WHY AND HOW DID I START BOOKSTAGRAM — THE PURPOSE

Starting Out As A Book Blogger

Bookstagram isn’t just a community to me. It feels like home. I started my journey on the first of May, 2022. At that time, I was going through a rough phase in my relationship. I was also an intern at a publishing house in Delhi — working remotely from my hometown.

One day, my mentor put up a status on WhatsApp, where she mentioned about “review copies”. That was when I first heard the term “review copies”. I still remember, it was a poetry book by a foreign author, named “Solitude”. I had used my mother’s bangles to decorate and will make a post about it later.

My First Free Review Copy

My first post was a review of the book “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover. I had seen it a lot on Instagram Ads, and I ordered it just out of curiosity. It took me three days to finish the book while I researched a lot about Bookstagram. I asked my mentor a lot about how Bookstagram worked, and she told me that when you feature your page all around books and reading, it is called Bookstagram.

I remember, there were a total of fifteen review copies for the poetry book, which ended up becoming my first review copy as well. When I first received the copy, it literally felt like an award. I had finished reading it within the next two hours. And posted my review later that night.

Some of the major things I researched included how to start a Bookstagram, what to post on Bookstagram, top 10 Bookstagram accounts in India, how to get free books, email address of this publisher, and what not. I used to write everything down in my notebook.

The Purpose Behind Starting Bookstagram

Coming to the purpose behind starting this page, trust me — it was just to divert my mind from the ongoing issues in my life, as well as sharing my love for reading. Throughout the months of May, June and July, I reviewed multiple books on my page which I had previously read. Some were The Palace Of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, Love In Lockdown by Chloe James, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and many others.

Tits And Bit From My Journey

I used to think about how other bloggers always got these many likes from people, about followers, shares and all that stuff. When I actually got into the game, I realised that it comes to you — as naturally as it could. But the only condition is remaining constant and adding value. When you remain constant, say, posting 7 days a week, Instagram has no other option but to push your content up. By adding value, you increase the time which people spend on your post, by liking, sharing, saving or commenting on it. This gives the algorithm a signal that your content is actually good, and people like it, therefore it is pushed upwards.

When I started Bookstagram, I started using each and every audio that repeatedly came onto my feed, maybe because I felt that this video could be mine as well. Back then, I was looking for external validation deeply, and I got just that when people used to engage with my posts. So I kept going on and on, the numbers were small, just 2-4 likes in the beginning—but even they mattered a lot.

Slowly, everything fell into place, and I came to be known as “Bibliophile Maniac” on Instagram. To read more of my journey, hit the blue button on my Instagram.