Starting a book blog can give you community and a sense of purpose — there are also several ways to monetize your website if you want to earn extra income.

There really are no downsides to starting a book blog except the dangerous levels your TBR pile will inevitably grow to (here are some of our favourite bookshelves for your home library for when you reach that point).

Starting this website was one of the best decisions we ever made and, thinking back to those first steps, we never imagined it would have led to this exciting point. We genuinely encourage anyone curious to give it a go!

If you’re thinking of starting a book blog, start with these simple steps:

1) Choose Your Platform

The first step is to choose which platform you want to use for your book blog. Many options are available, but the most popular one is WordPress.

You can start a WordPress site for free on wordpress.com, but if you are hoping to monetize your site in the future, we recommend going with wordpress.org.

In simple terms, WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service that helps you build a website using WordPress software. WordPress.org is the self-hosted version, which you can use to build and maintain a website on your own.

If you are hoping to monetize your website, then having your own hosted WordPress site will make things much easier for you down the line.

While you can switch, it can be quite a daunting task — not to mention the age of your website is a google ranking factor, so the sooner you start the better. You will also have a much greater choice of themes and plugins to customize your site with your own website.

That being said, if owning your website isn’t important to you, then a free WordPress.com website is a wonderful way to engage with and follow a wide community of book bloggers who already use the platform.

Read More:

• Book Blogging: How to Pick a Niche
• Book Blogging: How to Request ARCs
• How to Be a Successful Booktuber (10 Tips)
• Starting and Growing Your Bookstagram (With 200 Hashtags)

2) Pick a Domain Name and Hosting

Your next step is to pick a domain name and hosting for your book blog — this is a very exciting time as you get to choose the name of your blog and secure it as yours! Ideally, you want to pick something that you feel will be comfortable with long term, and consider any future life changes before committing.

We really didn’t give too much thought to ours — it came after eating some really great bao at a restaurant in Seoul — but thankfully, it was timeless enough not to need any changes as we grew much bigger than we ever imagined. And we have unexpectedly gotten to explain what a bao is to countless people!

There are many places to buy your domain name and hosting. We use BigScoots for both hosting and domain name, but we have also used Siteground in the past and were very happy with them.

It was cheaper for us at BigScoots, once we grew to a certain size, and we have found their customer service particularly helpful.

You will pay for your domain name annually, typically between £8-£20, and your hosting will vary, but it typically starts at £6 a month.

3) Install WordPress and Choose a Theme

Now it’s time to install WordPress and choose a theme for your book blog. If you followed our recommendation in step two, installing WordPress should be a breeze as your host will guide you through the process as you sign up.

You can upload and activate your theme from the WordPress dashboard:

Once it’s installed, take some time to browse through available themes and find one that matches the look and feel you’re going for with your book blog. You can spend endless time tinkering with this, so I recommend just starting simple, and then you can play around more as you go.

There are plenty of free WordPress themes available, but you can also buy one on sites like Creative Market or Etsy.

It’s important that your theme is lightweight and won’t slow down your site too much; make sure you also compress any images you use when setting up your homepage and posting blogs (or use an image compressing plugin), as you can severely slow down your site causing people to click away.

Site speed is also a Google ranking factor, so a heavyweight theme can really hamper your growth.

4) Configure Your Settings

Once you’ve chosen a theme, it’s time to configure your settings. This includes choosing a blog slogan (if you want to), adding social media buttons, and changing the permalink structure.

Making sure the permalink structure is correct should be the first thing you do before posting any pages or posts. You can change the permalink settings on the left-hand side of the dashboard under ‘Settings’.

The correct format for a permalink should be the domain and then the unique URL. It should look something like example.com/post-name

Make sure your permalink structure isn’t on that includes the date; changing this now saves a lot of headache later having to create a redirect.

You don’t have to set up social media profiles for your site immediately, but ideally, you want to clarify how readers should share your posts.

Your theme will likely come with social media sharing options; if not, you can use a WordPress plugin. There are plenty of free and paid options but make sure you choose a lightweight plugin, as this can also significantly slow down site speed.

5) Install an SEO plugin

Before you write, download and install a free SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math. Learning basic SEO will help your article gain organic traffic from search engines, as people can find your website.

An SEO plugin will make it easy to create your URL and meta descriptions and, generally, make sure your article is given the best chance of ranking with audit checklists. It will also take care of many technical aspects, like your sitemap.

Tip: Here are Five SEO Tips for Beginners and the Best SEO tools to get you on your way to learning SEO.

6) Write Your First Book Blog Post

Now comes the fun part: writing your first post! There is no hard and fast rule regarding post length, but you generally want to aim for longer than five hundred words as the post is more likely to rank.

There are many kinds of posts you can write for a book blog. Here are a few book blog post ideas to get you started:

• Book Reviews: This is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Reviewing the latest books will always attract readers looking for advice on what to read next. Don’t be afraid to be honest if you didn’t enjoy a book; people will get to know your taste and follow you for that reason. You won’t offend publishers!
  
• Book Lists: These always do well but can take a while to write. If you have read five or more books around a certain topic or theme, then why not collect them together in an organized numbered list?
  
• Comparison Pieces or Deep Dives: If you want to delve into writing some long-form content, getting stuck into a theme or exciting topic can be a great way to engage your community.
  
• Bookish-Related Articles: You don’t just have to write about books; you can also write about the bookish world! Bookshops, book subscription boxes, or bookish gifts are a few examples, you can go in so many directions with this kind of article — you may also find it is easier to work with brands or get a commission from affiliate links.

7) Share Your Posts on Social Media

After you’ve written your first post, it’s important to share it on social media so people can find your book blog.

We recommend creating accounts on the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and sharing each new post as soon as it goes live.

However, you will also want to engage with the community on that platform as much as possible. If managing three accounts sounds stressful, picking one you genuinely want to engage on is better than having multiple accounts where you share posts and leave.

Always answer comments and try to share useful information other than your own posts. Lifting up others in the bookish community by sharing their posts, sharing the latest bookish news, and exciting new releases can be a great way to engage your audience.

Make sure to follow publishers that you are interested in working with so you know all the latest release news, and so they know you exist. Twitter is particularly useful for this because the literary and publishing community is very active on the platform.

Have your DMs open and a way to contact you in your bio (like your email address) so publishers can get in touch with you. I would recommend getting a professional email associated with your blog.

To say Book Twitter changed my life would be an understatement. I met most of my closest friends there and, indirectly, my life partner. There is definitely a lot of drama, but don’t underestimate how many special people you can meet there! BookTube and Bookstagram also offer a wonderful space to get to know lovely bookish people. Follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

8) Join Facebook Groups and Bookish Websites

Another great way to promote your book blog is by joining relevant Facebook groups and forums related to books, reading, and blogging. This is a great way to connect with other book bloggers as well as potential readers of your blog. Check the group rules before you share any of your own content.

Joining Goodreads is also a great way to get yourself out there in the bookish world since most readers and bloggers have a profile on there. There are other sites, though — I prefer using Readerly as it suits my brain and is a generally very pleasant app to be on, and the reading stats are fun.

9) Participate in Bookish Activities Online

Lastly, be sure to participate in various online bookish activities such as readathons, tags, and Twitter chats. Not only is this a great way to interact with other book community members, but it’s also an excellent way to promote your blog (and potentially gain some new followers in the process).

Following these nine steps will help you start a successful book blog that connects you with other like-minded individuals who love reading as much as you do! Remember, it takes time, so don’t get discouraged if things seem overwhelming and slow to grow at first—keep plugging away and you’ll have built yourself a thriving little corner of the internet before long.

However, if you’re book blogging with a view to standing out, getting attention, and even making money from book blogging, then you’ll need to approach things with a little strategy.

One vital strategy is to pick a niche. This is a guaranteed method of standing out in the crowded world of book bloggers.

A niche means that you are advertising yourself as an expert in one particular area of the literary world. A niche means you are the person people will turn to when looking for more of a particular genre, period, or country’s literature.

Book Blogging Tips: Picking a Niche

This advice comes from a niche book blog. We’ve made our site a success by choosing a niche, and having it be one that is underrepresented; one that we already dearly loved beforehand. Everything we have to teach you here, we’ve learned from experience.

Our niche is “translated world literature”. Yours might be a genre like sci-fi or romance; it might be an era like gothic or Victorian; it might be literature from one specific country. Whatever it is, here’s how to make a success of having a niche in book blogging.

Read More:

• How To Start a Successful Book Blog in 9 Easy Steps
• Book Blogging: How to Request ARCs
• How to Be a Successful Booktuber (10 Tips)
• Starting and Growing Your Bookstagram (With 200 Hashtags)

Do you have to pick a niche?

No. You can stand out as a book blogger on your charms, your writing style and skills, and your prominence on social media. However, having a niche certainly has more pros than it does cons. So, let’s go through a few of those here.

Pros of Picking a Niche

You’re more likely to get noticed and be recognised as an authority in your niche. This can lead to all sorts of exciting things like paid promotions, review copies, invitations to conferences, conventions, author talks, and more. Being an authority brings respect and is, quite simply, a very cool feeling.

Your audience is more likely to be loyal and follow along. If you become a reliable source of information in your niche, people will come back time and again. Before you know it, you have a fanbase. If, for example, you are known as the sci-fi girl, sci-fi fans will turn to you weekly for any news or upcoming books in that genre.

A niche makes keeping up with new releases possible. What I mean here is that, as a book blogger and book reviewer, you’ll end up getting a lot of review copies from publishers. And there will be a lot of books you’ll want to cover. It can be overwhelming.

If you select a specific niche, however, your job is now to simply keep up with and review books within that niche. It’s manageable and you get to keep up with the latest news and books much more easily and practically.

Cons of Picking a Niche

You may have many interests and favourite genres, and you’re going to have to sacrifice review copies or invites to events that don’t suit your niche. This happens to us on a monthly basis. Since we specialise in translated literature and world travel, we can only cover books that meet these requirements.

While we could review a book about Chinese history or a novel written in Spanish, we can’t really cover an American fantasy novel, even if we would love to. This is a big limitation to having a niche. But it is the only real downside to niches in book blogging.

Read More: How to Work from Home Effectively

How to pick a niche

Write down the titles, authors, and genres of the last twenty books you’ve read for pleasure and consider what they all have in common with one other. These are the themes/genres you’re going to be predominantly reading long-term so you have to be genuinely interested.

While there is flexibility, if you truly want to niche down then you have to dedicate yourself to one genre or style. At times, book blogging can take the fun out of reading and feel like a chore (rarely, thank goodness) so you’ll have to really love your chosen genre to be able to get through those times and get a review out in time.

In short, don’t start a website on classic literature if you struggle to get through Jane Eyre.

As for picking a book blogging niche that will stand out, do a little googling. See who is already blogging about your preferred niche. Look at how many book blogs there are, how successful they are, and whether or not you think you can A. do it better than them and B. offer something entirely new that’s still within the same niche.

There is room in every niche for multiple book bloggers, but you do need to make sure you can approach your niche from a different angle.

For example, we know plenty of other bloggers who cover translated world literature, so we skew ourselves specifically to East Asian literature. We also interview translators (not authors), which is something that makes us very unique. What can you do within your niche that will make you stand out as a book blogger?

Read More: Get Started With Freelance Writing

Once you have a book blogging niche:

• Make it clear what your niche is. Put in your blog’s name, bio, ‘about us’ page etc.
• Follow publishers who specialise within that niche on Twitter and Instagram. Also, follow anyone working in publicity within those publishing houses.
• Follow accounts, journals, and magazines which are remotely associated with your chosen niche. You need to stay in the loop and embed yourself within your chosen community.
• Follow other book bloggers/booktubers/bookstagrammers in your niche (and beyond your niche because there are, after all, so many talented creatives out there) and see what they’re up to. This will give you inspiration and help keep you up to date with your new industry. Sharing the things they share and post will give you more content to share and attract new followers.
• Follow relevant hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. Comment and engage with any similar accounts to gain exposure.

And there you have it, everything you need to know about picking a niche…or not. Do you think you should niche down? Let us know in the comments.

Compared to many other corners of YouTube, the corner known as booktube is a really comfortable place to hang out, speaking as a booktuber who gets little to no negative attention on their channel.

How to Begin and Grow as a Booktuber

Being a booktuber, whether big or small, is extremely satisfying, but being a successful booktuber can be complicated and confusing.

Success is also a relative term. Do you measure it in terms of attention and subscribers, in terms of ad revenue, or simply in terms of the satisfaction you get from making a good booktube video that your viewers and subscribers enjoy?

I can’t answer that; we all measure success in different ways. Instead, what I’m going to do here is give you a few pointers for starting and growing a strong booktube channel.

If you’re looking to build your clout, grow your subscriber count, or even just start off on the right foot in terms of filming, editing, and uploading a solid booktube video, you’ll find what you need right here.

Read More:

• How To Start a Successful Book Blog in 9 Easy Steps
• Getting Started with Book Blogging: Picking a Niche
• How to Be a Successful Booktuber (10 Tips)
• Starting and Growing Your Bookstagram (With 200 Hashtags)
• How to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Consider Your Niche(s)

One way to stand out amongst booktubers on YouTube is to have a niche (feel free to have more than one, however). If you focus your booktube channel on a specific genre or style of book, you’re likely to build a specific and dedicated subscriber base quickly.

I, for example, primarily focus my efforts as a booktuber on literature in translation (otherwise known as world literature). Most of the books that I discuss/promote/review have been translated into English from another language.

You can focus, for example, on a genre like fantasy, romance, sci-fi, or mystery novels. Or you might want to focus on nonfiction, YA fiction, manga, manhwa, or children’s books.

You can even attach yourself to a specific author and become known as the booktuber who covers that author’s newest books.

Strategise Your Content

If you want to grow as a booktuber, think about the kind of content you want to put out. You need to consider SEO (search engine optimization). So many booktubers fail to grow because they just do book hauls or talk about a random book.

Instead of doing this, consider making numbered lists. The YouTube algorithm loves numbered lists. You could list the “top ten romance novels” or “ten terrible fantasy novels”, for example. Don’t make every video a list, but put them out occasionally.

Beyond that, also consider your playlists. Come up with a few styles and topics of video and stick to them. For example, I have a “book reviews” playlist, a “manga” playlist, and a playlist called “what’s so great about…” where I review classic and modern classic novels.

Doing this reinforces your relationship to your subscribers. They will look forward to your newest video of a certain type. Some of them will think, “yay, a new classic review!” and they will find a favourite topic.

Read More: How to Request ARCs

Lean into Your Personality

I found that my subscriber numbers started to climb faster when I let my personality come out. When I loosened up, allowed myself to make jokes, and laughed at my own mistakes.

This helps to build that all important parasocial relationship. Your viewers get to laugh along with you, and they become attached to your charms and quirks. It’s a lovely feeling.

Do you have a pet? Feature them in your videos; mention them by name a lot. This also allows your fans to form a connection with you and your life. Not so much that it’s weird, but enough for it to feel genuine.

This does bring me onto another important point, however…

Stay Focussed

While leaning into your personality can be great, it can also be frustrating if done too much. When you’ve got a specific topic to discuss in a video, make sure you actually focus on it and get that done.

For example, if you’re reviewing a new book, make sure that you discuss the book’s plot, characters, and themes. Don’t spend too long rambling about yourself, making jokes, and getting distracted. Focus on what the purpose of the video is.

Essentially, deliver on the promise laid out in your booktube video’s title. Inserting jokes here and there can be great, but begin and end your video with a clear focus on the topic at hand.

Get Good at Editing

I have a personal pet peeve when it comes to a lot of booktubers: a lack of flow and rhythm. So many booktubers fail to edit out their longer pauses, or the ums and ahs they make between words and sentences. Cut them out!

This may not annoy other viewers of booktube as much as it does me (in fact,I know many booktube fans that don’t even notice it) but it winds me up so I’m mentioning it here.

You can make as many mistakes and create as many pauses as you like when you record. But editing is half of creating a good YouTube video. When you get to the editing stage, cut out those ums and those long pauses. Build a rhythm.

This is the best way to get viewers to the end of your video. Viewer retention is important! So make your video focussed, snappy, and quick. Make jokes but make them quick; keep them within the rhythm of your video.

Get Creative

The more time you spend editing YouTube videos, the more creative you will become. You’ll learn how to zoom in and out, how to add text and effects, how to use editing tricks to make your jokes and comments land harder.

Every month that goes by, I learn a new editing trick that makes my videos more varied, more fun for me to edit, and more fun for my subscribers to watch. So keep learning; get creative with your edits. Consider how to jazz up your videos.

Almost every booktuber on YouTube follows the same format: they make a video of their face talking to the camera. So get creative with your editing and effects to make what your viewers see and hear a little more varied.

Read More: How to Start a Bookstagram

Make Attractive Thumbnails

This is something that every YouTuber, regardless of niche, learns and develops as time goes by. Scroll through any YouTube channel that you subscribe to and see how their thumbnails have changed over time.

Use the space in your thumbnail wisely. Put your face in it. Put the book (or stack of books) in it, too. But also find space to put some tantalising text.

Also consider your background. You can use free editing software to edit out your background, then use Canva to edit in an entirely different background, as well as that aforementioned text.

Speaking of, maybe consider and stick to a specific font or colour scheme. Or a specific border that you always use.

If your face is always in the thumbnail, vary your expression. Look excited, shocked, scared, angry etc.

Post Regularly

This is the easiest way to grow as a booktuber, but it can obviously be difficult depending on your schedule and routine.

If you can post at least one video per week, consistently, you’ll see stronger growth to your booktube channel. Subscribers appreciate regular content and, more importantly, so does the YouTube algorithm.

The dreaded algorithm is like a YouTuber’s boss: it forces us to do things we might prefer not to do for the sake of growth. Things such as making clickbait titles, covering popular topics, and pushing ourselves to post regularly.

If you can reliably record and edit together a 10-20 minute video every time, and post new videos once or twice per week, you’ll see bigger and more steady growth than most other booktubers.

Reply to Comments

There are two reasons for this: it’s another thing the YouTube algorithm loves, and it’s a genuinely great way to build a community as a booktuber.

The easiest way to do this is to set aside ten minutes every day to check the YT Studio app on your phone (you’ll get addicted to checking it anyway; trust me). Check for all your latest comments and reply to every single one, no matter what.

If a comment is offensive and cruel, or spam, then delete or report it. But if it’s some troll making a dumb argument, have fun with it! Tease them.

But you’re a booktuber, which means 99% of comments should be kind and enthusiastic. Get to know your regular commenters; engage with them; like and reply to their comments. Community is good.

Get Personal (Sometimes)

I mentioned in an above point that you should stay focussed and not ramble on about yourself in videos that are on a specific topic, and that’s true.

That said, people want to get to know you. The more you grow as a booktuber, the more curious people become about you as a person. So consider occasionally dedicating videos to yourself.

A great way to get personal, which many booktubers do, is to make a Q&A video. Hop on social media and invite followers to ask you questions about yourself. Anything they’re curious about! Then compile them and answer them in a Q&A video.

Another way to do this is to make a video dedicated to a specific aspect of your life. For example, I am non-binary, and so I have made videos dedicated to my personal journey as a non-binary person.

You may not be comfortable with doing this, with letter strangers in to such a degree, and that’s why Q&A videos are great: you can curate the questions and leave out the ones you’re not comfortable with answering.

We might also think about Japanese tattoo art. But tattoo artists in South Korea represent some of the most creative in the tattoo industry today.

Just like with so much Korean literature and Korean cinema, tattoo artists in Korea are pushing the tattoo industry in exciting new directions. Korean tattoo artists are thinking outside the constraints of traditional tattooing to bring us work that is wholly new and dynamic.

Before we dive into the best tattoo artists in Korea, here’s a quick history lesson.

History of Tattoos in South Korea

Korea has had a turbulent history with its tattoo culture. Similar to the views amongst the older generation in the West and attitudes which persist in Japan, tattoos have been associated with crime and general ‘untrustworthy types’.

Any actors and performers visiting and working in Korea have often had to, in the past, cover up tattoos while on stage to avoid offending anyone.

While having tattoos in Korea isn’t illegal, there’s still the issue of the law stating that actually getting a tattoo illegal if not performed by a licensed medical practitioner (this law is the same the same in Japan, though on the verge of changing).

Obviously, this makes it very difficult for talented artists to become licensed tattoo artists in South Korea (though far from impossible, as this list demonstrates).

The history of tattoos in Korea actually goes back to the 4th century when fishermen would get tattoos to ward off evil spirits. During the 19th century, however, things took a more negative turn when criminals were branded with tattoos.

Later, in the 20th century, tattoos in South Korea became associated with organised crime, much like how they still are in neighbouring Japan.

Additionally, there’s the issue that it goes against traditional Confucian values, which is similar to the religious argument in other countries, that you shouldn’t change the body your parents (or God) gave you.

Thankfully, tattoos are very quickly becoming de-stigmatised in Korea (compared to how they’re seen in neighbouring countries) and it’s not unusual to see young people on the Seoul subway with tattoos these days.

During our time living in Seoul, having tattoos ourselves has led to many conversations with curious locals that we just wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Check out our lists of other outstanding tattoo artists in Tokyo , Osaka, and Taiwan.

The Best Tattoo Artists in South Korea

Here are some of the best tattoo studios and tattoo artists currently working, and thriving, in South Korea. Scroll to the bottom for tips about getting a tattoo in South Korea.

85tattooer

The artist known as 85tattooer is one of the most unique tattoo artists in South Korea. They have a very specific style that makes their work instantly recognisable.

Almost every tattoo they do depicts either a grinning tiger (a modern take on an icon of Korean culture and mythology) or a grinning red devil with a gold tooth.

The devil can take many forms, from impersonations of recognisable characters from comic books and anime to dressing up as certain people or in certain roles, poses, and uniforms.

Cartoonish and bright, these wonderfully bold and inventive tattoos make 85tattooer one of the most exciting and original tattoo artists in South Korea today.

Dokhwa

Based in Seoul, Dokhwa is easily one of the most stand-out tattoo artists in South Korea working today. Her art is both hyper-realistic and adorable. This is because she mostly focusses on pets.

Not entirely, however. Dokhwa occasionally tattoos portraits and even characters from pop culture. But the majority of her tattoos are of dogs and cats looking both irresistibly cute and hypnotically realistic.

In spite of the realism on display here, Dokhwa still injects a unique sense of personality into her tattoos, through a recognisable and consistent colour palette.

This means you can spot one of Dokhwa’s tattoos easily, but also gasp at the sheer photorealism of them. She’s an incredible Korean tattoo artist.

Roha

Roha is a sensational Busan-based tattoo artist who specialises in a unique approach to portraiture (mostly women).

While her tattoos have a realistic quality to them, she almost always cleverly overlays the busts or entire bodies of women with natural imagery (ocean waves, sunsets, etc).

The end result is a piece that feels ethereal, calming, and yet also entirely captivating. Her line work also has a scrawling quality that sets it apart from other tattoo artists in South Korea.

Her approach to human form through her art is a breath of fresh air, and she has captured many hearts through her technique.

Krystal tattooer (크리스탈)

For more than ten years, the most popular growing trend and style in the world of tattooing is that of neotrad tattoos.

Neotrad is a style that takes old school traditional tattoo art and beefs it up with modern quality standards and, often, a more imaginative and playful approach.

Of all the tattoo artists in South Korea, it’s Krystal who represents the best neotrad tattoo art of the bunch. Her art is a consistent wave of beauty. Her colour palette leans heavily on shades of red and deep blacks, greys, and yellows.

Taking cues from traditional tattoo designs of old — skulls, ships, anchors, copasses, and other nautical tropes — Krystal not only imbues this style with new energy, she also does so with jaw-dropping skill and techniue.

If you like your tattoos bursting with colour, popping with depth and texture, and inspired by histories most iconic tattoo themes, Krystal represents the best of South Korea’s tattoo artists.

피타 – Pitta

Here is a Korean tattoo artist who really shows what it means to bring originality and style to your work as an artist. While, at the same time, drawing on your own heritage and local artistic traditions.

Pitta uses gorgeous traditional colours from Korean paintings, including classic reds, greens, pinks, and golds (the gold is stunning), to create scenes from Korea, Korean-inspired art, bold animals, and even Japanese anime-themed tattoos.

He often works in block shapes so his tattoos are instantly recognisable, without much background shading or even thick black line work.

Pitta is one of the best tattoo artists in South Korea if you want a traditional design in a uniquely modern style.

For tourists and travellers looking to get a uniquely Korean tattoo, Pitta is the artist you’re looking for.

Read More: Best Fine Line Tattoo Artists Around the World

시온 – Sion

Another one of the great tattoo artists in South Korea whose use of colour will blow you away. From natural florals and birds to beautiful fans and talismans.

Sion leans heavily on shades of pink with soft, delicate black line work to make their art quietly pop.

These are the perfect kinds of tattoos for someone looking for an understated, soft, yet infinitely stunning piece.

These are not loud, proud, intimidating tattoos. They are silky, soft, serene works of art that take their cues from classic crafts and natural elements.

If you’re looking for lush, dynamic, natural beauty then Sion is the artist for you.

시류타투 – Shiryu Tattoo

While Sion is an artist who opts for the soft and quiet approach, Shiryu is an artist who revels in the bold, the loud, and the extreme.

Excelling at enormous torso pieces, inspired by demons and Japanese elements like the phoenix and the peony flower, there is no artist like Shiryu.

One of the most exciting and abrasive tattoo artists in South Korea, Shiryu is all about that intense blast of bold colour, covering ever inch of skin with deep blacks, red, and golds.

These tattoos are metal; they are intense and loud; they are like nothing else you’ll find in South Korea.

홍담 – Hongdam

If you’re s fan of fine line tattoo art, Hongdam is for you. These are some of the most captivating, outstanding examples of fine line tattoo art you’ll ever find.

Hongdam creates fine-lined and whimsical watercolour tattoos and has made a huge name for themselves in the South Korean tattoo scene in recent years.

If you’ve been looking for a floral design or some delicate script tattoos then turning to Hongdam for your tattoo is an excellent choice. Their tiger designs are particularly inspired and, in turn, inspiring.

Sol Tattoo

Delicate fine art, watercolour tattoos. They create highly detailed pictures in the smallest of sizes. Sol tattoo is not only one of the finest artists of fine line tattoos in the world, but one of the best tattoo artists in South Korea.

타투이스트 나나  – Tattooer Nana

Nana specialises in the ever-growing in popularity neo-trad tattoo designs, while also managing to lean a little harder on the old school tattoo side of things.

Beautiful ,bold colours and thick black lines abound. For a striking tattoo in South Korea, this could be the one for you, especially if you’re a fan of the traditional and the real American old school style of tattooing.

타투이스트 바늘 – Tattooist Banul

This is one for delicate, small tattoos that make a statement. Thin lines, high detail, and majestic watercolours make Tattooist Banul’s style so distinctive.

Watercolour has become an increasingly popular style of tattooing in recent years, but quite often it can seem almost too pastel and quiet.

Banul manages to toe that line between bold colour and watercolour just perfectly.

Nobody

One of the best ways to make a name for yourself as an artist in any medium, and especially in the world of tattooing, is to have a specific personal brand or a recognisable style.

Nobody is one of the tattoo artists in South Korea who absolutely nails this.

Almostvery tattoo that Nobody designs is incorporated into a heart shape, regardless of what the content and design of the tattoo actually is. This is a genius move that is as unique as it is memorable.

Ridiculously cute, small heart and cartoon-inspired tattoos with bold lines. Totally unique and fun to simply admire, we absolutely love Nobody’s work!

호리타츠패밀리 – Horitatsu Family Kyu

Based in Busan, this Korean tattoo studio specialises in traditional Japanese designs and tattoo sleeves. Beautiful dragons, waves, and cranes are their signature styles and they do it so very, very well.

How to Get a Tattoo in South Korea

If you’re considering getting a tattoo in Korea I wouldn’t hesitate. The standards are equal to what you’d expect and with some of the most incredible tattoo artists in South Korea are below for you to choose from. You’re bound to come out with something special.

Most Korean tattoo artists have an Instagram page so if these aren’t your thing, that’s the best way to find someone who is. Find the best way to message them and fire over your ideas or visit the store and have a chat.

Most of these tattoo artists are based in Seoul but many of them do guest posts at tattoo conventions and studios around the world. If you need help with booking or want to find more artists, this Facebook page is a huge help.

Have fun getting a tattoo in South Korea, some of the very best artists to date are based there so don’t miss out.

If you like this then you might like: South Korean Films That Aren’t Oldboy, Books to Read Before Visiting Korea or find out Where to Stay in Seoul. For foodies, take a culinary trip around South Korea with us.

However, you can craft your own home library with the best bookshelves for you. You just need to work with the space you have. When you do some digging, it’s amazing just how much variety exists in the bookshelves and bookcases available to us.

The Best Bookshelves and Bookcases for Your Home Library

So, taking into consideration our different requirements (space, size, aesthetics, materials, colour, weight, and more) these are the best bookshelves and bookcases for your home library.

There is a huge variety to be found here, as well as where you can buy these bookshelves. You’ll definitely find the shelves that are perfect for you and your ideal home library.

Read More: Unique Literary Gifts for Book Lovers

Ladder Bookshelf

While a bookshelf or bookcase with a ladder is the dream for so many of us (Belle gif), it’s not a realistic one for almost all of us. A quick browse on Etsy for a bookcase with a ladder revealed a $1000 price ceiling.

So, what’s the next best thing, aesthetically? A ladder bookshelf! Meaning: a bookshelf that is also a ladder.

A ladder bookshelf is an aesthetically gorgeous thing. Pressed against a wall, it leans like a ladder, offering you a tier system that allows for a lot of creative freedom when it comes to how you wish to arrange your books and other pretty things.

The downside is that a ladder bookshelf doesn’t hold that many books. It’s certainly a case of fashion over function. But if you want to display your prettiest hardbacks, while also decorating your living room with some potted plants and ornaments, a ladder bookshelf is one of the best bookshelves you could ask for.

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Industrial Bookshelf

While the name is weird, giving off metal and concrete vibes, an industrial bookshelf is actually a very pretty piece of furniture.

Combining a metal structure with wooden shelving, an industrial bookshelf is one of the best bookshelves in terms of combining stability with home library aesthetics.

Usually consisting of five or six shelves, an industrial bookshelf gives you the height needed to store big hardback books, as well as the width to break up your bookshelf with other items — plants, souvenirs, picture frames, ornaments etc.

A thin black metal frame means stability with no danger of your shelves bowing; and a deep natural wood for the shelves themselves guarantees a warm, satisfying, homely feeling.

For a mix of strength and beauty, an industrial bookshelf is one of the best bookshelves for your home library.

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Geometric Bookcase

Always a popular choice for the modern homeowner, a geometric bookcase is one of the best bookshelves for bookworms who are looking for variety in their design aesthetics.

A geometric bookcase is made up of decently-sized and roomy cubby holes, usually made from painted wood, that allow for plenty of customisation variety.

You can choose to fill one cubby with books stacked in a row, another with books stacked on top of each other, and a third filled with candles, photo frames, or a potted plant. The choice is yours.

A collector may choose to use every bit of available space to fill up their geometric bookcase with as many books as possible. While minimalists who love to show off their favourite books may relish in the space and opt for displaying only the most beautiful hardback books.

There’s no right or wrong way to design your own home library, and a geometric bookcase is one of the best bookshelves to allow for that freedom of customisation.

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Solid Wood Bookcases

Solid wood bookcases are classic; quintessential; timeless. They represent the best bookshelves for any and every type of reader and book collector. Sturdy, reliable, beautiful. Who doesn’t want a set of solid wood bookcases?

They’re also the most common form of bookcase, but choosing to buy a really big, heavy, gorgeous set of solid wood bookcases can set you back a bit. But that’s your choice. Prices for the best bookshelves all vary, and that certainly applies to solid wood bookcases.

These are the best bookshelves for serious bookworms and collectors who have a lot of beautiful books, want to stack them messily and haphazardly, and want their living room to be primarily defined by books (that certainly describes us, at least).

Solid wood bookcases can also be made out of a dozen different types of wood, expanding your options when it comes to colour, sturdiness, density, style, and more.

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Montessori Bookshelf

If you’re a parent feeding your kids regular knowledge through picture books the best bookshelves for you/them come in the form of the montessori bookshelf. This small bookcase is purposely designed to display slender picture books with pretty covers.

A montessori bookshelf isn’t just for little kids and their parents, though. If you’re a comic book collector who wants to display a few of their favourite comics because they’re rare or particularly stunning, a montessori bookshelf is the best thing for the job!

Multipurpose, affordable, perfect for displays, ideal for parents, entirely made out of wood, and very aesthetically charming. A montessori bookshelf is one of the best bookshelves for your home library, especially if you’re a parent.

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Farmhouse Bookshelf

First of all, what is a farmhouse bookshelf? A farmhouse bookshelf refers to any bookshelf or bookcase that would fit in a home designed with a farmhouse decor. What that means is a farmhouse bookshelf should be made from raw, earthy materials like wood and metal.

A farmhouse bookshelf is rustic, old-timey, authentic, and other adjectives that nicely and romantically describe the past. Thick cottage-core.

We’ve already mentioned solid wood bookcases and industrial bookshelves. Made of wood and metal, both of these types fall into the bracket of “farmhouse bookshelf”.

However, since we’ve already given you some great options for solid wood bookcases and industrial bookshelves, here are some of the best bookshelves that don’t fit those moulds but are still definitely considered farmhouse bookshelves.

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Bamboo Bookshelf

Bamboo is incredible stuff. It grows at an impossible rate, is versatile and strong, looks gorgeous, and is super eco-friendly. When we lived in Shanghai we saw bamboo being used for so many ingenious things — most notably as scaffolding.

If you’re aiming to be environmentally conscious and you also want one of the best bookshelves in terms of strength, aesthetics, and cost, you need to get yourself a bamboo bookshelf. They’re gorgeous, affordable, and entirely made from wood.

Whether you’re an environmentally conscious person or not (for whatever reason), a bamboo bookshelf is undeniably a cool, unique, and pretty addition to your living space.

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Decorative Bookshelves

“Decorative bookshelves” is a pretty broad term, and it means whatever you want it to mean, honestly.

In our opinion, decorative bookshelves can be defined as any kind of bookshelf that does something strange or unique with its design in order to stand out and be eye-catching.

This does usually mean that decorative bookshelves are not the most ideal things for storing a large number of bookshelves. If you’re a bookworm with a lot of books to store and display, you’ll need an industrial bookshelf or solid wood bookcases.

However, if you want to display a handful of books in a creative fashion, you’ll want the best bookshelves for the job. Here are some great decorative bookshelves that fill this particular need.

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Bookshelf With a Glass Door

For the organised and the refined, a bookshelf with a glass door is the ultimate in respectable bookshelf organisation. Not sure I even know what that means, but I have faith that you do. Basically, a bookshelf with a glass door looks elegant.

If you love to organise your bookshelves in a very specific way (maybe even by colour), then using a bookshelf with a glass door to finalise the effect is the cherry on top. Sort of like laminating or framing a piece of art.

If you have pride in your book collection, and you wish to display them like artwork, a bookshelf with a glass door is one of the best bookshelves to provide that kind of finish.

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Bookshelves With Doors

Bookshelves with doors aren’t to everyone’s taste. Most of us like to display our books as a point of pride, as a form of decoration, and as a great talking point for visitors who come round. But some of us prefer the privacy and tidiness that bookshelves with doors provide.

If that describes you — someone whose books are a private affair and would prefer to tidy them away behind wooden doors, then the best bookshelves for you are, obviously, bookshelves with doors.

The doors mean that you’re going to see a lot more of the wood than you normally would. This means choosing the prettiest and most pleasing wood finish is an absolute must when selecting bookshelves with doors. Here are a few options.

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Corner Bookcase

The best bookshelves for people trying to make the most of their space — especially if they have a small living room or a studio apartment — are corner bookcases.

They still work well as practical bookshelves but they gel so perfectly with your home decor, as though they were always meant to be there. A corner bookcase straddles that line between function and fashion, looking refined and satisfying while also holding a decent amount of books.

They also work great if you really want to line your walls with books. Get a traditional bookshelf for one wall and a corner bookcase (or two) for the corner. Turn the walls of your home into bookshelves. Who needs wallpaper when books will do?

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Narrow Bookshelf

A narrow bookshelf can solve a lot of unique issues. If you have some annoying gaps in your living space; if you need a bit of extra book storage (but not too much); if you have limited space and only a narrow bookshelf will do.

A short, narrow bookshelf can also double as a bedside cabinet or a shelf for a potted plant, all the while storing some of your favourite books.

Whatever you need it for, a narrow bookcase is often the perfect solution to your problems. You can buy multiple without breaking the bank, and then fit them into every room in your house (or apartment).

Need a bookshelf in your kitchen? How about the bathroom? Maybe the larder (no, I don’t know what one of those is either). Whatever the (book)case, a narrow bookshelf can be your answer.

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Wall-Mounted Bookshelves

These are the best bookshelves for the lucky few who own their own home and can just go to town stabbing holes into their own walls to set up some beautiful wall-mounted bookshelves.

These types of bookshelves come in a few different flavours: single shelves and multi-shelf units. You can mount single individual shelves wherever you please, sporadically or in a pattern. Or just stop at one, if one is all you need.

Alternatively, you can buy and mount a multi-shelf unit of wall-mounted bookshelves. This is a set of three or four connected shelves that all get mounted in one place together. A small bookcase mounted on your wall!

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Desk With Bookshelves

Equal parts aesthetic and practical. Function meets fashion. The perfect tool for any work-from-home person who loves their desk and often needs quick access to reference materials like dictionaries and textbooks.

A desk with bookshelves can also simply be used as a two-in-one tool for storing all your favourite things in one convenient location. My two favourite things are my books and my laptop. Having them in one pretty location is heaven.

For this reason, getting a desk with bookshelves is a way to get the best bookshelves for your home library.

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Instagram can be a great way to unleash your creativity, build up your own bookish community, make new friends, and work with brands. Here’s how to set up and grow your own successful bookstagram page, including some hashtags you can copy and paste.

How to Start a Bookstagram

Starting the bookstagram itself is as easy as setting up an Instagram account with your email address and password, then picking a name. If you already have a brand established (like a blog or a YouTub channel) then this will be easy. If not, have a think about what sums up your bookstagram account themes, and what will catch people’s attention.

It could be worth reading on and planning out your theme and niche before committing to your new name. Of course, you can always change this later (I think I went through at least three changes since I started). Once you’re all set up, follow some accounts in your niche so you’ll immediately be engaging with other bookstagram and bookish accounts and can be easily found by others!

Follow Books and Bao on Instagram

Choosing a Theme or Niche

Do you have to have a niche? Absolutely not. But bookstagramming is a competitive field and having some kind of cohesive theme is going to help you stand out from the very beginning. Some niches are also really easy for grabbing the bookish community’s attention, these tend to be accounts that celebrate the YA genre of fiction and ones that share the stunning aesthetic of bookshelves.

But, realistically, there’s an audience for every genre and type of literature so go and find your people! We did write a guide on book blogging and picking a theme and niche if you’d like more information. A big part of having a cohesive Instagram is down to your editing. While you can change later on, having some idea of the kind of book account you want to be is a good idea.

Are you good at flatlays? (I really wish I was!) Do you want to take your books out on location or to beautiful natural spaces? Are you going to focus on bookstacks and curated bookshelves? Are you going to combine books and pets (there’s always room for more cute cats with books)? Are you going to have a mix of books and graphics with quotes on?

This is where your creativity can really come into play. Think about what  you like photographing and how you want people to see your books.

Once you’ve got your theme going then you’ll want to have a cohesive editing strategy. This tends to be what separates the accounts with huge numbers from the smaller accounts. Here are some of the best ways to edit your photos.

How to Edit Your Instagram Photos

There are so many editing apps for your phone that you can download. One of the most popular is VCSO which even has its own bookish hashtag (#vcsobooks). There is an annual cost involved and there are plenty of filters to choose from so you can choose a set you like and stick to them. Or simply edit the photos yourself with the contrast/colour section.

Another great app for editing is Snapseed which is much of the same but with different editing features. You can also find apps for adding video effects to your pictures. If you want to take your editing to this next level then you’ll want to use Photoshop or, most commonly, Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is a simple interface and gives you full control over the editing process.

You can save your own presets to make editing quick, easy, and uniform (or simply purchase some!) Instagram-worthy pictures with the press of a button. When it comes to making beautiful Instagram stories, one of the best at the moment is StoryArt but you can also make stories on your computer with Canva which can make it easier if the photos are already on your computer.

You can also plan your feed out in advance to make sure your photos look nice next to each other with apps like Planoly. You’ll also be able to schedule your photos, write captions and drag them around until you’re happy with how they all look.

How to Grow Your Instagram Account

Here are a few detailed tips and tricks for growing your Instagram account from the very start.

Collabs

Collaborating with other accounts, whether that’s setting up a mutual shout-out for each other’s great content or hosting a giveaway is a great way to get new eyes on your account.  Never pit yourself against other instagrammers, bloggers, etc.

You’ll always do better collaborating than competing with each other and even if you’re in the same niche, with pretty much identical content ideas, it will never be the same because your experiences are different. Unless you practise plagiarism. And, please, don’t ever do that.

To work with brands and host giveaways, you’ll need to find their press contacts and send them an email illustrating why your audience will love their product and why working with you for a giveaway, paid advertising, freebies etc is a great idea. Remember: your audience is your own and you have worth!

Interaction with others

Unfortunately, Instagram gives back what you put into it and more often that not, it gives back less than what you put in. But it’s true that interacting with people and using it as the social platform it was always intended to be will get you far.

Be consistent, show up as often as you can and always reply to your comments. Comment on other people’s posts, make friends, and help each other out. Let others see you as someone who is part of the bookish community. This goes for Twitter too! As I tend to favour Twitter, I’m often ignoring my Instagram as there aren’t enough hours in the day but, even if you just take the time to interact with you, that goes a long way!

Creating a Community 

Creating as much of a community as possible, in whatever way you can, will reap great rewards with Instagram. Try setting up your own book club based around your own hashtag; share videos and let people get to know you. 

Reaching out for Review Copies

So, it’s generally easier to start with your own books that you’ve picked up. This doesn’t have to be expensive; shopping secondhand or picking up books at the library can be a great way of getting started without spending anything (second-hand books and library promotion can be niches unto themselves!).

Also, some of the sites where you can request advance copies, such as Netgalley or Edelweiss, will give you ebooks and, while you can photograph your Kindle or tablet (or even photoshop the cover of the book on to your kindle if you want colour), this may not be ideal for you.

You can also email publishers directly to request copies. You’d be surprised how few followers you need in order to do this. So, if you really want a physical advanced copy, just ask for it! We have a huge guide that explains all the ways you can request an advance reading copy for more information.

Hashtags

The necessary evil of Instagram; as time-consuming as they are to find and type out they’re important for getting found.

One of the most important things is to use relevant hashtags that will help you get found by the right people and use a mix of hashtags that will help you get features but also plenty of smaller volume hashtags that will help you be seen in the first place.

You can find hashtags by checking out people in your niche and listing some of the hashtags they use or just going down a rabbit hole of searching them out on Instagram and noting them down. If you’d rather not spend hours researching hashtags, here are over 200+ bookish hashtags separated by volume, genre, and location-specific hashtags, as well as tips to find your own niche hashtags. Save your time and energy for creating!

Hashtags for Book Bloggers

Looking for hashtags when you just want to post your great content can be a pain and how do you know you aren’t missing out on the perfect hashtag suited to your exact picture! Here are 200+ wonderfully bookish hashtags for you to use sorted by volume as well as other lists like location specific/ genre/ bookshops and libraries.

Scroll to the bottom to find five days’ worth of 30 hashtags ready to copy, paste, and rotate.

Happy Bookstagramming!

General Bookish Hashtags

When choosing your hashtags make sure to use a good mix of volume with more that are a ‘low usage volume’ than high. Your post is unlikely to get seen by hashtags with over a million views and much more likely to get seen using a 100k volume hashtag. The bigger hashtags can be good for getting features by large accounts so using a few is recommended.

Usage volume: 0 – 50K

#bookishaesthetic #booksarelove #bookpicture #cozyreads #bookbuying #booksandcandles #readingtime #readingoutside #booksandplants #booksandbeans #booksandbotanicals #unitedbookstagram #booksandbooks #booksanddogs  #booksbooksandmorebooks #bibliophilefeatures #booksandnooksdecor #booksandwince #booksandnature #booksandtravel #booksandcoffee #booksandcupcakes #showmeyourprettybooks #bookishflatlay #bookishfeed #bookishphoto #readinglover #readingforpleasure #guardianbooks #bookflatlays #queerbooks #shelfiegoals #booksforclothes #bdloves #cottagereads #coolgirlsread #betterwithbooks #booksconnectus #readholic #booksparks #queerbookstagram #bookishallure #bookishhygge #readwomen #womenwriters #nakedbooks #bookwormlife

Usage volume: 50k – 500K 

#readingforfun #bookofthemonth #bookishescape #mybookfeatures #readingiscool #bookpic #bookishphotography #readeveryday #ilovetoread #readersgonnaread #fortheloveofreading #booktag #booksandcoffee #booksandflowers #booksandtea #booksofig #booksandbooks #bookseries #bookselfie #bookdbooksandmorebooks #bookstagramer #booksleeve #booksofinsta #toberead #booksaremylife #bookslovers #booksy #booksandtea #booksaremagic #booksforkids #booksigning #booksforlife #bookishmerch #bookishcommunity #bookishgirl #booksforlife #booksaddict #readingcorner #culturetripbooks #avidreader #booksaremylife #mybookfeatures #bookcollection #flatlaysquad #booksonbooks #mybookfeatures #shelfiesunday #tbrpile #prelovedbooks #bookstafeatures #bookclubsofinstagram #instabookstagram #bookishgirl

Usage volume: 500K – 1 Million 

#epicreads #readingisfundamental #readmore #readmorebooks #bookaesthetic #bookshelves #bookhoarder #bookstagrammers #booksarelife #bookishlove #bookstack #becauseofreading 

Usage volume: 1 Million + 

#bookaddict #booknerd  #bookblogger #bookshelf #igbooks #reader #igreads #lovebooks #bookphotography #bibliophile #bookishfeatures #bookcover #bookdragon #bookstagrammer  #booksbooksbooks #booksofinstagram #readingtime #amreading #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #bookobsessed #ilovereading #booksofinstagram #booknerdigans #bookshelfstyling #bookclub #oprahsbookclub #booknerdigans #bookporn

Usage volume: 10 Million +

#booklover #bookstagram #bookish #bookworm #instabook #book #reading #books #booklover 

Location Specific Hashtags

It’s easy to look up location specific hashtags and the best place to start is usually a country or city + bookstagram (bookstagramuk).

Check out the hashtags of users who have used that hashtag and you’re sure to find lots more! Here are some UK hashtags as these are what I tend to use but you’ll find literally a world more.

UK

#booksaremybag #londonbookshops #readinguk #bookstagramuk #bookstagrammeruk #ukbookstagram #ukbookstagrammer 

Book Title Hashtags

You can hashtag the name of the book so anyone interested can find it! If it’s a popular series like Harry Potter there’ll be an abundance of related hashtags you can use! You can also hashtag the name of your favourite author.

Genre Specific Hashtags

There are hashtags associated with every genre of fiction you can think of, here are a few popular ones to get you started!

#fantasy #yafantasy #yalovin #yaallegiance #yabook #yabookstagram #fantasybooks #fantasybooks #romancebooks #romancebooksinstagram #romancenovels #gayromancenovel #queerromancenovels #scifibooks #scifibookseries #horrorfiction #crimefiction #retro books #contemporaryfiction #classicfiction #thrillers 

Country/Translated Literature Hashtags

Again, you’ll find hashtags for most literature so if you’re reading internationally then see if there are some greatest hashtags to match!

#japaneseliterature #koreanlit #japanlit #koreanliterature #chineseliterature #indianliterature #indiabooks #translatedliterature #diverseliterature #diverselit

Celebrate our wonderful libraries and bookshops with their very own hashtags!

Library Bookstagram Hashtags

#librarylife #librariesofinstagram #librariesrock #librariesmatter #librariesofig #iglibraries #librariesaroundtheworld #lovelibraries #littlefreelibraries #ilovelibraries #librariestransform

Bookshop Hashtags

#bookshops #independentbookshops #bookstores #bookstore #bookshopping #bookshopsofinstagram #bookshopsoftheworld #bookshoplover #independentbookstore #independentbookstoreday  #instagbookshop

Book Blogging Hashtags

If you’re a book blogger or booktuber as well as a bookstagrammer then let everyone know!

#bookblogging #bookbloggers #bookbloggersofinstagram #bookbloggersofig #bookbloggerlife #booktuber #booktube #bookishpodcast 

Bookstagram Daily Hashtag Sets

These hashtags are in sets of 30 with a mixed range of volume ready for you to copy and paste.

Make sure to rotate these hashtags and spice them up with some picture specific hashtags now and again. Just delete any that are irrelevant to your picture and swap them out for some location/genre specific tags!

# 1 

#bookishaesthetic #booksarelove #bookpicture #cozyreads #bookbuying #readingtime #epicreads #readingisfundamental #readmore #bookhoarder #bookstagrammers #booksarelife #bookishlove #bookstack #becauseofreading #booklover #bookstagram #unitedbookstagram #booksandbooks #booksofinsta #toberead #booksaremylife #bookslovers #booksy #booksandtea #ilovereading #booksofinstagram #booknerdigans #nakedbooks #bookwormlife

# 2

#booksofinstagram #readingtime #amreading #bdloves #cottagereads #coolgirlsread #reading #books #booklover #betterwithbooks #booksconnectus #readholic #booksparks #booksonbooks #mybookfeatures #shelfiesunday #tbrpile #bookaholic #bookreview #bookreviewer #bookobsessed #ilovereading #nakedbooks #bookwormlife #booksandbeans #toberead #booksandbotanicals #unitedbookstagram #booksandbooks #booksbooksandmorebooks 

# 3

#nakedbooks #bookwormlife #booksforlife #bookishmerch #bookishcommunity #bookishgirl #booksforlife #booksaddict #readingcorner #culturetripbooks #avidreader #booksaremylife #bookhoarder #bookstagrammers #booksarelife #readingtime #amreading #bookaholic #bookreview #bookphotography #bibliophile #booksandcupcakes #showmeyourprettybooks #bookishflatlay #bookishfeed #bookseries #bookselfie #bookdbooksandmorebooks #contemporaryfiction  #igbook

# 4

#prelovedbooks #bookstafeatures #bookclubsofinstagram #instabookstagram #bookishgirl #bookreviewer #bookobsessed #ilovereading #booksofinstagram #booknerdigans #bookishaesthetic #booksarelove #bookpicture #cozyreads #bookbuying #booksandcandles #readingtime #readingoutside #booksandplants #booksandwince #booksandnature #booksandtravel #booksandcoffee #booksandcupcakes #booksaremylife #bookslovers #booksy #booksandtea #bookstagrammer #morebooks

# 5

#booklover #bookstagram #bookishescape #mybookfeatures #readingiscool #bookpic #booksarelife #bookishlove #bookstack #becauseofreading  #readingoutside #booksandplants #booksandbeans #bookcollection #booksofinstagram #readingtime #amreading #bookaholic #prettybooks #bookreview #bookreviewer #bookobsessed #ilovereading #booksofinstagram #booknerdigans #nakedbooks #bookwormlife #bookcommunity #readmore #readinglife

Feel free to copy and paste these hashtags and use them to grow your own beautiful bookish instagram account!

Bathhouse Culture in South Korea

Just about everyone goes to Korean bathhouses, or jimjilbangs (찜질방), meaning heated rooms. Businessmen go to unwind after work, couples go here on dates, and friends come to catch up all while relaxing in the hot tubs of water and heated rooms.

Jimjilbangs are gender-segregated bathhouses with both hot and cold pools, as well as dry heated rooms. You can also get deep body scrubs, dinner and, even sleep here overnight! The most awkward part about jimjilbangs is getting naked. The awkwardness may be even worse if you are a foreigner. However, since everyone is naked, this feeling lasts about thirty seconds.

The most famous jimjilbang in Seoul is Dragon Hill, and Spa Land in Busan. However, there are plenty of Korean spas in major cities. A quick Naver search (similar to Google maps, but I prefer this in Korea) for spas can show you dozens anywhere you are in Korea.

If you work in Korea, I recommend going Sunday evening before the workweek starts. I find myself leaving relaxed and refreshed, and I also get the best sleep after I visit these bathhouses.

Before Visiting the Jimjilbang

Before you head out, there are a few items you should bring. Should you forget to take them with you, have no fear. Jimjilbangs sell toiletries for a few thousand won.

Here are the things I recommend you bring:

• Shampoo
• Face mask (optional)
• Loofah or exfoliating glove
• Toothbrush and toothpaste
• Soap or body wash*
• Body cream*
• Empty water bottle (for the baths)
• Cash

**Most jimjilbangs have soaps and creams on site, but if you prefer your own you should bring them. You can also buy them at the jimjilbang.

Read More: A Health and Wellness Journey Around South Korea

Entering the jimjilbang

When you enter a jimjilbang, you should go to the reception and pay the entrance fee. Most jimjilbangs cost about 8,000 – 12,000W to get in ($8-$12). This includes two small towels as well as a change of clothes, which we will get to later.

You will be given a key with a number on it. Take off your shoes and find your locker number. Since jimjilbangs are gender-segregated, make sure you go to the male or female side accordingly.

Put only your shoes in this small locker.

Being Naked in the Jimjilbang

Take this same key and go into the locker rooms. Here, you take off all of your clothes and put the rest of your things into the locker. As I mentioned earlier, getting naked can seem daunting at first, but Koreans won’t give you a second glance. The first thing you should do before hopping in the baths is taking a quick shower.

Bring one towel with you inside and wrap it around your head. Now you are ready to go to the baths! Each bath has a different temperature, anywhere between 10C and 40C. This is usually indicated above the bath. I recommend alternating between the hot and cool ones so that you don’t get too lightheaded.

Make sure to stay hydrated! The locker area just outside the baths has water coolers. You can also bring a water bottle, fill it up and take it with you inside the baths. If you go with a group of friends, don’t make too much noise. You will get dirty looks or you may be shushed. If you must talk, do so quietly. People come here to relax, so don’t disturb others.

Optional Jimjilbang Extras

Scrubs

If you want your skin to feel truly refreshed, the best thing you can do is get a full-body scrub. Full-body scrubs are provided inside the baths. The scrub itself costs about 20,000 – 30,000W and last about half an hour. The dead skin is scrubbed away and you come out a new person.

Stores

As previously mentioned, every jimjibang will have a store either in the locker room area or the public area. Some stores charge cash only while others will charge what you need to your key. Stores sell snacks such as ice cream and kimbap (Korean sushi). They will also sell necessities such as shampoos, soaps, socks and underwear.

Restaurants

Getting clean is an arduous process, and it’s sure to make you hungry. Bigger jimjibangs will have a restaurant where you can get a decently-priced Korean meals. Some will charge your key number, but many require cash payments. They will always have tables, but like many Korean traditional restaurants, you will be required to sit on the floor.

Sleeping

Whether you are visiting Korea or need a place to stay after a long night of fun, if you need a cheap place to stay for one night, jimjilbangs are your best option. Paying a few extra thousand won at the entrance allows you to sleep in the sauna overnight.

Every jimjilbang has a large sleeping area with heated floors. If you know you will spend the night here, I recommend bringing earplugs because some people snore.

Heated Rooms

Once you are done with the baths, head back to the lockers and put on the shirt and shorts that were given to you earlier. There will be a main room, usually with a TV, where both men and women lie on mats and relax while watching TV.

This is also the place where you can go into the dry, heated rooms. Like the baths, each heated room will have the temperature indicated above it. The ice room will be the smallest and the coldest room. This is a great place to go in-between the other rooms.

Some rooms will go up to 40C, 50C or 60C. Depending on the room, the floor will either have hot salt crystals or a wooden floor. You can doze off on the mats or rest your head on a pillow in the cooler rooms. Each room’s walls are also lined with different stones. Some rooms may have walls lined with salt, jade, quartz, gold or other crystals. This is done so that you can breathe the air emitted from the stones.

Depending on the room you go, they are said to heal different parts of your body. So take deep breaths!

Leaving a Korean Spa

I recommend taking a shower after you have visited the heated rooms and you are ready to leave. This is because you sweat a lot in the heated rooms. Some jimjilbangs have free hairdryers, but others require you to pay 100W for about 3 minutes of use.

They also have lotions and creams to put on your body after you are done. Jimjilbangs also provide hair brushes which are sterilised, but I recommend you bring your own. To leave, take your locker key and go back to the shoe lockers. Take your shoes out and hand the keys to the front desk. Assuming you haven’t accumulated extra charges to your key, you are free to go!

Jimjilbangs are a fun place to visit whether you go alone or with friends. You feel relaxed and refreshed, ready to take on a new day. Whether you go once a week or once a month, you are sure to have a good time. Now that you know the steps, head to your nearest jimjilbang!

If you’re in Korea, you may also want to know about Seoul’s best party districts

The making of these books and films is something that will continue as we desperately fight to level the historic playing field between women and men. Saving Lucia by Anna Vaught is a book that stands tall within this echelon of important works, and one that also stands alone as something daringly unique amongst its peers.

Saving Lucia’s theme is that of mental health, and it follows the lives and stories of four real women of history who have been criminally forgotten. Women who, I will happily though guiltily admit, I did not know about until now. The first is the titular Lucia Joyce, daughter of James Joyce and brief lover of Samuel Beckett. The second is The Honourable Violet Gibson, a woman renowned for attempting to assassinate Mussolini in 1926.

The book begins at St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton, a mental health facility in which both Lucia Joyce and Violet Gibson were long-term residents.

In fact, both died and were buried there. While these women truly existed, and the accounts of their past experiences and childhoods in the book are true, Saving Lucia is still a work of fiction, and a frequently wild, abstract, and rather thrilling one.

Split in two, Saving Lucia’s first half paints us two vivid portraits of these women through wildly varied writing styles. The perspectives and narratives shift frequently, with one writing down the accounts of the other, and both offering opinions on themselves and the other.

Read More: 7 Books to Help with Mental Health

Lucia’s perspective provides a relatively level and grounded observation of her surroundings, and of Violet, while Violet’s is a detached, abstract, borderline surreal narrative experience. Lucia’s story breathes and has rhythm. Violet’s is sporadic, exhaustingly energetic and dizzying, and full of noise.

As their narratives continue to be threaded, Violet gently introduces Lucia and the reader to our other protagonists: Anna O, whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim, and whom history remembers as a patient of psychoanalyst Josef Breuer, colleague of Sigmund Freud; and Blanche Wittmann, patient of Jean-Martin Charcot, another contemporary of Freud.

Both Anna O and Blanche are remembered by history as examples of hysteria, case studies which spring boarded the successful works of the men who studied them.

“We have things we both know, in this hard and barren place of boiled wool and no-hope where we have been left. You, my darling, are a mountain in that small body, old before young, screaming poetry.”

In the book’s second half, the historical falls away and is replaced by the fantastical, as our four women take a journey together through the places and periods of their lives, including Rome and Violet’s attempt to kill and cut short the tyrannical reign of Mussolini.

Saving Lucia is an undeniably strange and ethereal tale which treats fiction as fact, which is really the only way for the lives of four women – branded hysterical, institutionalised, and made by men into case studies – to be told.

Violet is a woman defined by an action which labelled her insane; Lucia a woman remembered for the men she knew and loved, and the schizophrenia which had her institutionalised for much of her adult life; and Anna O and Blanche as leading examples of hysteria – emotional excess historically and linguistically associated with the behaviour of women as defined by men.

Perhaps what best defines Saving Lucia, and what makes it such a tantalising and exhilarating read, is the freedom that it offers these women. Saving Lucia is not a history book. It is not a dry and stunted study of their lives. It is a transitory, flowing, abstract and strange, flitting and floating, broken and cracked narrative involving four fascinating and tragic women of history.

It is the character of Violet who encourages this thrilling narrative. While Lucia is our true narrator, and the lives of Anna O and Blanche are greatly probed and explored, it is the unrelenting, often childlike enthusiasm and energy of Violet Gibsom which carries this narrative and lends it that defining dreamlike quality.

Her story is hard to follow – it swerves and moves at a dizzying pace. Her mind races and keeping up with it is an enthralling challenge for much of the book. The imagination of Anna Vaught, weaving together the true stories of these four women into a surreal adventure tale through time and space, is matched by her sharp command of dialogue and pacing.

There is so much energy to be enjoyed here as her writing runs away with itself, especially when it’s in the hands of Violet. And when Vaught writes with the thoughts and voice of Lucia Joyce, we get to enjoy the sublime temper of a poet. Vaught, here, matches beat for beat the personalities of her women with astonishing deftness and confidence.

Her style switches on a dime, and not with a shallow affectation but true depth of concern and understanding. Her characters betray their values, flaws, and ideas through their actions and tone of voice as much as they do through the stories they tell.

Conclusion

In Saving Lucia we are offered a window into the lives and histories of four overlooked women who were defined by their status as institutionalised hysterics.

We are told a story of personal freedom, of the power of imagination and memory, a touching tale that speaks to the cracks in our own mental health. And while history forms the bricks of this tale, surrealism is its mortar – it is the thread that interweaves these beautiful and unbelievable tales of four very real and incredible women.

Getting started with book blogging, however, can be tricky. The most frustrating part being how to obtain review copies of books. And getting these review copies is important for a number of reasons:

• Review copies give you a chance to be extra relevant in the conversation. You can read the book before release, get your feelings and opinions down, and become a sought-after news source for that particular book.
• Review copies save you money. Being serious about book blogging means having to sink a lot of money into books, but if you can obtain ARCs, you can dive head-first into the world of book blogging without breaking the bank in the process.
• Review copies allow you the time to read and review a book. When reviewing a book that’s already out, there’s the creeping dread that, once you’re done, the world will have moved on. ARCs remove that dread.

So, the first step when getting into book blogging, besides setting up the blog itself, is knowing how to get your hands on advanced review copies (also known as ARCs, galleys, and proofs). Every good book blogger relies on ARCs to keep their blog afloat, relevant, and in the conversation. And here’s how to do it! Your first step to book blogging.

Read More:

• How To Start a Successful Book Blog in 9 Easy Steps
• Getting Started with Book Blogging: Picking a Niche
• How to Be a Successful Booktuber (10 Tips)
• Starting and Growing Your Bookstagram (With 200 Hashtags)

What are ARCs?

Also known as galleys or proofs, ARCs are free copies of an upcoming release which publishers send out to reviewers and bloggers.

They come in two forms: digital and physical. Digital ARCs are much easier to obtain, so it really helps if you have an eReader like a Kindle. In fact, having a Kindle is all but vital for being a good book blogger, since many publishers prefer sending digital ARCs.

Physical ARCs are usually only sent out by publishers that are in the same country as you, since international postage is pricey.

This type of ARC also comes in two forms: rough and finished. If it’s close to the publication date, you may receive a finished proof, which means it’s the same quality as the ones sold in bookshops. Unfinished or uncorrected proofs are in paperback and may contain typos etc (because they’re uncorrected).

When approaching a publisher for an ARC, they will often appreciate you asking for a digital, since it can be sent as a PDF via email and you can then simply download that PDF onto your eReader. However, if you’re in the same country, feel free to ask for a physical ARC since these are vital Instagram material.

Read More: How to Work from Home Efficiently

How to Request ARCs

There are three ways to request ARCs, and all are very simple and stress-free. Doing them in this order, however, is definitely the best approach.

1. Request them online

This is the simplest way to request ARCs, especially when you’re first starting out with book blogging. I’ve already mentioned more than once that you can reach out to publishers via email but, in actual fact, you often don’t even need to do that. Instead, there are two websites you can turn to as your middle-man: NetGalley and Edelweiss.

I’ve mentioned that ARCs are also known as galleys. Well, these galleys are often found on NetGalley. Not every publisher offers their books via NetGalley and, if they don’t, you’ll need to go down to step 2. But many do, and so it’s up to you to sign up as a member of NetGalley (it’s free) and then simply browse through their catalogue of review copies.

You can browse by publisher and by genre, look at the release date, and hit ‘request’. Requests can take a few days or even a week, and you may be rejected if it’s a book that’s in high demand.

Once you have your ARC/galley/proof downloaded to your eReader, happy reading! Only thing to remember is that, as well as your own book blog, you need to post a review on NetGalley.

For every book you download from NetGalley, make sure to post a copy of your blog’s review on the book’s NetGalley page with a link back to your blog (free publicity!). If you don’t do this, you’ll be rejected for galleys going forward. Book blogging is all about tit for tat: free copies for reliable and honest reviews.

Edelweiss works in almost exactly the same way as NetGalley though, I will confess, I rarely use it. NetGalley is the more popular site to turn to. But, if a book isn’t on NetGalley, definitely check Edelweiss before emailing publishers directly. Speaking of…

2. Approach publishers via email

Full disclosure: every single PR person that I have come to know via book blogging has turned out to be the kindest, sweetest, bestest person ever. What I mean is: don’t ever be afraid of reaching out to publishers for ARCs. They want to give them to you.

At first, it seems almost cheeky asking for a free copy of a book that isn’t even out yet. For bookworms, this is a dream come true. But what they’re getting in exchange is an honest review and free publicity from you. It’s a good deal.

The first thing you need to do is to get to know your publishers. Know which ones publish the genres and authors you love and want to review. Visit their site, check out their upcoming releases, note down a few that you’re interested in, and then find the person you need to reach out to.

Every publishing house has a page on its website – either in a drop-down menu, at the top, or at the bottom of their homepage — called ‘contact us’ or ‘press’ or something similar. Here you’ll find the email addresses you’re looking for. Copy the relevant email address and send over a friendly email requesting an ARC.

When emailing publishers, put in your subject line something like “ARC Request” or “Review Copy Request”. Feel free to add the name of the book as well. Then, in the body of the email, simply state who you are and add a link to your blog, then specify which book you’re hoping to obtain an ARC of.

If you’re worried about sending your first ARC request, fill your blog with a few reviews of recent books you’ve read, so that they can see the calibre of your writing. Most importantly though, don’t stress. As I said, publisher PR people are the best people.

Read More: Where to Find Freelance Writing Jobs Online

3. Use Twitter and Instagram

Publishers and their PR people are big on Twitter and Instagram. So, take a bit of time to find and follow them on these platforms. While you’re there, start following fellow book bloggers to fill up your community with good, helpful people. These are, after all, your people.

When it comes to Twitter, most PR people will have their DMs open and many will follow you back if you make it clear in your bio that you’re a book blogger/reviewer. Instagram DMs are always open, which makes everything simpler.

While these platforms aren’t as formal as emailing, most PR people and publisher pages are happy to receive messages requesting review copies via Twitter, making Twitter as valuable a tool as emailing when it comes to asking for ARCs.

It also allows you to build a more friendly and fun relationship with those awesome people who work for publishers. And, once you publish your review, make sure to share it via Twitter and tag the publisher (provided it’s a positive review, of course).

Twitter can be a toxic place, as many people often tell me. However, if you do as I do and only follow bookworms, you get the most warming and comfortable community you could ever ask for, and you’ll quickly find yourself spending more time on Twitter talking about books than you do actually reading books.

Building a Following

Book blogging is a hobby for many, but for some it can become a full-time job. Or, at the very least, it can get you a little money here and there. To get to this point, you’ll want to build a following. There are two ways to accomplish this: social media, and some Google savvy.

Building a social media presence is all about following and being followed by the right people. Getting your reviews retweeted by other bloggers and by publishers is the quickest way to get your name out there. From here, it’s a matter of being a regular tweeter who offers interesting book-related content and encourages healthy discussion. Also, make sure to tweet images of books often. Everyone loves that.

What I mean about Google savvy is knowing what books are going to be a big hit in the coming months and getting yourself a review copy. Put your review out a few days or a week before publication and people will start to search for reviews of the book on Google.

If your review is up, it’s yours they’ll find. The more people visit your site and read your reviews, the more Google’s algorithm will reward you and bump your reviews up the list.

Things to Know Before Taking a Crete Vacation

Before you head to Crete, you need to know how to get around, what to pack, and what the best places to visit are. All of that is covered for you right here! So make sure you’re fully prepared before your incredible Crete vacation. We recommend Airbnb if you’re looking for a really special place to stay in Crete.

What’s the weather like in Crete?

Crete, like the rest of Greece, has a really excellent climate. It never gets too cold, meaning travelling to Crete pretty much any time of year is an option. However, the height of summer does get pretty overbearing in both raw temperature and humidity, so it’s best to avoid July and August if possible.

This means that the best time to visit Crete is in the Spring and Autumn months. If you can plan your Crete vacation for April – June or September/October you’re going to have the best time. This is when the sky is blue, the days are long, and the heat isn’t yet too unbearable. However, if you do like your intense heat, there’s nothing stopping you from taking your Crete vacation in the height of summer.

Read More: Explore the 6 Cities on the Rhine River

Fun Facts About Crete

Crete is home to the minotaur and its labyrinth. The very real palace of Knossos, found just a short drive away from the capital of Heraklion, was home to the mythical King Minos, who fathered the minotaur and ordered the inventor Daedalus to build an elaborate labyrinth to contain the minotaur.

Zeus, king of the gods, was from Crete. In Greek mythology, Kronos the titan had a habit of eating his children (as depicted in Goya’s most famous artwork) thanks to a heavy onset of paranoia when it was foretold that his son would rise up to defeat him.

That son, who survived being eaten thanks to his savvy mother, was Zeus, and he was born in a cave on Mount Ida, the tallest mountain in Crete.

The capital city of Crete is named after Hercules. The name Hercules is actually the name the Romans gave to the famous demigod, and is now the name we all typically use. But his Greek name was Heracles, and the capital city of Crete, Heraklion, was named after him and its name literally means “Heracles’ City”.

Crete Packing List

Crete is an island nation in the Mediterranean, with clear blue skies, a rocky and rugged landscape, a lot to explore, and weather that is pleasant almost constantly. That means summer clothes, swimming attire, and a few different pairs of shoes.

Shoes are perhaps the most important thing to consider when packing for your Crete vacation. You’ll definitely need sandals or flip-flops for the beach, and even for light strolls around the city. However, you will be hiking, exploring ruins, and going off the beaten track, especially if you rent a car (more on that below) and for that you’ll want some sturdy hiking boots, even in the summer months.

As for clothes, make them light and breezy. If you’re visiting in the winter, consider a windbreaker or waterproof jacket. Otherwise, you’ll want t-shirts and shorts. And sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen. Liberal amounts of sunscreen. And some spare sunscreen.

Bring a backpack. You’ll be hiking, walking the beaches, strolling through the towns, visiting museums, and more. Crete is a holiday-maker’s dream because it encompasses everything we enjoy in a vacation: exploration, relaxation, and discovery. That means you need a strong and sturdy backpack to carry your water, spare shoes, a book, and all your other essentials.

Read More: Books to Read Before Visiting Rome

Must-Visit Historical Places in Crete

Here are some of the most beautiful historical places in Crete that you will not want to miss out on.

Knossos Palace

This is probably number one on everyone’s list of places to visit in Crete, and with good reason! As already mentioned, this ancient palace is said to have been home to King Minos, the Minotaur, and the labyrinth designed by Daedalus to contain the Minotaur. It is also a staggering collection of ancient Greek ruins that have stood for over 3,000 years!

Phaistos Palace

Crete is, unbelievably, where Europe’s oldest civilisation began. And Phaistos Palace was a city that went through several iterations through almost all of that history, existing for thousands of years. You can trace the history of Phaistos back to the Neolithic Era. When you visit Phaistos Palace, you’re travelling back to the earliest days of European civilisation.

Arkadi Monastery

This monastery, which has stood in one form or another since the 5th Century CE, is a beloved jewel of Crete. Originally built by Emperor Arcadius of the Byzantine Empire, this monastery has seen centuries of change and war in Crete. It was even used as a place for women and children to hide in safety as local Cretans rose up against the Ottoman Empire in 1866.

How to Travel Around Crete

Crete is an island nation made up of a few major cities (those being Heraklion, Rethymnon, Chania and Agios Nikolaos) but with so much historic and natural beauty spread out in-between. That means your best method of travelling and seeing everything during your Crete vacation is by hiring a car.

There are bus links between all of the previously mentioned cities, so if it’s the city life you’re looking to focus on, feel free to rely entirely on the buses. They’re cheap and easy to get, and they offer you great views of the picturesque countryside on your way from one city to the next.

However, as mentioned, so much of Crete’s majesty is hidden away outside the major cities. The most famous example being Knossos, an ancient palace built 3,000 years ago, which can be found a short drive away from Heraklion. The most stress-free way of getting to Knossos is by car. The same goes for Samaria Gorge, Balos Beach, and a lot of other unmissable places in Crete.

If you are looking to rent a car in Crete, which we do recommend, the best place to do so is Rental Center Crete. They offer a range of cars of different sizes based on your needs, and you can organise your pick up and drop off locations in advance in order to best plan your road trip around Crete.