So happy to start a new month and talk about July’s Monthly Wrap up! Last month was more about going where the mood took me – mood reads, experimenting with social post schedules and narrowing down my excessively long to do list. This month I did my best to step back from the fun stuff (reading books and making social posts) to focus on researching how to get my first pop-up underway.
July 2024 Reads
Here are my finished July 2024 reads. This month was very much all about mood reading. 4 of the 8 books that I read were not planned. I mean I had them on hold through the library, but they weren’t on my July TBR list. I’ve had so many ARCs on my list that I haven’t been able to check library books out. So pretty much I’ve been paying it forward with my library holds. Every time I delay another month, I’m hoping that the next person in line appreciates my sacrifice.
PLAYING CATCH UP
The Sky On Fire and The Fiancé Dilemma were supposed to be read in June, but as is becoming a pattern I wasn’t able to keep up with the reading pace. So since these two ARCs weren’t planned to publish until early and late in July respectively, I just moved them onto my July TBR list. The Sky On Fire was my long book of the month, there’s always one. Even though the book was long and full of epic fantasy, I enjoyed reading about the adventure and characters. And a plus for the book is that it was a one off!
The Fiancé Dilemma was a bit of a let down, as one of my 2024 anticipated reads. I’ve loved all of the other Elena Armas books I’ve read; so now I’m wondering if I’m just tired of the fake relationship trope. I have read a few fake relationship romances this year, I probably just need to take a break. Now since I have loved her other books, and I realized that there was another book connected to the same world that I hadn’t read yet I immediately checked out The Long Game to compare and contrast. Lucked out because The Long Game was more fun for me to read; but it was tainted by its connection to The Fiancé Dilemma. Really wish I’d read The Long Game first, but what can you do?
AUDIOBOOK GOLD
Rich AF and Set Boundaries, Find Peace have both been on my library holds list for months…many months of delaying my checkout. At one point I started reading Set Boundaries, Find Peace – but I decided that reading via audiobook is a better experience for me when reading personal growth books. I like to hear the author imparting their wisdom; like I’m in the audience of a Ted Talk.
THE MOOD READS
I finished out the month with 3 mood reads. Once I read That Time I Got Drunk and Saved A Demon, I NEEDED to read the other books in the Mead Mishap series. I’m happy I read the whole series, but the first book was definitely my favorite in the series. I didn’t know what I was in for with this book series. You’ll see from my “shelf reader” below for this book, that I read a sample and immediately bought the book. Then after I got a little further into the book I quickly put the other two books in the series on hold. I finished these three books in 3 days, one after the other. Great experience. Planning to post the reviews in August.
Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
Alecia, Wallflower Bookshop Owner
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Enjoyed listening to these tips and tricks to setting boundaries within family and work relationships. Learning about all the ways I could be taking better care of myself is always a welcome experience.
August 2024 TBR List
Excited for a new month of reading, and a list of new publications, at that! Even more pivotal for me is that The Fallen Fruit was my first ARC I downloaded. So I’ve been waiting a while to get to this book. From the description it sounds similar to Kindred, so it’ll be my HEAVY read for the month.
I’ve had to move a couple books to a new TBR list again…’cause of my mood reads I slipped in during July. I’m happy with my choices, those Mead Mishap books were fun to read. They were a total surprise too, I merely wanted to read the sample chapters from the library and suddenly the sample chapters were done and I HAD to buy the e-book immediately.
I’m hoping that a few of these ARCs I’m reading in August will scratch the same itch as the Mishap Mead series. Hot Hex Boyfriend, This Will Be Fun and My Vampire Plus-One look fantastical and paranormal in nature. And Frequent Fliers and You’re the Problem, It’s You are romance books, so I should be golden with those. Unless if there are annoying third act breakups or miscommunication issues…then who knows how I’ll respond, but probably not well. I love starting a new month, so much possibility!
That Time I Got Drunk and Saved A Demon
Alecia, Wallflower Bookshop Owner
by Kimberly Lemming
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read a sample of the first 2 chapters of this book at 11pm at night and I was hooked. Immediately bought the e-book and proceeded to keke until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I then took a quick nap and went back to reading. High stakes fantasy that feels like low stakes when you’re having this much fun.
Business Updates
I decided to pull back on how often I was working on the Wallflower Bookshop marketing. In order to do that I continued to post book reviews on the blog, when I could, but stopped sending the reviews to the email list. So these monthly wrap ups are the only updates sent to the email list.
Sending only one email a month is still in testing mode. I’m going to continue doing this and compare the impressions and open rates. I don’t think the open rate was very different from June to July, but somehow traffic went up on the site.
The traffic difference could be due to a myriad of reasons: fixing the SEO, marketing the site through social, reviewing books that more people are interested in. At this point I’m not really sure what the draw is…but the “more interesting books” angle is where I’m leaning. 2 books in the last month have shown themselves to be very popular on this blog and Pinterest.
Nothing is set in stone with how I’m delegating work as a solopreneur. But as of now the Instagram and Pinterest accounts are more about book recommendations and getting feedback. The blog is for book reviews and this monthly shop diary.
Since I freed up my time, I started researching local businesses that I could partner with for pop-ups. I made a list of 50 businesses, and I’ve slowly been narrowing the list into 3 categories: pop-ups, vendor markets and event spaces. While I’ve been narrowing the list I did make business cards so that I will have something to hand out when I’m networking. Super excited to have another “official” element.
On the subject of networking, I signed up for a grant to attend the ABA’s Winter Institute in 2025.
gOALS FOR AUGUST 2024
- Celebrate National Black Business Month with our first Giveaway
- Complete first purchase of books with Ingram
- Connect with 10 businesses about pop-up events
- Create a monthly earnings goal: I’m still noodling on whether to measure by inventory numbers or monetary amount
What business updates would you like to hear about? What was your favorite book to read in July? Let me know in the comments.
