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Back in June of 2011, there was an onslaught of posts on jealousy within the writing world and book blogging world. (I will put links to a few of these at the end of this post.) I enjoyed reading them because I related to most of what everyone said. I’ve dealt with my own feelings of jealousy since I started blogging in June of 2010, and the posts inspired me to share a little bit about how I felt when I first started blogging.
(Please note this is not a response to the other posts. It’s merely inspired by them.)
Beginnings, With A Side Of Jealousy
It was June 2010 when I started working on the design, layout, and content for The Well-Read Wife. I was meticulous from the start. And by meticulous, I mean I hired a blog consultant, the wonderful Megan Jordan, who explained the ins and outs of search engine optimization, social media, and the importance of quality content. I will be forever grateful to her because I get a large amount of traffic via Google and other search engines which I would have never gotten without her help. I was a bastion of preparedness ready to take on the Internet (where I was sure to be queen – so I thought). What I didn’t see coming was the inner “fame monster” that would begin to fester and grow as my blog did.
Despite all of my advance preparations and advantages, shortly after The Well-Read Wife launched I began to have feelings of jealousy towards the other more established book bloggers out there. This is only natural, right? But, I couldn’t help myself. Once I became active on Twitter, it was like there was this whole society of book bloggers that I was not a part of yet and I really wanted to know the secret handshake to become a member. Although most everyone was really nice and if not nice, then tolerant of my newbie questions, I still felt envy.
I would see a tweet where someone was writing about how they just read a book that wasn’t coming out until January or February of 2011 (remember this was back in June 2010) and I would wonder, How is it possible to have read a book that’s coming out almost a year from now? I was clueless. I eventually stumbled upon NetGalley.com on my own through a Google search that probably read something like: So, how the f*$% do I get a book that comes out in 2011?
Don't Hate the Player
Also, so many bloggers reached out and helped me. They helped me discover things such as Galley Grab and shared publicity contacts that would have taken me a long time to figure out on my own. Basically, this is an awesome group of people. Yet, I still felt jealous. But was I really jealous of the other book bloggers or was I jealous of their insider knowledge of the industry? Perhaps a little of both.
I started blogging right after BEA (BookExpo America) last year. So, there was much excitement in the book blogging world going on that I wasn’t a part of. And to top it all off, I had no idea what the heck BEA was! So imagine my confusion when post after post described amazing book hauls of ARCs -- and by the way, what is this ARC that people speak of? -- that I had no hopes of getting my hands on anytime soon.
Then there’s the stats. Was I jealous over stats? Kind of. I mean I really wanted to have awesome stats right away, but at the same time I knew that if I kept chugging away I would eventually see improvement. It’s a lot of work though. *whines* It’s like hard y’all! (please no "that’s what she saids" in the comments.) Having great stats is a lot more than just SEO, it’s relative to content. Sometimes the content just wasn’t there on my blog, and then I would look at a blog with an awesome post or feature and think Why didn’t I come up with that?
How Did I Deal With The Jealousy I Felt?
Most of my jealousy issues were related to insider information that I didn’t have. So one day I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself and ask
