Book Lady YouTube Channel - First Thoughts

I started a new YouTube channel… a bold move for a woman who is not good at speaking!

Linda Jo Martin, resting during a long hike in North Idaho.

This came from one of my videos – during a hike on the North Idaho Centennial Trail in 2014. Learn More

I’ve always had problems with speaking. I think my mind is wired to write but not to speak. This could be due to my early childhood experience of letting my amazing and personable older sister do most of the talking while I listened, followed, and tried to learn whatever she knew.

There are days I wonder why I did this – why I am putting myself through the videography wringer to produce videos of me talking about books.

Well, here’s why.

For years I’ve said “I’m a writer, not a talker.”

You can look at my videos and see how frightened I am. That’s pathetic! Is it stage fright?

I want to overcome that.

I want to speak normally – even to a camcorder.

I hereby challenge myself to just get over it – and to love the camera and enjoy my book reviews.

So, what did I do when I started my channel? I checked out the other book reviewers on YouTube.

How intimidating! Most are cute, gorgeous, or both, and very young… college students and even high school students. I love that they are loving books! I admire their video prowess. Very impressive stuff!

Come to find out there’s a huge “booktuber” community within YouTube. These young people are putting out videos like “End of Month Recap” and “Bookshelf Tours” and “Bookhauls” – where they show everyone the books they recently acquired.

Follow Linda Jo Martin, Book Lady’s board BookTubers on Pinterest.

I envision my book review channel to be somewhat different. I will spend most of my time reviewing books, and many of them (but not all) will be Christian books. So far I haven’t found anyone else reviewing Christian books effectively on YouTube. If you know of someone, please inform me in the comment section of this post – I’d like to meet others!

My “thing” in book review is to research the books I’ve read from a writer’s perspective. I want to know more about the authors, who they are and why they wrote their books.

If the book is about a particular place or time, I want to know more about that.

If it is a medical memoir, I’ll need to know more about the ailment(s) described.

I love to do the research!

Aside from that, I can’t be a cute 25-year-old booktuber because I’m older than that.

Considerably older.

I won’t let age stop me. One of my friends said, “You’ve got the edge.” That made me feel hopeful.

My other reason for wanting to review books on YouTube comes from my years of working for Squidoo.Com… where I reviewed many books and often looked for YouTube videos about those books to include on my pages there. [Update: That site shut down in 2014 and in the future, my book reviews will be posted on this blog and other sites I own.]

Subscribe to the Book Lady Channel on YouTube.

Sadly, there are many books that have never been reviewed at YouTube. I want to do my part to fill in the gap.

My videos are not professional… I am just now learning how to edit them better. I also don’t have a professional camera – it is just a hand-held camcorder… without even an external microphone jack. But I believe in starting where you are, and learning as you go. That, I can do. Better video equipment will come when the time is right.

That said, I will now let you see my fledgling videos – the first two. I am still working on the third and will post it here on my blog when it is ready. The third video is an actual book review (with lots of research) on a book about Christian missionaries in China: Green Leaf in Drought. Thus far that video seems too long, and I’m doing a lot of editing.

My first video was fairly easy – it is about what I’m reading now. When I made the video two weeks ago, I was still reading Green Leaf in Drought.

Please subscribe to my channel! Book Lady Channel at YouTube

My second video is about the mission statement I wrote for the Book Lady Channel. At that time, I was still worrying about whether or not having a book review channel was a good idea. Since then I’ve prayed more about it and been told it is approved by the Lord. (I know, I should have asked about that before making any videos, but I’m a new Christian and still learning!)

Something I need to read:

How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck - good videography book

I’m reading this book so next time I try to make videos they won’t suck quite so bad.

So, that’s it for my Book Lady YouTube Channel introduction. As I create new videos I’ll be posting them here on my blog.

Update: 2015 – I’m taking a hiatus from video making while I gain skills and learn to make them better. I’m reading books, and took a couple classes at Lynda.com – one was to learn to use my new video editing software, and the other was to learn to make mini-documentaries. I have a video-in-progress about the Gaiser Conservatory at Manito Park, in Spokane.

Update: 2016 – I’m planning to get back into the videography side of my creativity this year. Let’s see what comes of it.