Fruit I’m also reading Between Friends & Lovers for a different flavor and not fall victim to the doldrums. Who doesn’t love a funny romance that has a confusing love triangle? I mean I’m not confused right now, I’m very much on Mal’s side…but I’m also only 5 chapters into the book. I’ve seen promos that it’s going to be tough to choose between the male leads…we’ll see, I guess. So far only one of them has POV chapters, so he’s got the edge for now.

Wrapping up the month with two fantasy books hopefully isn’t a mistake, but one has dragons and the other a mystery. I think I’ll be engaged throughout!

Book Reviews PLANNED FOR SEPTEMBER 2024:

• ARC Review: Hot Hex Boyfriend by Carly Bloom (LIVE!)
• ARC Review: The Fallen Fruit by Shawntelle Madison
• Book Review: Between Friends & Lovers by Shirlene Obuobi
• Book Review: My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine
• ARC Review: My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine
• ARC Review: A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan
• ARC Review: The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

Business Updates

So I’ve been testing out some changes for the past couple months concerning the blog, social media and goal setting relating to my number one mission: selling books. In order to not inundate you all with too many emails I pulled back on sending book reviews out as a newsletter every Tuesday in July. The change also put less pressure on me to rush through reading books and thoughtfully assess my feelings about each title.

Strangely, pulling back on sending newsletters resulted in the site traffic going up. But I’m thinking that’s probably because I improved my SEO so the site is easier to discover now (thank you, Yoast!). So reprioritizing my post schedule was helpful, and I was going to try it for social media in August too – because I really wanted to take a break from trying to constantly post and work on selling books instead by organizing a pop-up.

National Black Business Month Goals

Then I found out August is Black Business Month, whoops, so I figured I’d take a little break in September instead. Uh oh, looks like September is Small Business Month…and then we’re into the holiday season. So no more putting of reorganizing, I just need to do what I can manage and focus on my goals.

So goals. August I focused on selling books, my goal was to sell 30 books for the month. I chose a random number, not a number that would actually provide a living wage. But a good starting point for actively trying. I ended up selling 11 books out of 30 books and I’m just proud people bought books, at all. That someone out there is listening to me while I chatter into the void.

My two other goals were focused on fundraising for my brick-and-mortar/business expenses and gaining more Instagram followers. Because if I wasn’t going to take a break from Instagram, I might as well try to get more followers. A couple weeks into the challenge I discovered that I needed to clear out the bots “following” my account, though, because they were definitely messing up my engagement stats. So 70 followers were gone in a night! I was sad, but at least that meant I was actually talking to real people with some interest in books.

Small Business Month Goals

For September I’m going to take a step back from Instagram and truly focus on setting up a pop-up event AND show the website more love. Now I look forward to the day when I’m able to add e-commerce to the site, but for now I’m going to keep the online shopping with Bookshop.org (books) and Libro.fm (audiobooks). So showing more love to the website will consist of posting more book recommendations on the site, rather than Instagram. I’ll still post to stories, because I can’t resist, but I want to build the site as more of a resource.

New additions to come to the site immediately, will be weekly “new book releases” email newsletters, listing out new fantasy and romance titles. Also, instead of posting book reviews and recommendations on Instagram I’ll be posting long form entries on the blog. Posting reviews to the blog isn’t new, but posting book recommendations regularly will be. I think I stopped posting book recommendation listicles on the site in May. So I want to try an alternative swap; prioritizing the blog over Instagram. As many a blogger says, I own the content on my blog, while Meta could take down my posts anytime they want to from Instagram and I would have to start all over again. So the blog is the queen over here!

Goals for September 2024

• Get More Newsletter Signups: tie-in with our first giveaway*
• Arrange First Pop-Up Event: purchase books from Ingram*

Book Recommendations PLANNED FOR SEPTEMBER 2024:

• Most Anticipated Fall Book Releases (LIVE!)
• Weekly New Book Releases: Romance & Fantasy Books
• This or That: Dark Academia vs. Light Academia
• Zodiac Reads: Books for Libra
• Series: If You Like This, You’ll Love…
• Spotlight: Banned Books Week (Sept. 22–28, 2024)

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*was supposed to do this goal in August…