On our Blog Birthday - Ten Things I wish I'd known about Book Blogging when we first started - A ReadItTorial.

We're a little bit late with this article, oops! August was a holiday and early September has been a total smorgasbord of book releases but we're squeezing in this week's ReadItTorial with a bit of a self-congratulatory pat on the back for reaching our 8th Book Blog Birthday.

Wow, has it really been that long? It's flown by!

We thought we'd come up with a list of ten things we wish both of us had known when we first started ReadItDaddy all those years ago. If you're a fledgling book blogger you might find this list useful, or just smile and nod if you're well established at some of the things that you probably experience yourself.

On with the show - oh and Happy BlogBirthday Us!

1) You will never have enough shelving, storage or nooks and crannies to cram all your books into. 

Once upon a time we had a lovely minimalist house. It was great! Everything was tidy, you could walk across the room from one side to the other without doing yourself an injury, and the bookshelves were full of "Mummy and Daddy" books.

Then along came our daughter.

Along with all the usual (foot damaging) things that kids love to leave lying around on the floor (books, lego, LOL doll accessories) we swiftly discovered that passing on our love of books to our daughter came with the side effect that every bookshelf in the house was swiftly overtaken by her books.

At first this wasn't too much of a problem. Board books are usually fairly small format. But when we started buying her picture books - and then later on when very kind folk started sending us books to review - the 'keepers' (those hallowed books we can't possibly get rid of - more on that next) started to take over.

There was also the added peril later on of having to weed our shelves of inappropriate reading material when C began her own reading journey (most of my graphic novels had to be tucked away from curious fingers for starters). Today we have to be thoroughly merciless and brutal in our book pruning. Which is great for local charities and our local library, but ohhhh....

2) Parting with books is hard. It's very hard. It's SO VERY DURNED HARD!

It used to be every year. Then every six months. Then every month. Now it feels like every week. I wish we'd known that we'd have to become expert at parting with books that we've loved, but barely get read.

Established book bloggers will probably tell you that book pruning involves three distinct levels of difficulty.

A) I love this author, I love their books, but C is too old for them so they've gotta go

B) I love this book, we have read it so many times, we may read it again, but the durned thing is SO BIG IT WON'T FIT ANYWHERE IN OUR SHELVES!

C) You'd better not donate or give this away when my back is turned, Mummy!

(Yes, my wife is far more heartless / brutal than I could ever possibly be when it comes to building our donation pile).

The golden rule is that now we're cruel to be kind - and go by the philosophy that if we're likely to read a book again within the next six months we'll keep it a bit longer, but if it's part of a series, is signed by the author or we really can't bear the thought of losing it then it becomes one of the hallowed books to live on our shelves. With most of the books we donate to local libraries, schools and charities though, the thought that someone else out there will enjoy them as much as we have is its own reward (and if we desperately did miss a book we'd probably go buy another copy).

So far we've resisted the temptation to go to town making a real library of our own (slightly impossible in our house but something I think about from time to time), covering every inch of wall space in shelves. Drowning in lovely books is a fabulous (and fortunate) position to be in though, for sure.

3) Your time is precious, focus on reviewing things you love rather than trying to tackle absolutely everything, all the time, all at once.

I admire book bloggers who can do this. I can't. I'm absolutely rubbish at following my own advice so my penance is that I spend a lot of time late into the night, at weekends and at odd (fleeting) spare moments of time tackling our reading pile, going through the books with C, and coming up with mental and physical notes to eventually type up and turn into reviews.

It takes a lot of work so it's worth bearing in mind that if you want to serve up fresh delicious blog content every single day, sometimes many times a day, you're going to have to put in the hours. When we talk to folk from the book world who we meet at events etc, they look at us in stunned disbelief that we actually do read all the books we review / get sent but it's as true now as it was when we started out.

Every year we go through the same angsty internal discussion about possibly dropping a particular type of book, or only reviewing age-appropriate titles for C but then along will come a gorgeous board book, lift the flap book or stunning picture book that just undoes that decision in a moment.

It's also very hard to review chapter books at length and in a timely fashion (we hugely admire book bloggers like BookLoverJo who do such an amazing job with their book coverage - which is thoughtful, in-depth and utterly unmissable) but it's getting easier as C gets older to cover chapter titles, less easy to cover Picture books so the balance shifts with each passing year.

4) Book folk are lovely, kind and amazing - never be scared to engage with 'em!

Back in the day we used to feel extremely cheeky (and, to be honest, we still do) if we fired off a specific request to a book PR person asking for a specific book. I think in the entire time we've been writing ReadItDaddy we've only ever had one rude response back. One single one, in 8 years of book blogging.

Most publishers (even smaller independent indies) understand that bloggers can build up a wide reach and circle of influence (particularly via social media), and they're willing to tap into that in order to ensure their titles aren't just covered by the professional press, but bloggers too.

Likewise, the book blogging community is an amazingly supportive network of incredible folk. Overcoming my anxiety and meeting them has been one of the best things about kicking off this blog.

Lastly of course the authors and illustrators out there in Twitterland (and the ones we've been fortunate enough to meet in real life) have all been incredibly approachable and wonderful too. We have been lucky, of course - but the majority of people involved in children's publishing in any form are really amazingly nice (including us!)

5) Books will make you, and break you. 

I'd love to be able to pretend to be some flinty-skinned hard nut when it comes to things that pluck at my emotions. I noticed after C was born that sometimes the stupidest and most simple things would set me off if they hit the right nerve. Back when we began the blog I never expected so many books to do the same. But not just make us cry, make us laugh with joy, give us a glimmer of hope that the world truly is the wonderful place we want and believe it to be, and also to help us realise that words (and indeed pictures) are powerful forces to affect change in the way we think about practically everything in our lives.

When I scan back through our past book of the week winners, you can nearly always see books that are constantly pushing forwards the boundaries of children's literature, fiction and non-fiction, constantly raising the bar higher and higher every single week. It's no real surprise that quite often BOTW winners are the ones that pluck our heartstrings hard though. Books also have the power to serve us valuable life lessons that we end up fully getting behind, such as showing us amazing ways to up our recycling, or perhaps showing us a whole side of life that we hadn't seen before.

6) Scheduling is everything - and spreadsheets are priceless. 

It was pretty evident early on when we started to get sent books to review that we'd somehow have to structure what we did a little bit more. Not to the point of obsessing about it, but to the point of at least having some sort of 'plan' for posts. I was pretty naive back when I started out, and didn't even realise that Blogger posts could be queued up and scheduled to publish at a later date. Now, our posts tend to be written around a month ahead - with a lot of manual juggling, jostling and massaging of that schedule (as not everyone sends books out in a timely fashion before their publication date / release).

The spreadsheet helps me track the number of things we've reviewed, with extra tabs and categories for potential Book of the Week winners, stuff like our Booky Advent Calendar (which, worryingly, is already starting to take shape - Christmas books in July FTW!), separate categories to gather together our Chapter Book roundups - and things like that. Just a flat sheet was good enough but it saves a HUGE amount of time, and means I (hopefully) never forget to write up our reading list.

It probably sounds a bit anal to do something like this, but it really is the only way I can think of to keep things thrumming away every month.

It feels like a long way from how things began (just writing posts as and when, firing 'em out into the ether at completely random times every day etc) but it feels like it's a formula that's worked, and it does help us keep on top of an awful lot of books (to date, around 700 or so already this year, and the year isn't over yet - yikes!)

It probably also helps that I'm a writing machine, sadly a skill I've never been able to turn into a career but if you're in the market for someone who can write up a storm all day every day about books then I'm your man and you know where to contact me, right?

7) Book trends are utterly fascinating

Like the waxing and waning of the moon, each new year brings a new set of book trends that quite often take us by surprise. We love a laugh, predicting what the next trends might possibly be at the start of our book blogging year - but sometimes it takes just one or two successful titles of a particular type to kick off a sheer landslide of similar books - all competing for the same shelf (and blog) space.

When we first started out, stories about Pirates and Princesses ruled the roost. Then it was Knights, then Space, and this year it's been all about mighty, inspirational and amazing girls and women. Sometimes we get so caught up in analysing book trends and trying to second-guess the sort of books that may have been green-lit by publishers at the various book fairs that go on throughout the year that we forget how glacially slow the business can be, and how quite often book trends 'happen by accident' which is even more amazing really.

8) A lot of people have a lot of opinions on what kids should read (and NONE of them are right). 

I think we've blogged about this particular subject more than any other in our ReadItTorials, and it's been something we've encountered time and time again through the 8 year history of talking about and reviewing children's books.

A lot of people (mostly outside the industry, quite often linked with children's development and education) have a clear view in their minds of what constitutes appropriate reading material.

"Book Snobbery" is (unfortunately) still rife, and again this summer we were reminded that quite often well meaning folk have a horrible habit of sticking their feet firmly into their cakeholes when it comes to expressing an opinion about what kids should be reading.

"Shakespeare!" they cry, foisting crumbling dusty old copies of King Lear or Richard III onto kids.

"The Classics!" they scream, ramming original Dickens or Bronte novels into kids unwilling hands.

"ANYTHING BUT DAVID WALLIAMS!" they foam, as poor Dave picks up the brunt of certain folks' ire about celebrities DARING to attempt to enhance their bank accounts by writing for kids.

Sometimes it feels a bit cheeky to write a children's book blog then claim adults shouldn't be telling you what to read - but our aim is to highlight and perhaps gently coax you towards reading certain books (and let's not forget this blog isn't all about my opinions, it's mostly about C's opinions).

If there's one clear thing to learn right from the outset when writing a children's book blog, it's that kids will nod politely at all your recommendations (no matter how weakly or strongly made) and then go off and do their own thing anyway. But why stop them doing just that? What are you hoping to achieve?

If you are the sort of parent who stands in a bookstore and abjectly refuses to buy your child the book they've got their heart set on, believing your choice is better, we really don't want to know you, sorry. Again we've seen that a lot - normally linked with awful old-fashioned ideas around gender or age ratings but in some cases just sheer unadulterated book snobbery and nothing more.

9) A lot of people still have some pretty old fashioned ideas about comics. 

Right from the outset on the blog, and on C's reading journey I was utterly determined that we'd cover comics in some way. Comics were a huge part of my growing up - quite often the only reading material we could afford were the 10p (oh those were the days) weekly comics picked up from the local sweet shop / newsagents, or the bumper editions released at the start of the school holidays (why oh why don't we ever get "Holiday Specials" any more?)

Then there were always annuals at Christmas, at least one of the Dandy, Beano or Whizzer & Chips finding its way into my christmas stocking.

Sadly for a lot of parents, their own childhood memories of comics have built up their resistance to letting their kids explore what modern comics have to offer. Since we began ReadItDaddy we've always championed our local awesome kids comic The Phoenix - showing that it's perfectly possible to produce the highest quality comic on a weekly basis, with stories and characters that excite, challenge and immerse, without resorting to a metric ton of ads or plastic toys.

Moving past The Phoenix, graphic novels for kids - and kid-friendly stuff from the "Big Two" (Marvel and DC) have increased in quality exponentially to the point where we are really spoilt for choice when it comes to new comics to let C dive headlong into.

Comic folk are just as lovely as the rest of the book folk too - and we've been lucky enough to meet some of the creators of our favourite comics and strips, always keen to point out how hugely important and influential their work is - and how quite often kids who have no art or creative outlets in school will go home, read comics and turn their hand to producing their own strips and stories themselves (and thank god for that, because if they didn't I have no idea where the next generation of comic heroes would come from).

I'd like to openly invite any parent who hesitates when it comes to letting their kids loose with comics to get in touch, and I'll happily provide them with a metric ton of recommendations. See how they have changed, see how they've evolved and see how they're just as important a part of a child's reading (and artistic) journey as anything by Shakespeare or Hardy.

10) You are going to buy an awful, awful lot of books. Even when you get sent a lot for free. 

I don't know (or at least I don't THINK I know) anyone who gets into children's book blogging just for the lure of getting sent a load of 'free' books (and if you're a conscientious reviewer, books are never free - you will always pay for them with your time and your critique).

One thing I realised fairly early on, mostly from reading a ton of other people's blogs or recommendations on social media, is that we'd end up buying a hell of a lot more books.

In an average week we're lucky if we get a single day where there isn't something book-shaped dropping through our letterbox - and believe me, we do consider ourselves VERY lucky that publishers and PRs, authors and Illustrators still want our opinion after 8 years.

But a lot of these are book purchases we make ourselves (certainly when it comes to comics we buy an AWFUL lot of new titles - just because there's so much awesome stuff to choose from).

I don't think any of us (Me, my wife or C) could pass by a bookshop without wanting to go in and have a look (and quite often we come out with something, 9 times out of ten). It's impossible for us to pass up secondhand book stalls. We love going to book signings and picking up books (and meeting their authors). So we're not mere liggers, clutching onto the coat-tails of children's publishing just for the goodies.

To that end we also don't want to stop. We joke about maybe killing off ReadItDaddy when we hit the 'magic' number of a million unique hits. Or perhaps when we reach our tenth anniversary. But the truth is that even if we could magically stop overnight, we'd still be as hugely enthusiastic about books, enthusiastic consumers of books, and want to tell you all about them in some form.

So you're stuck with us. Happy 8th birthday to us. Let's see if we can keep on keeping on!