Coffee and cake, essential to deep. thoughts!
11th March 2023

Blogging and Social Media

By Stephen
Coffee and cake, essential to deep thoughts!

Coffee and cake, essential to deep thoughts!

Just had a week off work and putting out my regular newsletter and it’s given me time to reflect on how I want to use the interconnected web of my blog, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Ko-Fi, the newsletter, and Patreon (phew!).

To begin with there are the three websites (at the moment); Big Bearded Bookseller, Indie Bookshops, Indie Publishers, and yes I know I’ve been concentrating on this site but it’s time to make sure that all the information on the other two is up to date and then mirror anything I put on this site about indie bookshops and publishers on the respective sites.

As for this blog, it will continue to have a little bit of everything on it, somewhere to write a longer post, all my reviews, all the author and illustrator interviews, some tarot, some bits about music and film, some photography, recipes and cooking, all the art manifesto, and all the indie bookshop and indie publisher information.

A general catch all, though it won’t have all the content on it, that can be found on various other platforms.

I do have other websites (domains) that I may work on once I’ve got this to where I feel comfortable, but right now they are all on hiatus with their content being added to this main blog instead.

My Twitter (@indiebookshopuk) will be mainly book related, pretty anything to do with the bookish world. Bits about publishers, agents, editors, authors, books, bookshops, bloggers, but it will also be a place where you can hear about my day in general, where I just blether on about various things.

Then there’s the Instagram (@big.bearded.bookseller) where all the random pictures I take on my phone will live, though it will mainly be books, cats, tarot, and food. This is the place to go for practically all the tarot and cat content if that’s what you like to see, but this will also eventually have all my book reviews on it as well.

My Substack newsletter will still come out every Friday1Unless ill, on holiday, or otherwise inconvenienced Still a general look at what I’ve been up to in the past week, lists of recently added indie bookshops and indie publishers, new books coming up, events and submissions, any book news that I’ve got to share, a review/bookshop feature/publisher feature, and then some thoughts on what I’m planning for the coming week.

Ko-Fi is next, other than a way that you can say thanks and help cover some of my costs this is where all my tarot content goes, including where you can get a reading if you want one. There will be other bits here and there but this is. the world of my Tarot and esoteric exploration.

Facebook, what does anyone do with Facebook really? May just turn this into where I friend authors only and that means I’ve got somewhere less cluttered to see what’s going on with the writers of my favourite pastime, not sure still but this sounds like the best thing to do.

Finally there’s Patreon where I’ll be talking about short stories, adding a lot of public domain short stories, and publishing any short stories that get submitted and I love2these will be behind a Patreon subscription to help the authors get paid, it will also have various tiers to recognise other parts of my blogging and web presence.

I’ll be using the rest of the weekend to start putting together the bits that are needed for the sites to be differentiated and writing a plan of action on how to develop and get things sorted.


If you want to help and support this blog and my other projects (Indie Publishers and Indie Bookshops) you could become a Patreon which would help pay for my hosting, domain names, streaming services, and the occasional bag of popcorn to eat while watching films.

If you can’t support with a monthly subscription a tip at my Ko-Fi is always appreciated, as is buying things from my Ko-Fi Shop.

You can always email me on contact@bigbeardedbookseller.com with any suggestions.

Liked it? Take a second to support Stephen on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
  • 1
    Unless ill, on holiday, or otherwise inconvenienced
  • 2
    these will be behind a Patreon subscription to help the authors get paid