 What's ya can booktube? My name's Cam, and welcome back to another video. I've been gone for a little while, but I'm back, baby. No one fucking cares. First things first, I hope your Christmas and New Year's was fantastic. Mine was mediocre. So I have been gone for a couple of weeks, mainly just because I want to change things up on my channel in the new year, and I've been using some of that time to get the planning for that done. But I'll get to that a bit later. But I've also been quite sick. I still am a little bit up until a couple of days ago. It actually felt like someone from Mortal Kombat had done a fatality on my fucking throat. So that was fantastic. But here I am, back in business, back in the heart seat, baby. I'm going to be telling you about some of the goals I have for 2020. That way, at the end of the year, I can reflect on this video and laugh at what a monumental failure I am. Is that that's too many self-deprecating? OK, I know if you do too many, it gets a little bit sad. I'm going to be breaking down my goals into three sections, and that's going to be writing, reading, and the channel itself. Because I have some things that are going to be changing quite a lot on the channel this year. I'm excited about. Before I get into those three sections of goals I have for the year, I want to just tell you something really quickly that I feel like I need to get out of the way. You might remember last year I started PageNomad.com, which it's not wool shop publishing much, but it is bookish clothing. And what most people don't know is that having a commerce store, it's not just like the pagenomad.com. It's not just like a red bubble store or an Etsy store. It's an actual store on its own. It's a commerce store. It comes with quite a lot of fees and it can be quite expensive. And I'm just going to be blunt. It has been a pretty big failure so far. It's I've gotten bugger all sales and I've tried soft selling on my videos. I've tried hard selling, but hard selling is something that I just I refuse to do. I hate seeing it in other people's videos and I don't want it in mind. I've tried running actual ads as well on like Facebook and Twitter and stuff. And it's just nothing seems to be working at this point in time. Maybe the designs aren't as good as I thought they were. I don't know. I just don't know what the reason is. But basically, yeah, to put it bluntly, it's it's been a failure. It's been bad. And that's a bummer, you know, that sucks, but that's life. It is what it is. It's OK. So, yeah, this this honestly is not a sales tactic whatsoever. But at the end of the month and the first week of February, I'm going to be shutting it down. I'm going to be cutting the cord. I'll keep the page nomad name, of course. I'm going to keep that. But the store itself is going down. So if you do actually want anything on there, this is literally your last opportunity to get them. What are you doing? I'm writing. But you'll be when you start punching those keys. So first things first, my writing goals for the year. It's no secret. I've been pretty slack with my writing for the last couple of years, I guess. Shit. I've been pretty slack. But this year, I really do want to give it a give it a better shot. I guess I mean, I could say that every year. But hopefully this year, I can give it a better shot. I'm going to be trying to hold myself accountable a bit more. I still don't want to set the goal of, like, I have to write this many words every day. I just I just don't think that's completely realistic. But I am going to try and do at least five thousand words a week. More specifically, the the actual goal that I want to set for 2020 is that I want to finish two books by the end of the year. Now, to some people, that might not seem like a lot to others. That might be too optimistic. But I've actually already got both those planned out and both those two books started. One of them quite a bit. You might know I've mentioned in past videos, Descend Seven, the horror psychological horror book. That one's already got quite a lot of it done, I guess. And the other one is a horror anthology. And hopefully I can finish those before the end of the year and get started on something outside of the horror genre, because I have a lot of other plans as well. One more goal I want to set in regards to writing for the year is that I want to actually host some kind of big, pretty big writing, short story writing, competition or event on my channel. You know, like, readathons on booktube. I want it to be a bit like that. I guess like a write-a-thon, except a bit more competitive and with a prize, I want it to be a big deal. I'm hoping it can be something that brings the writing community together in the same way that readathons do with the reading community. That's my plan anyway. I haven't really given much thought into that and I'm probably going to be looking for co-hosts when I do that. But that's something for later on. Reading goals is a pretty easy one because I've never been a person to really set many goals in regards to reading. Reading is a hobby for me. It's just a fun. It's nothing more. And I refuse to make it anything more than that. That's why I don't have a reading challenge on Goodreads. I mean, if you like setting yourself a challenge or a goal in regards to reading for the year, that makes it more enjoyable for you. Cool. That's completely fine. Me personally, it just adds pressure and makes it feel more like a chore when it should feel more like just a fun hobby. That's that's just what reading is to me. But with that said, I do have a goal that I want to kind of set out for myself this year. And that is to at least get out of my comfort zone a little bit and read something other than just fantasy or horror. Not because I feel like I have to mind you. This isn't something I feel I'm obligated to do, but rather I think it'll actually be fun to maybe expose myself to something else. And I'm not talking about like literotica or anything like that. I think I've given absurd erotic stories more screen time on this channel than genres that I actually thoroughly thoroughly enjoy. I've given them more than a fair shot at this point. I'm talking more like contemporary romance genres and subgenres like that, that maybe I've been a bit snobby about. I don't feel like I've gone out and said that I think certain genres are worse than others, but I haven't given them a chance just based off the limited experiences I've had with those genres. And I just want to just want to give it a bit more of an opportunity to maybe there's something that I really enjoy, because I really like romance movies and rom-coms. But when it comes to romance stories, I'm very rarely interested. A lot of the ones I hear about, especially on Booktube, just kind of sound like contrived garbage. Maybe a lot of them are, but I could also be completely wrong. But yeah, that's that's my plan. That's my reading goals for 2020 is to get out of my comfort zone and hopefully read some stuff that I wouldn't normally do. Now, the one I am, I guess, most excited to tell you about is my channel goals for the year. I've been trying to do something with my videos kind of recently. I've been trying to steer them in a certain direction, but they're still not quite what I want to try and do with my videos. I know this all sounds pretty cryptic, just bear with me. I want my videos to feel a bit more like video essays. I guess video essays are something I thoroughly enjoy. I think they're like one of the best things on YouTube. And it's something I've wanted to do in a bookish sphere for a very long time. And I've considered doing a different channel to do it. But, you know, that's just not manageable. I can barely find the time to upload content on one channel. And what this means is that my videos going forward are going to feel and look a bit different. And some main differences you're going to find is that they will be a bit more scripted because without scripting videos, it's always been hard to get my exact thoughts across. But I've also not really liked the idea of doing scripts because it just feels too stilted. With that said, I feel like I'm comfortable enough now doing videos and making content that I can make it feel natural now with a script. I can still deviate a little bit from the script if I want to. But it is going to help out a lot more. I want to make it clear there's going to be just as many jokes. And my personality is still going to be very much infused in that content. So I'm pretty confident in saying I don't think it's just going to get boring. But you're going to see my face a lot less in these videos. You're still going to see it. You're welcome. But there's going to be so much more editing now. It's going to be crazy. Like I said, there's still going to be lots of jokes, but there's going to be a whole lot of more images and videos. And just stuff just over the top of this video to make it more visually engaging as well. I'm really excited to see how it goes. And I hope you guys like it. If not, I guess that's just just how it is. It's just something I want to try. I feel like every time I finish a video talking about a topic or a book or some kind of writing or reading thing, I always feel like there's so much I missed. And that's not a trend I want to keep going. So videos going forward are going to be quite a bit longer. The editing is going to be a whole lot more than usual. And with both of those things in mind, I should point out that my videos are probably not going to be as frequent as they used to be. It used to be two a week, usually without fail. Going forward now to probably be like one video a week, maybe more. And I'm pretty sure it won't be less. But if I was to give you an estimate, I would say it would probably be about one video a week because editing already takes me so damn long and it's going to just be way more now. But that's the whole thing. I want the videos to be higher quality and I feel like they will be. It's just going to take a lot more effort, a whole lot more time to script them to record them to and to edit them is going to be the big one. But yeah, that's that's basically the update. I'm I'm excited. I'm a little bit scared just in case people won't like this new format. But I guess we'll see. In fact, you're going to be able to see an example of what it is exactly I'm talking about tomorrow. I'm going to be uploading my first it's not a video essay, but the style is going to be like a video essay tomorrow. I won't tell you what it's about, but it's going to be a perfect example of what you can expect from my videos in future. So keep an eye out for that one. But they have it, folks, ladies and gents. That's what you can expect from my channel this year. That that's the gist of it. Don't be afraid to let me know what you think of the stuff I've mentioned. And let me know how your Christmas and New Year's was in the comments below. Hopefully a bit better than mine. Like I said, it feels like I've been swallowing razor blades. I really do appreciate you guys sticking with my channel for so long. And I really do appreciate, you know, hitting 10,000 subscribers before the New Year was just incredible. It's not something I I seeked out like I didn't go asking for it or anything. It just kind of happened. And it was probably one of the best gifts I could have possibly gotten. I really do appreciate that. You guys really are the best. So thank you so much. And yeah, to keep an eye for tomorrow's video, I hope you like it. And I'll catch you later. Never act wild. Never low key on a profile. Catching feelings isn't all. Let me show you how it all spins.