Today’s Topic:
We want to hear all about your FUTURE treasures. We’ve been visiting each other and getting to know each other better…now is your chance to share what you enjoyed about BBAW and also what your blogging goals are for the next year!
Alex:
What I enjoyed most about BBAW this year was getting to interact more with other book bloggers around the world. Given our somewhat niche category (Hawaii books, authors, publishers), we don’t often get to involve ourselves in the hottest book discussions going on, nor do we see many of the books we read being reviewed or written about by our peers. When it does happen, we’re ecstatic! I’d love for us to get more involved with the book blog community in the coming year—whether through reading more books outside of our focus, or drawing in more readers to Hawaii books, that will definitely be one of our mission goals.
As for the site itself, I have a lot of goals I’d love to see accomplished. At some point I’d love to re-do the entire site. I like where we are now, especially compared to last year, but I still feel it could be a LOT more intuitive and user-friendly. So, look out for a possible redesign of the site in the next few months.
I also want to create a better resource for Hawaii books, for both residents and visitors alike. I’m currently re-doing the Book List to be much more sortable (complete with categories, publish date and more). We’ll also include more of our own specific book lists as part of that page so if you feel like learning about one topic or another you’ll more easily find our reviews of those books. All in all I have high hopes for Hawaii Book Blog and hope I have the time, patience, and knowledge to carry out all the lofty visions I have for this project.
Misty:
Just as Alex mentioned, I enjoyed meeting new bloggers, but also participating in some of the judging was interesting, too. I’m excited to have made these connections because now it’ll be even more fun to do swaps and memes throughout the year… (like the Secret Blogger Gift Swap, etc). This next year I’d really like to interact regularly with comments and try to read from more genres. (Reading MORE is always a goal)
As far as HBB goes there is never a shortage of things Alex and I want to do. Hopefully in this next year we can host a meme or reading challenge of our own and have all our new book blogging friends participate. Lots of technical changes coming to the site in the coming months, but mostly I hope to just continue doing what we do, but better. I’d like to see more reader submissions for reviews, go to more literary events, and do more “creative writing-ish” things on the site. There’s so much to do, and we truly enjoy doing it. As long as I have Alex, a library card and a working keyboard, HBB will happily continue.
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~Mahalo to all the Hawaii Book Blog readers and supporters! Even though we didn’t win the Cultural Book Blog award we’re so happy to have gotten as far as we did. HBB is still growing and we can only keep going up and improving from here. As always, feel free to tell us what works and doesn’t, what you’d like to see more of or less of, and any suggestions you might have.
