Happy First Blogiversary To Bookishness and Tea! (Giveaway, Thank You’s, Accomplishments…)

Happy 1st blogiversary to me!

(Blogiversary? Blogversary? Blogoversary? I’ve seen it spelled so many ways. It’s BLOGGING ANNIVERSARY, so I’m choosing to spell it like this.)

Exactly one year ago today, I published my first post. *cue screams of excitement* (You can check it out here… I don’t know WHY I’m linking you to this, it’s kind of embarrassing. At least it shows this blog has improved!) And I can’t believe how my blog has grown, how I’ve grown, and what’s happened in that time. I also can’t believe that it’s already been a year- WHAT? I love blogging so so much, and honestly, it’s one of the best choices I’ve made.

Yes, I started school again last month, and does that mean I’m posting less? Yes, it does. I’ll post whenever I can (which is at LEAST once a week), so don’t worry: this blog will still be very active. I love it too much to just stop now.

I’m going to start the post off with thank you’s- I have a lot of people to thank.

Thank You’s:

Of course I have to start it off with Erika. Thank you for being the best friend I could ask for. I can’t WAIT until we meet. That will be one of the best days of my life. I’m so grateful for you and your friendship, and I love you so much.

Alex, my blogiversary buddy! You are my go-to for writing, blogging, chatting, ANYTHING. I’m so happy I met you at BEA, and I love love love talking to you. You’re doing incredible things. I can’t wait to see you again (only seven more months!), when we have more time to spend together. I love you so so much.

Lillie, Gee, Deanna– I’ve just started getting to know you in our group chat (+ Alex), but I LOVE talking to you guys! You’re funny and fabulous and gorgeous and it makes me happy just chatting with you.

Aneeqah– Thank you for always being there for me to talk to! I love chatting with you about ANYTHING: books, travel, whatever. You are incredible.

Hannah– You are my fashion QUEEN. Oh, and I also love talking with you. I can’t wait until your book gets published and everyone can see how brilliant your writing is.

Kaitlin– My Hamilton buddy! I’m so happy that I’ve met you in person TWICE, and hopefully many more to come. You are so fun to talk to, and I adore you and your personality.

Claire– You were one of my first blogging friends (and the first blogger I facetimed and then met in person)! You’ve come so far in your one year of blogging as well, and happy (one day late) blogiversary.

Nova, Xan, Jess, Rachel, Claudia, Paige, Rebecca, Cait, Sierra, Andrew, Taryn, Brittany, Aentee, Aila, Mish, Tamara, Jill, Claire, Alexandra, Tehlor…

And so, SO many more. If I forgot you, I AM SO SO SORRY. I’m thankful to ANYONE who I’ve talked to on Twitter. Chatting with fellow book lovers and friends makes me so unbelievably happy.

Thank you to all the authors who I’ve chatted with on Twitter. Talking to you makes my day.

Everyone that I listed above has been so, so kind and amazing in welcoming me to this community, and I’m forever grateful for you. (I just couldn’t list EVERYTHING every single person has done for me. That list would go on forever.)

Experiences and Accomplishments:

I attended BEA in Chicago!

This was my first ever book convention, and it was honestly one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I met fellow bloggers and book lovers, I met authors I loved, and I received advanced copies of upcoming books.

I went to book events in San Francisco

I met authors like Susan Dennard, Alexandra Bracken, Marie Lu… I found out about these events BECAUSE I started blogging.

I was the street team leader for Stalking Jack the Ripper

I read Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco back in May, and adored it… So I created a street team (a group of readers that promotes the book) for it! It was amazing, and Kerri is the absolute sweetest.

I was featured in the acknowledgements FOR Stalking Jack the Ripper

Because I created that team, Kerri included me and the rest of the team (called the Knights of Whitechapel) in the thank-yous of her book. I am STILL in shock. This was one of my blogging dreams!

I started receiving ARCs for review

While NOW this isn’t such a big deal for me, back when I started blogging, all I saw was ARCs ARCs ARCs. And receiving my first ARC from a publisher (it was Burning Glass, if you’re curious) was incredible, and then starting to get ARCs on a more regular basis? So great. It’s still so fun to open mail and see books instead of other (boring) things.

And, since this is kind of related to accomplishments…

Stats:

I’m really, really proud of how far this blog has come since I started one year ago, and although stats aren’t the most important thing, I’m still happy with them so I wanted to include them here.

As of right now, I have:

519 WordPress followers

132 Bloglovin’ followers

1,995 Twitter followers

9,034 Instagram followers

18, 617 total pageviews

8,074 total visitors

Maybe those are absolutely nothing compared to what your stats are like, and you’ve been blogging for a shorter amount of time. I’m sorry, but I don’t really care. These are wonderful for ME to look at and see how they’ve grown, and that’s all that matters.

I’m so happy I started blogging because of so many reasons, and if I listed them out this post would never end.

Goals for my second year of blogging:

• Switch to self-hosted WordPress
• Use an original theme
• Post consistently
• Write more creative posts
• Make more blogging friends
• Possibly go to YallWest
• Read more diversely and write more reviews for those books
• Update Goodreads more often
• Talk about my writing projects

And most likely more as the year goes along! I love setting goals for myself, no matter how hard they look now.

Giveaway:

This couldn’t be my first blogiversary without a giveaway… Right? So, to add to the celebrations, I’m doing a rafflecopter giveaway for one Young Adult book of your choice that’s under 16 dollars. It’s international if Book Depository ships to you, and if you’re in the US, I’ll be ordering it from Amazon. You can enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway. Good luck!

Can you believe I’ve already been blogging for a year? Have a message/post request/ANYTHING to say to me? Comment! If you won the giveaway, what book would you choose?

Thank you so much for a wonderful year of blogging,

Ava