Subsequent to last month’s blog about my new YouTube obsession, I successfully launched my BookTube channel on 1st May, with my first three videos going live on the same day.

I publicised the launch on multiple different social medial platforms and online communities I’m a part of, as well as to all my friends and family members. And the response was great! I got quite a few views, more subscribers than I expected, and several lovely comments, either on the videos themselves or via email or text directly to me.

It’s great to know that I have so many wonderful friends and supporters, who are keen to encourage me in my creative pursuits, and I’m very grateful to everyone who responded and also who forwarded on the information about the channel to others who might be interested.

It was a great public start to a project that has already brought me a huge amount of joy and satisfaction in the preparation stages.

I’m hoping to continue to create a monthly schedule of content for many months to come.

But I’m a bit stuck as to how to reach more people. As mentioned, the initial response was more than I could hoped for – but all the comments (and I suspect most of the views) came from people who already know me.

Now that the instant burst of enthusiasm from my friends and family is over, I’m basically expecting tumbleweed in terms of ongoing engagement – and I don’t know what to do about that.

With all my creative projects to date, the biggest stumbling block is finding an audience outside of the people who already know and support me. And this one is no different. I’m also aware that my approach to content creation isn’t necessarily best designed to attract new viewers (the books I’m choosing to highlight are not necessarily recent or popular, and my reviews videos are a bit long…).

But I’m having fun with it. And I want to continue having fun with it. And, you never know – other viewers like me (I’m making content that’s very similar to the kind of BookTube content I most enjoy – and those creators have found an audience, after all) might find me!

So I’m going to keep making my videos the way I want to make my videos. And I’m going to keep advertising them in the spaces I feel comfortable. And we’ll just have to see how it goes.