Introducing the Growing Bookworms Weekly Newsletter

This post introduces my new Growing Bookworms email newsletter, which focuses on book reviews and literacy related news for children and young adults.

I've had feedback from friends that they like my blog, but don't have time to visit every day, or just don't think of it because their lives are so busy. Since I started the blog I've had an option by which people can sign up to receive my blog posts each day via email using a service called Feedblitz. Currently I have about 35 subscribers who are dedicated enough to receive my daily Feedblitz updates - many of them are close friends or family members. But receiving daily emails is quite a commitment, and not one that I've wanted to push on anyone.

What I've wanted to do for a while is provide a weekly email newsletter that focuses on my blog's core content: the book reviews and literacy and reading related news. However, I have some experience with publishing newsletters (though my work), and I know that starting one from scratch would require quite a lot of work.

Therefore, I was very pleased when I learned recently that Feedblitz had added a newsletter publication feature. This feature makes it easy for me to send out mailings once a week (or on whatever time frame I choose), and include only the posts that I select. I can also customize the graphics a bit, and include my own introductory text. I think this is going to be a perfect vehicle to let me meet my desire to publish a weekly email newsletter, without adding too much to my workload. (Plus it's free, with only very tiny text ads included by Feedblitz at the bottom of each email)

And so ... drumroll, please! ... I'm happy to announce the commencement of my new weekly email newsletter, which I've named the Growing Bookworms Newsletter. The newsletter won't contain all of my blog content. Instead, it will focus on my reviews and on literacy and reading-related content from newspapers and from around the Kidlitosphere.

I received some truly wonderful feedback (thank you all so much!) to a post that I put up earlier in the week, in which I expressed my wish to focus my blog content better to meet my goal. And my goal, in its simplest form, is to help parents and teachers and librarians and other concerned parties to find resources that will help them to help kids to grow up loving books. My hope is that this new Growing Bookworms Newsletter will help, by making it easier for people who don't have time to visit the blogs every day to keep up with this type of content.

My expectation is that providing content for the newsletter will help me to focus more of my blog content in these key areas. I'm mulling over other changes, too, to make the blog a more useful resource for people (and to keep it manageable and fun for myself). I'll keep you posted on those changes. But I am moving forward with the newsletter in the meantime. If you would like to subscribe, please click this link to go to the Feedblitz subscription form (or use the form at the very top of my right-hand sidebar). Thanks so much for your support! And happy reading.

UPDATED to add (with thanks to Megan Germano for asking the question): The newsletter won't have any content that isn't also on the blog, so if you already read the blog, there's no need to subscribe. (So, I suppose, I'm announcing the newsletter in this post to the audience that has the least use for it - but I have to start somewhere). I would still love for people to visit the blog directly - I think that people who visit online are much more likely to comment and join in the discussion. The newsletter is there as a backup, and a way to reach people who, for whatever reason, would prefer receiving email to directly visiting the blog. Thanks, Megan!