Blog, Facebook, and Reading Update

The last two weeks of the fall semester exhausted me.  It took me the first six days of winter break to recover to where I no longer feel tired and out of sorts.  

I listed a bunch of books on Etsy, including the rest of my Trixie Belden Goldencraft hardcover books. 

I also listed quite a few Nancy Drew Digest books plus some other stuff.  I may list some more books, but right now I may take a break.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

Jennifer's Series Books on Etsy

For the last several days, I've been working on this blog.  I first changed the template.  I went with an even simpler version this time.  For ease of reading, it's best to keep the layout simple with black print on a white background.

I then decided to change the description that shows below the title of the blog.  This is what I had:

This is where we discuss your favorite vintage series books from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Trixie Belden and the Three Investigators to all other similar vintage series books.

This blog covers other types of books as well, so I felt like I needed to change the statement.

With some thought, I came up with this:

A blog for vintage series books like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys... featuring modern middle-grade fantasy... young adult dystopian novels... vintage teen books... vintage book collecting, buying, and selling topics... and more.

This is much better.  I acknowledge the other types of books that I enjoy reading and reviewing.  I also like writing about buying and selling topics, and so mentioning those topics is important as well.

I've always been bothered that blogs display posts in reverse order within each tag.  It makes it hard for people to read my reviews and other posts.  I have some good stuff in this blog, and I have even forgotten exactly what I have.  I stumbled across one of those posts the other day and was surprised to see it.  If I don't even know what I have, then certainly nobody else does.

I use tags (or labels as Blogger calls them) for all of the topics covered in this blog.  I have tried to use the best tag for each post, and sometimes I have used more than one tag so that the post is listed wherever it fits.  Still, some tags, like the reviews, have too many posts listed under them.  I fear that many readers never see the small link at the bottom to older posts under that tag.  It's also annoying to have to click on a link to make it back to the early reviews in the sequence.

Blogger has an option to create "pages" for the blog.  Back in 2016, I created a page listing all of my Nancy Drew reviews in order from #1 to #56.  I then never published it or linked to it.  At that time, I didn't see a way that I could make the page prominent enough for anyone to know about it.  I did nothing with it and abandoned my idea of making the reviews easier to find.  I felt like it was too much work for too little of a reward.

I've been thinking more about this during the last couple months.  I created a page for my Keeper of the Lost Cities (KotLC) posts.  I have linked to that page in most of my KotLC posts.  I want whoever is reading my KotLC posts to know that I'm not insane and that I have good reason for believing what I do about certain yet-to-be-revealed secrets in the series.  Basically, I think I have it figured out, but most readers have missed all the clues.  So, the page with all of my posts is like my guide to what I have figured out.

So anyway, I got to thinking about the pages function of the blog again.  When I changed the template, I looked at the widgets that can be added to the sidebar.  I discovered that one now exists for the pages.  Oh!  I then realized that it would be worthwhile to create pages for my reviews, since I had a way of making them prominent in the blog.

I got started.  The first goal was to get pages for all of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys reviews since I have such a large number of reviews for both series.  I then created pages that list my middle-grade fantasy, young adult, and vintage teen book reviews to make them easier for readers to find.  After that, I created pages for some of the vintage series that are the most popular so that readers can get to those reviews easier.

I created the widget and got the pages added to the main page of the blog on the right just underneath my avatar.  I then had to decide what to call the widget.  The default was "Pages."  I first tried "Review Pages," but I didn't like it.  I went with a few other iterations and then landed on "Selected Content."  I changed the widget title for the tags from "Labels" to "All Content."  I was feeling rather pleased, but I felt that "Selected Content" was a little off.  I hit upon "Featured Content," which is a label seen often online.  Perfect!

Always click on images in order to view at a higher resolution.

The pages listed under "Featured Content" are the ones that I created, and it was a lot of work!  I had to type or paste all of the blog article titles into the pages, and then I had to apply the link to each article title.  This was done over the course of several days.

I will find it very useful, since I have always found it annoying to try to look at my reviews.  I have a goal to post content to my Facebook page and group regularly, and I am using my old reviews for content.  For instance, yesterday I looked at my Nancy Drew #1-56 page and clicked on the post, Nancy Drew #26 and the Transition Books.  I decided that the second half of the post would work well as a post on my Facebook page.  I captured that text and edited it slightly to read better as stand-alone content in a post.  I then created an image to go with it using my dust jacket scans of Nancy Drew #23 through #26.

Having handy pages with my reviews listed in sequence will be of much use to me.  I hope others find the review pages beneficial as well.

I am spread pretty thin.  I have a number of interests.  I have two Facebook pages and my blog to maintain.  I am inconsistent in how often I post, but I do try to post regularly.

Back a couple years ago, I created a Bee Gees Facebook page.  I then abandoned it for around a year until I I realized that I had over 100 followers who were following it even though almost nothing was there.  I decided to start posting regularly.  Why not?  These people were following nothing, so I realized that the page would gain fast if I fed it content.  For someone like me, the reach of the page is becoming significant and astounds me.

Compare to the reach of my Jennifer's Series Books page.

Series books are popular, but they are nothing in comparison to the popularity of famous legacy music groups.  I am learning a lot about Facebook spam and how to deal with it.  It's an interesting experience.  

The approach I take with the Bee Gees page has changed my approach to the Jennifer's Series Books page.  I still have my blog posts publishing to it, but I now do these periodic posts like the Nancy Drew post from yesterday.  Most often, I will just pick a scan of a book to feature.  People love looking at images.  I will most often will use Nancy Drew, just because it is the most popular series.  

I wrote recently about my intent to read through the Seniors series.  It was a good idea, but the last two weeks of the fall semester were so hard on me that it derailed my reading.  I'm once again not reading at all.  I am continuing to obsess about the KotLC series.  I'm fighting the urge to read through the books for the fourth time, and I'm very close to caving in.

I continue to be frustrated over the comments of KotLC fans.  I read some critical comments the other day saying that Shannon Messenger has just been making it up as she goes and that she has no idea where the story is going.  No, I think she does.  I'm probably going to start through the books again to find more of the foreshadowing.

So, that's what is going on right now.