Carpe Librum Celebrates 20 Years of Blogging

I have another major milestone to celebrate in 2025 because this month (drum roll)...

Carpe Librum turns 20 years old!

I'd love to share how it all started, what's changed over that time and offer a giveaway so that we can celebrate this accomplishment together.

I've come a long way since this blog started in 2005 under the name My Four Bucks. Often when people offer their opinion they call it their 2 cents but I always have more than 2 cents to contribute and in order to share it, My Four Bucks was born. At the time, I posted on topics that took my fancy however my first official book review was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Since then, I have published an astonishing 1,126 book reviews, can you believe it?

In August 2012, My Four Bucks underwent a significant rebrand and was relaunched as Carpe Librum (Seize the Book). In May 2014, I joined the team of book bloggers writing for Boomerang Books and also became one of their affiliates. Over the next 12-18 months I included affiliate links with all of my reviews but it failed to generate any income.

In 2015 Carpe Librum turned 10 and in April 2016 I was excited to launch my current logo. In 2018 and 2019 I was asked to be a Digital Storyteller and Blogger for the Melbourne Writers Festival which was a highlight and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In September 2020 I became a Booktopia affiliate, but again, this wasn't successful in the long term.

In the early years, I began receiving requests from authors to review their books on Carpe Librum. I also began to send publishers my reviews of their new releases and after a number of months, started requesting advance reader copies (ARCs) for myself. I was thrilled when they said yes and they soon started asking me to review ARCs and sending books in the mail. This increased over time and lead to a lucrative few years receiving all kinds of unsolicited books in the post every week just in the hope of a review.

Let's check out some stats from the last two decades of blogging:
Number of posts published: 1,596
Number of reviews published: 1,126
Number of blog comments: 3,280
Number of giveaways: 89

Number of books given away: 133
Number of author interviews: 51
Number of email subscribers: 795
Number of reading challenges completed: 51
1 Million views achieved: December 2017
2 Million views achieved: September 2023
3 Million views achieved: May 2025
Most popular book review: Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth (32,447 visits)

More recently, the number of unsolicited books in the mail from publishers has declined significantly over the past year or so and other Australian book bloggers agree it's the end of an era. I can request new releases on NetGalley (NG) however I still prefer to read print copies over e-books so I'm not an active NG reviewer. I've been enjoying the additional reading time to pursue the never ending list of back catalogue books and have still managed to enjoy some incredible new releases from publishers. The fact that I'm not reviewing as many ARCs and new releases as I used to could have had a detrimental effect on my traffic but that hasn't been the case at all.

What's next? I've stayed true to the books I like to read and haven't been tempted to dip my toe into the highly popular pool of romantasy novels that are dominating the catalogues at the moment. I don't spend much time on Instagram and don't feel any desire to join the BookTok community. Yet despite this, readers are still finding my reviews and continue visiting my little corner of the internet at Carpe Librum. Last month I achieved 3 Million hits and I don't know of any other Australian book blogger who has reached this milestone; but if you have, please let me know below, I'd love to congratulate you on your success!

It's been a thoroughly enjoyable 20 years and I've never considered slowing down or stepping away from my passion for a moment. Reading and reviewing books fills my cup, so thanks to all of my subscribers and readers. Some of you have been with me since the very beginning, while others have stuck around after entering a giveaway, or pop back in from time to time to see what I've been reading. If you're reading this, it means we share a love of books and the written word, and I appreciate that while you're reading my words here, you're taking precious time away from your book. Carpe Librum!

Giveaway

This giveaway has now closed. Enter below for your chance to win a $50AUD gift card from Dymocks. If you don't have access to a Dymocks store I'll arrange a gift card of the same value from your preferred bookseller to be emailed to you. Entries are open internationally and close at midnight AEST Monday 30 June 2025. Good luck!