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You might remember that a little
while ago I wrote: This Post asking if book blogging was on the way out, or, as
I put it, had fallen out of fashion.
The post proved popular and
people had a lot to say – not only in blog comments, but on Twitter and via
Email, so I decided to post a follow-up post here today for anyone who read the
original post and was interested in finding out more.
In my initial post I commented
that over the summer months I had seen a drop in visitors to the blog and many
of you agreed that this year summer saw a slowdown in the blogging world. I’m
not complaining too much – weather wise we had one of our best summers in
years. But the summer slowdown made me reconsider my summer spotlight; in
future I may take some time off from blogging during the summer months and
maybe do a summer round-up instead of blogging all summer long.
The thing about the summer
slowdown aspect of blogging though, is that it seems to have continued into
autumn – maybe traffic and comments have picked up a little, but I still feel
like the book blogger heyday is behind us.
Maybe I’m wrong. I still love blogging, but looking through the list of
bloggers I follow, I see that a lot of bloggers (some who were very prominent
bloggers when I first started blogging) now no longer blog.
People are still eager to blog
about books, though, which is always great to hear – and for those of you who
asked about it, I responded in comments, but I also have some further tips for when you are starting out which I've posted below. I know
that starting out in the blogging world is tough – it takes a lot of hard work
and dedication to build a blog.
I also wrote a little article on
BEATING BLOGGER BURNOUT a while back if anyone is suffering at the moment and
wants to check it.
In my initial post I wondered if
the only people reading and commenting on book blogs were other book bloggers –
The answer is NO. Non-book bloggers read book blogs for recommendations but for
the most part, the majority of comments come from other book bloggers. The reasons
given for not leaving comments were mostly that it’s time consuming. Also,
people read via email, on phones etc. and it’s not always possible to leave a
comments.
Bottom Line: Book Bloggers
receive 99% of comments form other book bloggers – and if you want comments on
your blog then you need to give comments to get comments in return.
Speaking of comments, let’s talk
about those BookTubers who receive lots of comments. I thought the findings on
BookTubers were VERY interesting.
First off, a lot of book bloggers
said they had never heard of BookTubers –and even more bloggers said that they
were interested in being book bloggers – not BookTubers.
Readers, too, left feedback
saying that they would prefer to read a review over watching a review stating
that watching a video review is far more time consuming than reading a review;
on the flipside though, people did comment that BookTubing often has that
personal touch that blogging lacks, so maybe that accounts for the growing
popularity of BookTubers.
And I can see BookTubing and
video reviews continuing to grow, because last week, for the first time ever, I
was contacted by a publisher and offered a book, not for (written) review on
the blog but for video review. I know this is just one book and one publisher,
but it’s interesting to note that publishers are now considering video reviews
as an avenue for book promotion – so maybe they’ve seen something in the rising
popularity of BookTubing too. All I’m
hoping is that book blogging and BookTubing can happily co-exist, which I’m
sure they can.
And, I’m not all that worried
about the state of book blogging overall, because: 1- I still enjoy blogging –
even after all this time. 2 - I loved finding out that people are reading and
enjoying the blog even if they don’t have time to comment – I totally
understand that people don’t have time to comment but it’s nice to know that
there are readers out there and that they took the time to come say hello. And
3 – if blogging has fallen a little out of fashion, then fashion is cyclical and
everyone knows that everything comes back into fashion eventually, um, right?
What do you think?
Any further thoughts since I
first posted about this topic?
And what do you make of the
findings – especially the thoughts on BookTubers and video reviews. Has anyone
else been contacted re: video reviews?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
