27 February 2017

Sprucing up the old blog

There are changes afoot! I've been adjusting a few things with this blog, hoping to make it more accessible and make the content more compelling. Here are a few of the adjustments:

--I changed "girl" to "gal" in the blog name. I was afraid that "Average Girl Reads" would mislead readers into thinking they would find a lot of young adult book reviews here. Besides, I can still be a gal at 50, right?

--I signed up as an affiliate for Amazon and Book Depository. You may have already seen the links in some of my recent reviews. I know that book lovers in this modern age want to be able to click through and purchase a book if a review strikes their fancy, so I wanted to make it convenient for my readers. The extra affiliate pennies I earn will also help keep my coffee cup filled, which will enable me to read more books. See, it's a cycle.

--Since I know what it is like to not have an unlimited budget for books, I will include the Overdrive link for a book if it is available. It is my understanding that this is the e-book service used by a large number of public libraries, including my own. If your library uses a different service, let me know and I can try to add those links, as well.

--When Google Reader shut down years ago, I never replaced it with another RSS reader. Instead, I started following the Facebook and Twitter feeds of blogs that I really wanted to keep up with. So, in that vein, I started a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account for this blog. In those feeds, you will get notifications of when I post new reviews to the blog, of course, as well as additional random bookish thoughts I may have throughout the day.

--Lastly, I signed up with NetGalley and First to Read in an attempt to get advanced reader copies (ARCs) of upcoming releases. When I started this blog, it was partly to show love to public libraries and the backlist books. I am still all about that, but now I think it might be fun to add reviews of a few new books to spice things up. There seems to be a lot of competition for these digital galleys so I may not get very many, but I'm giving it a go.

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