#now that I'm more involved in the fandom it feels so cliquey and I feel like the annoying one no one wants to hang out with and everyone

[untitled-byler-blog]

sometimes I want to be popular and other times I rather enjoy flying under the radar

[wandyrlust-a]

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[howlsmovinglibrary]

I'm new to the book oriented portion of tumblr but really want to get involved with the community. Do you have any recommendations about the best ways to start?

Holy shit man if you’d told me a year ago that *I* would be the one getting this question in my anon and not the one sending it I would literally have cried. A year ago I was just some nothing blog who was also completely boggled by how people made friends and had fun discussions on this site!!

My first piece of advice on starting is: create original content. This one sounds dumb but early booklr me did not get it. Early booklr me was scared to share opinions or reviews, and only reblogged other people’s stuff. The only way to get followers - if that’s what you want - is to make something worth following for, be it aesthetics, book photos, reviews, shit posts, screams into the void. It can be a little discouraging to start off with because you might not get much interaction, but keep going and something will stick (for me, it was a post about ‘guilty pleasures’).

And ‘original content’ doesn’t necessarily mean you have to write essays or anything!! My second piece of advice is jump on other people’s posts, with comments. This one also comes with a fair bit of social anxiety, you can feel like an unwanted addition, but trust me, the person in question will really appreciate you adding your voice to their post, showing your appreciation for it, drumming up interaction, and maybe finding some common ground that results in an internet friendship. Find bookish question posts and add your thoughts (some people who tend to ask cool/interesting questions are @bookcub, @lizziethereader, @malazan-the-younger, @logarithmicpanda)

Thirdly, find your group. A lot of people talk about how ‘booklr is dead’, and maybe that is so. I don’t really know. But there are definitely small pockets of people that support and interact with each other, and while it might feel cliquey, it really isn’t. Everyone wants more bookish friends! If you have a group of people who you know enjoy your content and will support you for it, it’s easier to keep going even if your notes etc. fall off. I don’t have a particularly high follower count, but I do have a group of about 10 or so blogs that I know will tend to reblog/interact with what I put out there. Blog for yourself, or for those ten people. If you try and do it for the thousands of potential followers you want in the future, you will quickly burn out.

And finally, don’t be scared of high profile bloggers!! One, the high profile blogs you think are high profile might not be. Two, even if they are, it doesn’t matter! They got that way by talking to people and I bet they’ll be willing to do that again. There are two blogs in particular on this site that I freaking idolised, like literally they were my booklr celebrities. They’ve now both at some time PM’ed me, because of something I said or a common ground we had together (not always book related). I fangirled. Hard. But turns out they’re just normal people who like chatting about fandom. On tumblr. Who knew?

So basically, just talk a lot about shit you like. Probably until you think you’re talking too much. Jump on people’s posts. No thought is too small, and it definitely won’t be annoying. People welcome interaction.

But also - and I don’t know if this is the introvert in me talking - but don’t necessarily blog to be part of a blogger community. Do it because of the thing you love, and because you can’t contain your love for the thing inside your own head. I blogged into a void for a year and two months before I had any post that reached more than 10 notes. It can get a little disheartening - and yeah, it’s much more fun when your posts are getting comments, likes, and reblogs - but if you’re just doing it because you want to externalise all your internal fandom energy then you’ll keep going no matter what. And that’s pretty much how I got anywhere, just by keeping going.