It’s Our Nine Year Blogoversary at Pages Unbound! (+Giveaway)

We’re Celebrating Nine Years!

This May marks our ninth year blogging at Pages Unbound! Our first review was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published May 18, 2011. (WordPress wished us happy anniversary on May 19, but close enough, right?)

I forgot to plan anything in particular for this blogoversary, but I would like to thank all of our wonderful readers and followers and all the friends we’ve made over the past nine years.

I wish I could list everyone, but that would take a really, really long time since I follow hundreds of blogs (and Krysta also follows a lot of blogs), but I’d like to give shout outs to at least some of the people who leave us awesome comments and some of the people whose blogs I enjoy (in no particular order):

Michael @ My Comic Relief / Melanie @ Grab the Lapels / Stephanie @ Chasm of Books / Jenna @ Falling Letters / Geraldine @ Corralling Books / The Orangutan Librarian / Lianne @ Eclectic Tales / David @ The Warden’s Walk / Margaret @ Weird Zeal / Holly @ The Nut Free Nerd / Crystal @ Lost in a Good Book / Jackie @ Death by Tsundoku / Katie @ Never Not Reading / Julie @ A Little Book Problem / MetalPhatasmReads / Eline @ Lovely Audiobooks / Sammie @ The Bookwyrm’s Den / Bibliosini / Sophie @ Beware of the Reader / Eustacia @ Eustea Reads / La La in the Library / Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies / Caro @ The Bookcheshire Cat / Ellyn @ allonsythornraxx / Destiny @ Howling Libraries / Bentley @ Book Bastion / Kay @ Hammock of Books / Ali @ I Wuv Books / dinipandareads / Nandini @ Novels and Nebulas

What Have I Learned in Nine Years?

I’ve definitely learned a lot of technical things in nine years, such as more SEO and how to get views from Pinterest, and I’ve come a long way in using social media and taking Bookstagram photos (though our Bookstagram account has been a bit inactive recently due to real life business).

But I have to say the primary thing I’ve learned, no matter how cliche it sounds, is that you have to blog about things that interest you if you want to keep going. Personally, I do like people to read the things I’ve written, and I have no problem with people who blog to get traffic. I need a balance, however. I probably wouldn’t have lasted blogging nine years if I had no followers and comments, but I certainly would not have lasted if I didn’t write about things I wanted to write about– even when those topics were not going to be big hits for page views.

So here’s to nine more years of writing things I like and hoping that occasionally other people like them, too!

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Giveaway

To say thank you for everyone who has followed, commented, or otherwise supported us for nine years, I am giving away a book of your choice from The Book Depository (up to 11 USD).

GIVEAWAY RULES

• The giveaway is open internationally as long as the Book Depository ships to you.
• You should be 18 years or older to enter or have your parents’ permission.
• We will email the winner once the giveaway closes.  The winner will have 48 hours to respond before we pick a new winner.
• You do not need to be a follower of our blog, though you can get extra entries for this.
• Anyone found cheating will be disqualified from this and any future giveaways.
• We are not responsible for lost or damaged prizes.
• We will not do anything with your address besides ship the prize to you.

Click here to enter the giveaway.