It’s the last week of the annual #AMonthofFaves blog event with Girlxoxo and Traveling with T. It’s been fun to look back and recap the year in books!

(Click here to see last year’s posts!)

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MON. | Dec. 23 – #AMonthofFaves Blog Posts This Year – Tell us how you blogged – most popular (and/or favorite) blog posts for the year or each month, did you try anything new on your blog this year, did you make blogging goals – how did you do? What are the essential programs, apps, plugins, websites you use? What’s your blogging routine, any blogs on blogging that you follow, blog tips you learned and used this year.

My Most Popular Posts

January

Top Ten Tuesday | Most Anticpated Reads Jan-June

February

Top Ten Tuesday | Favorite Book Couples

March

Top Ten Tuesday | Spring 2019 TBR

April

Top Ten Tuesday | What Makes me Choose A Book

May

Calendar of Events

June

Interview with Alexa Kingaard

July

Top Ten Tuesday- Underrated Books I Loved

August

Calendar of Events

September

Goodreads Games

October

My Year In Nonfiction

November

Nonfiction November – Book Pairings

December

Bring on the Challenges – Part I

My Blogging Year In Review

I’m still trying to find a balance that works for me. There’s no question that regular posting increases the page views. So does blog-hopping and participating in a weekly meme such as Top Ten Tuesday or a blog event like Nonfiction November.

(I’ll post my year end stats in my wrap up post.)

Here’s the update on how I did with the goals I posted last December.

Successes

The focus of Orange County Readers is in the name. I want to differentiate my book blog and make it a real resource for readers and authors that live and work in Southern California. AND of course provide thoughtful reviews and promote upcoming books and support authors!

The Calendar of Events page is the only resource I’ve found that aggregates ALL the local bookish events into one place. From Los Angeles to San Diego, there are more author events and book signings added every week. I am most proud of this page, especially since I streamlined it and switched from a simple monthly listing to a robust Google calendar!

The Sunday Sessions is my affectionately named series of local author interviews. There are SO many talented authors here in Southern California and I’d like to grow this series even more in 2020.

Everyone wants to win free books so I shouldn’t be surprised that The Goodread Games was such a popular series! On Mondays I would choose a handful of giveaways that ended that week and created a post with descriptions and links. I’ll definitely be continuing this series next year.

The best advice I was given:

Know your Audience. Write posts that you would want to read. Once I realized that most of my readers were other book bloggers (and not just random people that stumbled across my page) I thought more about my audience and what would appeal to them. For instance non-book people probably could care less about tropes, maybe they don’t even know what that word means! But it’s a buzzword in this community and I wanted to know more. So I wrote Ten Things About Tropes I Didn’t Know.

I’d love to know… What’s the best advice you would offer to a newbie book blogger? What’s a blogging success you’re proud of?

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link. Thank you for supporting this blog and the books I recommend! I may have received a book for free in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

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