Twinja Book Reviews Year in Review

So since Twinja Book Reviews is on Blogger and not Wordpress, we decided to do our blog in review manually!

We've had a really great year talking about our favorite authors, favorite blogs, hosting awesome events, attending awesome events!

Can you guys believe we've been viewed over 75,000 times? We're not a high profile blog, so that's kind of cool. And it's about 5 times more than our stats for last year, which ranked in at 15,000!

Followers aren't really anything we worry ourselves to death too much. Followers come and go based off interests, boredom, inability to actively use internet all the time, we maybe even loose some when people enter contests to follow, then unfollow once the contests are over.

But it doesn't stop us from celebrating the many books that feature diverse characters, both new and old(Preferably old. There are too many books out there that have been out for your eyes to consume, but a lot of people rely on new releases to get their fixes.) both self published and traditional.

We've read over 65 books between the two of us, and written over 55 reviews between the both of us.

Guinevere's fastest read was: Portrait of Us by A.Destiny in one day

Libertad's fastest read was: Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman in the course of two days

Libertad's Favorite Read of the Year: Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Guinevere's Favorite Read of The Year: The City of Death by Sarwat Chadda

We can probably credit some of our traffic to the events we offered this year, which included(In order of date):

Diversify Your Steam Punk

Twinja Book Reviews' Favorite's Month

Black Speculative Fiction Month

Twinja Book Reviews Annual Diversity Month

But let us not forget some of the great guest posts we've gotten to write for authors, blogs, and even a audio interview(In order or date)!

Living diversely isn't hard. Writing diversely shouldn't be either. w/ Scarlett Van Dijk

A Kind Voice on Book(We're the last interview. It takes about an hour and seven minutes) w/ BookLove and Eden Blackwell

Where are all the books that reflect the world I live in? w/ Natasha Hanova

We don't just need diverse books. We need to market them too. w/ Diverse Book Tours and the awesome authors who re-hosted it.

The Cybils Featured November Bloggers

Are You Sure? w/ Dennis R. Upkins

I need diverse main characters w/ Madhuri Blaylock

Black Girl With A Spanish Name w/ Latin@s in Kid Lit

Women in Love w/ Gay YA

We've gotten to connect with a lot of bloggers and authors at BEA/BookCon which included many of the authors we featured this year(which ironically we were too excited to blog about)!

 Libertad w/ Ellen Oh and Lamar Giles

Ellen Oh w/ The Twinjas

 Libertad w/ Mike Jung and Diana Pho

As well as KidLitCon which there are too many faces that touched us, too many pictures to capture in the one post.

 Guinevere w/ Kelan O' Connell-Libertad w/ Nathalie Mvondo

 Guinevere w/ Hannah Gomez and Sheila Ruth

 Libertad presenting- The Twinjas w/ Tanita Davis

 The Twinjas- The Twinjas with "Pam Loves Books"

 The Twinjas w/ Jewel Parker Rhodes

 The Twinjas w/ Kathryn Otoshi and Maya Gonzalez

Surprisingly, demographic wise, most of our traffic came from The United States, France and China. Most people found us via Facebook, Tumblr, Google Plus, or actual Google searches. Our biggest event was Diversity Month, and continues to be our biggest event since last year.

Kelly Jensen of Stacked Books wrote "Fatness and Diversity in YA"

She was our most viewed post with over 2300 views.

But here are some other great posts that you guys came out of the woodwork to read.

Twinja Book Reviews Top Ten Viewed Posts(In order of page views):

Never Too Young To Be A Hero Book List for Black Teens in YA Spec Fic-Over 1,100

Why We Need Diverse Book Bloggers-Over 460

Interview w/ Steve Dos Santos-Over 430

Interview w/ Barry Lyga-Over 380

The Invisible Latino Book List for Black Latinos in Spec Fic-Over 320

My Steps To Worldbuilding and Character Creation Guest Post by Dennis Upkins-Over 310

The Invisible Poor Guest Post w/ Librarian & Blogger Faythe-A wee bit over 300

Blogoversary Interview w/ Romance Novels in Color-Nearly 300

A tie between:

Middle Graders Are Awesome Too! Book List of Middle Grade Black Kids in Spec Fic-About 290

&

Diana Pho/Beyond Victoriana's Interview for our Diversify Your Steampunk Event-About 290

We've reached about half of our goals for our blog for last year. We've been busy, so we're not sweating it!

We hope everyone will stick with us next year! We plan to have new events next year, that will be inclusive to main characters with disabilities, main characters of Asian ancestry, main characters who are Latino of any race, main characters who identify as LGBTQIA and Quiltbag just to start. Many more have the possibility of becoming events, even though we will always host Diversity Month!

We wish you all a Happy New Year! Two High Kicks for Diversity!