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Welcome to By Her Shelf!

I’m Erica, and I judge books by their covers (and titles…and descriptions…and authors), because how else am I going to decide which ones are worth my time? The people who say you can’t judge a book by its cover would probably say you shouldn’t judge a lady by her bookshelf, either. Don’t listen to those people! Judging people’s book choices is how I found my tribe. I need to know we can read and discuss books together. If the book that spoke to me also spoke to you, then we need to speak to each other! I’m giving you permission to judge me by my shelf, the books and book related content, products, and services I will feature on By Her Shelf.

 

While book recommender extraordinaire Anne Bogel assures her podcast listeners “we don’t get bossy on this show,” I’m here to assure you I’m all about being bossy. I LOVE telling people what to read. In fact, my childhood dream was to be a professional book reviewer, librarian, and author (and relationship therapist, but that’s neither here nor there). While I still haven’t found anyone to pay me for sitting around reviewing and talking about books, By Her Shelf fills my need to tell people what to read nicely.

On By Her Shelf, my co-contributors Christina, Alex, and I will discuss books, reading and writing with each other and our readers. I wanted to combine the best aspects of book bloggers, booktubers, and bookstagramers with what I wanted but wasn’t finding anywhere else. Like me and my contributors, this site is a mixture of genres and topics, but I promise everything will revolve around books. Every post will be categorized and tagged so you can easily find the genres or features you want to read.

What kinds of books and book related posts will be featured?
You’ll see posts about romances, thrillers, women’s fiction, “literary fiction,” horror (mostly just Stephen King), memoir, humor, and non-fiction, and Christian Living from me. Every now and then, I’ll pick a book that’s so far out of my wheelhouse it’s a triangle, but it’s so good we will all deal. My critique partner and good friend Christina will post on women’s fiction, historical, non-fiction and contemporary fiction, with possible sprinkles from other genres. My college friend Alex will post primarily on YA books, trends and authors. You probably won’t find non-fiction about politics unless it’s a biography/memoir or about an issue one of us is curious about.

An aside about diversity: Diversity in books is all the rage right now. Everyone is looking for diverse characters and authors, and it’s wonderful. My contributors and I are a diverse group who reads widely. We are Black, White, and Hispanic ethnically and read in many different genres. My fellows are old married women (;-)) and I’m the cool single friend (:D). We have different careers, live in different cities, and have different sized families (two without kids, one with). We hit some of the diversity points, but not all, in life and in books. We all live in the Southeastern US, in Florida and Georgia. None of us are LGBTQIA. None of us are male. Neither the things that make us different, nor the ways in which we are similar, detract from the fact we are all voracious readers who love slipping into someone else’s skin and walking around. We bring different lived and learned experiences to the page, and I’m excited to see how that affects what we get out of books. We will always strive to be respectful of others and want our readers to show that same level of respect. Comments that don’t meet this basic criteria will be deleted.
What kinds of posts can you expect?

Page to Screen: Discussing TV series or movie adaptations of books.

Get in My Kindle: Upcoming releases we’re excited about.

Required Reading: Books we think everyone should have to read.

Grab and Gab: Books we want to discuss with other readers. I’m hoping these will be some of the most interactive posts where we ask questions or vent (we’ll warn you if there are spoilers and please do the same in comments).

You Oughta Know: Reading and book related content, products, or services we think readers should know about.

Gateway Books: Books we would recommend to new readers of a genre or those unfamiliar with the genre.

FOMO Books: The most buzzed about books, already released, that we missed. Readers will vote whether or not the book is worth a read.

Writing Wednesday: Any topic about writers and writing.

Also, we will post, book reviews, cover reveals, author interviews, guest posts, and posts on hot topics in books/reading.

Can writers submit books/content to be featured on By Her Shelf?
Yes. Authors can submit a request via my contact me page or direct email (submission page coming soon!). Please send your name, content title, a brief blurb, and what type of post you’d like me to consider–review, cover reveal, interview, excerpt, etc.–to me at mz[dot]zeyzey2[at]gmail[dot]com. You can also send suggestions of book related sites, blogs, podcasts, or YouTub channels for us to feature to this email address as well.

One last thing. I’m an Amazon Associate. I earn money from qualifying purchases if you use my links. It’s another way to feed my book fund and introduce you to your new favorite read. I won’t provide links to books my contributors and I are not interested in and/or think readers will be interested in. I provide links to support the books and authors we love, and to live my dream of being paid to recommend books in a small way.