2016 Blog Goals & Giveaway!

Well 2015 is officially behind us and 2016 is well on its way! I can’t believe how much has happened in the last year! When I am trying to gather things for this post it was quite shocking, to me, all that we accomplished! In this post we will share with you all some blog stats from 2015, plus 2016 blog goals, and a giveaway!

One of the biggest things Shannon & I did in 2015 was that we invited in guest reviewers and I am happy to say that Sara Meadows has each become an integral part of our blog and I am thrilled to have had Sara with us for the entire 2015 year and now we will be bringing Teresa Gonzalez, on as full member of our blog for 2016! Congrats ladies! They have each included their blog goals for this year below!

We also started to become way more regular with our weekly features posts of original content, like Cover Crush, New Release Tuesday, and Books On Our Radar! This year, the blog hopes to get at least 1 more weekly meme into regualr rotation!

We also created and participated in blogging challenges in 2015! We created the Series Sweep challenge and we have grand hopes for a bigger participation for 2016! On the heels of that challenge just completing, we hope to possibly implement this challenge more than once a year because I know that I always need to finish series that I started!

2015 Blog Statistics:

• Most Visited Post of 2015 – Character Crush – Silas Moore – All Broke Down by Cora Carmack
• Our Busiest Day on the blog was October 28th with 660 views. The post that day was New Release Review & Giveaway: Rogue by Karen Lynch. No surprise there! What an amazing finale to an amazing series!
• In 2015 we created 368 posts; over 100 more than 2014! WTG!
• We re-vitalized our Instagram account and already have 205 posts for the year and we appreciate all of our 850 followers! Thank you all for the likes, comments and continued support.

Kelly’s 2016 Goals:

Well to start, I accomplished my Goodreads reading challenge for 2015! I read 94 books, and my challenge was set at 85! It was my largest challenge goal yet, and I think I did good! 

So this year, I am setting my goal at 95 books! I started taking public transit to work and I have an hour commute so there is a lot of extra reading time which I attribute to beating my 2015 goal by almost 10! So it is reasonable that in 2016 I should be able to read well over 100 books! That is my real goal…but don’t tell Goodreads! I will also be keeping a reading journal along with goodreads to keep track of my reading. One of goodreads biggest faults is that I cannot mark a book as read if I already read it & each year I re-read at least 5 books!

I may have succeeded in my reading goal, but I definitely failed at writing more reviews. Oh man, I am a terrible blogger! I will be putting together reviews that I owe from this past year, and I will get them written, they may not be lengthy but they will be reviewed, dammit! So I vow for 2016, to review all the ARCs I read in 2015 as well as all the ARCs I read in 2016! I should not be allowed a new ARC without reviewing my old ones! Bad, bad blogger! So another blog goal this year is to bring our NetGalley feedback percentage up to 80%!

Last year we shared some Reading Challenges other groups have made and this year I want to check out PopSugar 2016, Modern Mrs. Darcy & Book Riot’s Read Harder challenges! I definitely will be using these challenges when I need help to choose what to read next! Sometimes stepping out of my little book world into something totally different really helps boost my reading blues!

My next goal is to try and stop buying books without reading them! Which goes hand-in-hand with also reading the books I already own. This is a major goal of mine for 2016 and a semi-failed goal of 2015. It also extrapolates into reading more books that I want to read and not reading tons of review books because I am asked.

I will also need to do some major book organizing. I am still without a real bookshelf and I cannot wait until I get a weekend to do lots of book organizing and taking lots of crazy bookshelf pics for Instagram!

Last year, I thought I would clean up my goodreads TBR list, but I only added to it, so this year I just want to organize the books I do shelve, with more descriptive tags and shelves to help me know what books I loved when the end of year compilations come up!

Lastly, I want to make some structural changes to the blog format. I have some things on my to-do list that include updating the features tab to ones that are active, creating a master review page listing (which seems like way too much work), and just keeping it fresh!

Shannon’s 2016 Goals:

2014 was a tough year for me so in 2015 I completely focused on changing myself physically. I committed to weight loss and running and spent the entire year working towards that goal. While my weight loss goal of losing 60 pounds and running a half marathon was met (mentally high-fives self) my reading goals sadly took a back seat. It was the first time in 4 years I did not meet my Goodreads challenge (hangs head in shame). I set the bar at 50 books and only read 42. While I am disappointed I did not meet my reading goal when I look at it as a whole I was reading roughly 3-4 books a month, which to me is nothing to frown about.

One of my main goals last year was to commit to doing weekly posts and I stuck to that consistently (Books on our Radar, New Release Tuesday and Cover Crush). I even instituted a new meme for Book Rewind where we review older books. I went to two major book events on opposite coasts (Apollycon and YallWest) and a book signing for Leigh Bardugo, Amie Kaufmann and Jay Kristoff.

I made a vow last year to expand my horizons and read new authors, I am proud to say out of 42 books 16 were new authors. Not too shabby.

Now on to this year’s goals.

1. Review more books! I reviewed a pitiful amount of books last year but we are so lucky that we brought on two new amazingly talented reviewers! I hope to review 2 books a month moving forward.

2. Finish up the books I laid out in series sweep. If it’s one thing I hate it’s unfinished series. So I plan on attacking the series I didn’t finish in series sweep plus a few more that didn’t make the cut.

3. Finish reading some of the older books on my Goodreads shelf/home book shelf. These are the books that have been sitting around for over 2 or more years and desperately need some love.

4. Attend more bookish events (I’m looking at you YallWest 2016 😉 )

5. Finally, just have more fun with reading. This blog was started out of a love for books and I just want to get back to being a super fan again. I am also giving myself permission to stop reading a book if I don’t like it. Life is too short to read a book you don’t like if it doesn’t work I am going to be ok with a DNF and move on.

Sara’s 2016 Goals:

Here are my 2016 Blog Goals. I might be in over my head…

1. I want to read at least 250 books. I think this is more than feasible, since I read about 150 this year. But even if I don’t reach the goal, I won’t be sad, because the main point of the goal is to spend as much free time as I can with a book in my hands; if I can do that, then I’ve had a pretty damn good year.

2. I barely used Goodreads this past year, mostly because of my annoyance at the whole Amazon/Facebook/Goodreads tracking thing; thus my goal for 2016 is to make a handwritten list of every book I read. Yes, handwritten.

3. I am going to review every.single.book that I read, even if it’s just with one line about why I liked the book.

4. I am going to have my reviews done on time so Kelly doesn’t have to nag me, and I’m going to write down when my reviews are actually due so that I don’t have to pester Kelly a million times. Speaking of which, umm, Kelly? I have a few reviews coming up and I forget when they are due…

5. I’m going to read more books that I already own, preferably in paperback form.

6. I’d like to try to review more critically and come up with some new adjectives and phrases to describe why I liked or didn’t like a book.

Teresa’s 2016 Goals:

I am so excited to be included with these amazing ladies in BookCrushin this year. It has truly been an amazing new addition to my life, and these women are just such a blessing to me. *tear*

For 2016, I really would like to bring things ‘back home’ for me personally when it comes to reading. Now that this isn’t quite so new to me, I can start to have a little fun!

Here are my goals for this new year:

1. I would like to read 85 books this year. More would be great, but I would like to work on my consistency instead of reading seven books in one week, then not reading for a week. So we will see how that one goes.

2. I have actually read all of the physical copy books that I currently own, but I would like to add at least ten signed physical books to my shelves this year.

3. I would like to review more books and be on the blog more this year, so I gotta get my booty in gear reviewing! LOL… I am working on it!

4. I need to finish the three series of books that I have on my Kindle, I don’t know why I abandoned them…oh…squirrel! 🙂

5 .I will get better about my Goodreads page, I know Kelly will hold me to this one!

6. Lastly, and this has nothing to do with reading, I am going to push myself and my cooking this year. I love cooking and baking, but this year I have gotten a little lackadaisical in what I am serving my family. So, I am vowing this year to revamp our menu.

I think that is all for me for this year, thank you!

Happy reading!

Giveaway:

Just leave us a meaningful comment about your reading goals or on our blog goals! 1 Winner will get to choose a signed paperback from our giveaway pile! Here is a photo of the current pile, but there are a few other giveaways going on so not all books may be available when this contest closes on Jan. 25th, 2016 at midnight est. Open internationally.

 

Happy Reading in 2016!