Are you the go-to person for book recommendations within your friend group or family? Then, starting a book review blog may be the perfect opportunity to share your favorite books with a growing audience. Along with exploring your passion for reading even deeper, there are also exciting opportunities to monetize your blog–meaning you could get paid to read new books! THAT’S RIGHT!
Building a great book blog gives you the unique chance to connect with readers like yourself who love the same genres and authors as you. Just think: instead of putting your book back on the shelf after turning the last page, you get to prolong your experience with the story by writing an in-depth book review and recommendation for your audience–whether you enjoyed the book or not.
Another great benefit of starting a book blog is that you can do it anonymously. This is great for those who love to hide behind the cover of a book and fall into a world of their own between the pages. There is no need to put your face or voice out in front of thousands (or hopefully millions after following our blogging advice) of people. Embrace the freedom of critiquing your latest read with a mask of anonymity. Make sure to read our blog post about how to start an anonymous blog for more tips.
To help you take a leap of faith, we’ve written an in-depth step-by-step guide to starting a book blog!
Here’s Exactly How To Start A Book Blog
Step 1: Choose a book niche.
The first step to starting your book blog is to choose a niche or target audience. This is important because it helps you focus your content and attract a specific group of readers who share your passion. Consider a specific book you love or the type of books you enjoy reading. Do you lean towards fantasy epics, beach read romances, horror, biographies, or literary fiction? Remember, choose a genre you’re truly passionate about–this is what you’ll be writing and speaking about for years to come!
Once you choose your niche or the genre your book blog is focused on, book lovers who have a passion or interest for those types of books will soon become your loyal audience and fans.
Step 2: Choose a blogging platform.
Okay, you’ve got your book blog niche narrowed down; now it’s time to decide where you will build your blog. We recommend using either WordPress or Squarespace (our favorite blogging platform is WordPress!) to build your book blog. They are affordable and easy-to-use website-building platforms that every new blogger should consider. When choosing a platform, consider factors like ease of use, cost, and the features they offer for bloggers.
Both of these platforms are easy to set up and offer great SEO (search engine optimization) tools so that search engines like Google will recognize your book review blog posts and promote them in the SERPs (search engine result pages), leading to more traffic to your blog.
Step 3: Buy a domain name.
The next step to starting a book blog is to register a domain name. A domain is the name and address of your blog website. If you choose WordPress or Squarespace, you can purchase a custom domain directly on the platform. Or you can use third-party sites, such as GoDaddy or NameCheap.
Choose a domain name that is related to your book blog. This allows you to create a solid brand identity for your blog and social media platforms. When a reader sees your domain and blog name, they have an idea of the type of content to expect on your website.
Step 4: Select a blogging template.
Now comes the fun part–choosing a blogging template! Blogging platforms offer hundreds of website templates to help you build your blog’s aesthetic with just a few clicks of a button. Scroll through the different templates and choose one that speaks to you and the types of books you’re reviewing. Remember, you can always change the color themes and fonts later on.
You’ll also want to use this SEO web design guide to ensure your website is optimized for search engine results and get more visitors to your blog.
Step 5: Create a brand identity.
We mentioned that you can change the colors and fonts of your blog template, but before trying different combinations, think about your brand identity. Choose a color theme that relates to your content. (Think pink for romance books and black or gray for horror books.) This process also includes designing a logo for your book blog. Once you’ve set up your brand identity, you can customize your book blog to your liking.
Creating a brand identity helps you stand out from the sea of other book bloggers, allowing your audience to pick your content out from the crowd.
Step 6: Create a content calendar.
Now comes the moment you’ve been waiting for–coming up with book blog post ideas! Creating a content calendar to plan out your ideas and schedule when you write blog posts will help you stay on track to create content consistently, which is key for building a successful book blog. Try to plan a month’s worth of blog posts to start. As you find your blogging voice and content style, it will become easier over time.
If you’re stuck about what to write about, check out what other book bloggers are writing about or use resources like our summer blog post ideas for inspiration to overcome writer’s block and start your creative engine. Or simply look through your library and see which books are on your TBR list and plan to write reviews for blog posts!
Step 7: Start posting optimized blog posts.
It’s time to put your blogging skills to the test. Before launching your book blog, we recommend writing 15 blog posts that are ready for upload. This gives you bulk content to consistently upload to your blog while you create even more content, so you’ll never fall behind. Remember to follow our SEO blog post guide to ensure you’re creating SEO-optimized blog posts to attract more viewers and traffic.
Step 8: Promote your book blog on social media.
While SEO is fantastic and can boost your blog’s traffic immensely, there are other ways you can gain more traffic, such as promoting it on a social media platform. You’ve probably scrolled through the BookTok side of TikTok and have seen fellow book bloggers share their book recommendations and share a link to their blogs in their bios. Creating Instagram or GoodReads accounts are also great ways to promote it. Now, it’s your turn to make an appearance on BookTok and tell the world about your new book blog!
Step 9: Monetize your blog.
While your initial motivation for starting a book blog may have been to share your passion for reading and maybe even hold yourself accountable to read more, there are great monetization opportunities for bloggers out there. Consider some of the following monetization strategies to earn some extra money or even turn your book blog into a full-on blogging business!
- Display Ads – You can rent out your blogging real estate and display ads on your website and earn commission for views or clicks from programs like SHE Media or Mediavine.
- Affiliate Marketing – Earn a commission through affiliate platforms when a reader purchases a product, such as a reading light or book on Amazon, using your affiliate link.
- Digital Products – Create digital or printable products that relate to books and reading for your readers to purchase.
- Brand Collaborations – Collaborate with brands to promote their products or services on your blog, such as a new book release.
- Unreleased Book Review – Partner with authors promoting a new book release to get a sneak peek read and review it for your audience.
Step 10: Track your analytics.
As your book blog begins to grow and you gain more readers, you’ll want to track Google Analytics and understand how your blog is performing. Knowing where your readers are finding your blog, top performing blog posts, and countries your audience is located will help you make informed decisions about next steps to grow your blog even bigger. Check out our guide about how to connect Google Analytics to Squarespace to get started
What is a Book Blog Exactly?
A book blog is a website embellished with content about book reviewing, upcoming authors, literary news, and anything surrounding books. There is a large book blog community full of book lovers who all share a passion for reading, diving into stories (both fiction and non-fiction), sharing their thoughts about the latest books they’ve read, and recommending their favorite books. These book blogs can focus on a genre, author, series, or a general list of books the blogger enjoys, whether that be a mix of genres or not.
Blogs About Books
Below are some successful book blogs that you can take inspiration from for when you start your own.
Hasty Book List
What first started as a hashtag soon grew into a full blown book blog, Hasty Book List. Managed by former fashion history professor, Ashley, this book blog has everything from book recommendations to helpful tips for aspiring authors. Ashley writes SEO-optimized posts for readers on how to brand themselves, publish their first book, and beyond. As far as books go, she covers popular genres such as young adult fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, mystery, memoir, and more.
We love how she also uses highly searched keywords for bookstores in certain areas, such as Chicago, to help boost her SEO, bring more traffic to her blog, and gain book-loving newsletter subscribers!
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
Romance is a genre you are either ecstatic about or can’t stand. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is the book blog that recommends romance books for BOTH of these camps. Their SEO superpower is harnessing this niche in romance fiction and we’ve loved watching them create a community of like-minded readers who enjoy romance novels that simply rock their world!
The bloggers at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books excell with their SEO techniques as they write about popular romance novels and create serial blog posts, such as books on sale and book recommendations. All while also incorporating plenty of high-quality outsourcing links to bookseller sites, such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble to build authority.
Maryse’s Book Blog
Not sure what to read next? Maryse has you covered with hundreds ( and we mean HUNDEREDS ) of book reviews and recommendations published on her popular book blog! From listicles that contain her top 10 favorite books for each year to in-depth reviews of books spanning a variety of genres, readers fill up their TBR lists in no time after scrolling through the engaging and SEO-optimized blog posts on Maryse’s Book Blog.
As far as SEO goes, we love the aesthetic of this blog, how organized the verticals are, and how consistent the posting is. After all, consistency is key in search engine optimization. We also love the inclusion of affiliate links and the call to action to an email newsletter–both are great ways for bloggers like you to make real money blogging!
Book Riot
Book Riot is a collection of various writers sharing roundups of the best books in a genre that are either newly released or great reads for a specific season or occasion. Plus, they share tons of blog posts covering topics like ‘How Much Time Americans Spend Reading Each Day’ and ‘The Best Credit Cards for Book Buying’. How cool? This is a great blog to take inspiration from thanks to their variety of content and formats.
We love the SEO-optimized content on Book Riot and we can tell they put the time in to research high-quality keyphrases. Most importantly–we like that Book Riot’s content is HIGH-QUALITY. Both readers AND search engines love high-quality content!
The Artsy Reader Girl
Jana is the blogger behind The Artsy Reader Girl, reviewing books of all genres and writing book roundups for specific occasions. She also has a series “Top Ten Tuesday” where she publishes weekly listicles for the top books for a specific topic and keeps her readers coming back for more and more.
Other than listiscles, which are GREAT for SEO, we like Jana’s consistency. We also LOVE to see how Jana’s socials are easy to access right from her blog. Now THAT is good on-page SEO!
Share your passion for books with the world when you start a book blog!
If your bookshelf is overflowing with your favorite books and TBR books and you love giving reading recommendations, then it may be your sign to start a book blog! Not only will you have a chance to join a thriving community of book lovers and let your voice be heard, but you could monetize your blog to earn extra income.
All of this can be possible with the help of InfluencerSEO and our SEO services to ensure your website and blog content are fully optimized to be recognized by popular search engines and ready to welcome new readers. Contact us to learn more about how we can help harness your blogging talents today!
Jordan Becerra, founder and Lead SEO Strategist at InfluencerSEO, has spent almost 15 years in the creator internet space, the last nine building InfluencerSEO into the go-to SEO partner for content creators, with 500+ creators served from pre-launch to massive publication. She learned creator monetization and community building strategy from the inside working for Lauryn Bosstick of The Skinny Confidential prior to founding InfluencerSEO, so she understands both halves of the game: how search actually works AND how creators actually build a strong community online and make money. Her job now is to stay ahead of where search engine optimization is going, especially as AI rewrites the rules, and to make sure the creators she works with get there first.
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