Is book-blogging-minus-book-reviews ruining book-blogging ?

The other day I read a book blogger’s musings about the very discouraging reader engagement for book reviews in contrast to non-review content which seems to have become almost a must-have to bring readers to your book blog in the first place . Otherwise , the book blogger might as well write in his / her  personal diary – forget about reader engagement with the content , the post does not get any clicks .

As several other book bloggers have pointed out repeatedly , today book blogs minus book reviews have become a trend . If they do have reviews , they are the some 5 or 6 lines about a book – the mini-reviews . Almost every review reads like the one before : ” It was unputdownable…” , ” I stopped in my tracks when I finally came to the big reveal – you would’ve have never seen it coming… ” . There are too many adjectives and adverbs in these mini-reviews  : ( almost ) nothing original but still there just to enforce upon the readers the intensity of the reviewer’s reactions , I think .

Mini reviews are somewhat okay but there is one book-blogging fad which I have not taken to ( & will never ) : the book-tags . I have never gotten the idea behind book tags . Somebody please enlighten me about putting out a list of books / writing about bookish elements which fit a particular tagline . You may identify your fandom tribe and can have gush about your favorite series all over again . That’s how far book-tags go for me . I haven’t picked up a single book yet after reading book tags .

In today’s blogosphere , with too many wannabe-writers / hobbyists competing with each other for the readers’ engagement with their content , it’s only natural that many book bloggers are turning to the easy-content-with-high-reader-engagement to bring in the numbers . I myself have put 2 compilation posts in this blog and vouch for it being a blog-saver : The blog was languishing and I was not reading much to review it here . At-least these recommendations posts let people know that I haven’t shut shop . Now , after 3 months of my first ever reading – slump , I am back .

But , I regretted each time I put out some filler content like that .

I don’t see mini-reviews / book tags / listicles ( basically , several of the recent fads in book-blogging culture ) as being of much value ( forget about the literary value ) to the readers . Sure , people may pick up books from your list but I believe that nothing can take the place of a proper book review – a review which dissects the various aspects of the book : the themes , the characterization , the plot , the storytelling . The in – depth reviews offer the reader / would-be reader an idea about what to look for in the book and encourage them to read better . The mini – reviews / book recommendation posts most often read like those blurbs written by the book’s promotion team – the blogger’s ultimate goal is to pique the reader’s interest . Still better , if they make them pick up that book . But , is it the purpose of blogging about books ? Aren’t the book bloggers supposed to be facilitating better reading of books by having discussions around the books they have read / full-fledged reviews about their reads ?

I believe that nothing can take the place of a proper book review – a review which dissects the various aspects of the book : the themes , the characterization , the plot , the storytelling . The in – depth reviews offer the reader / would-be reader an idea about what to look for in the book and encourage them to read better .

But , is making the readers pick up the book after reading your mini-reviews , the sole purpose of blogging about books ? Aren’t the book bloggers supposed to be facilitating better reading of books by having discussions around the books they have read / full-fledged reviews about their reads ?

As important influencers among the reading tribe , I think that every book blogger should ensure that their blogs carry more literary content than fad / filler content . As an analogy , while we are concerned about the quality of reporting these days with more of click-bait headlines ( basically all celeb stuff and all other fluff ) rather than THE IMPORTANT STUFF that make it to our online news-feed , let us also get concerned about the content our book blogs carry . Because , in this digital age of short attention-span / need for eye-ball grabbing stuff like GIF s to actually entice the readers into clicking the link to your post / availability of encyclopedic proportions of information on every random topic , giving the readers all this fad stuff would only further contribute to the growth this culture of mindless consumption of anything they read .

I think it is the time for the book-bloggers to remedy this mindless consumption by putting out content that would open the readers’ eyes to the various aspects of the book being reviewed and help them to identify these aspects in their own current reads . And , it won’t hurt the reader to read some proper reviews without all the distracting fluff like GIF s , memes . When readers get to read more quality content like good discussion posts / book reviews online , they would demand quality content every time , in turn making us book-bloggers  read better . Currently , our production of all these fluffy content has shaped their book-blogs’ experience , in turn forcing us to keep churning out more of this useless content and it definitely wouldn’t do for us to hold the reader accountable for the content we post on our blogs .

I think it’s high time that book bloggers had a good look at their content and ” fads ” they are encouraging .

As an analogy , while we are concerned about the quality of reporting these days  , with more of click-bait headlines ( basically all celeb stuff and all other fluff ) rather than THE IMPORTANT STUFF that make it to our online news-feed , let us also get concerned about the content our book blogs carry .

In this digital age of short attention-span / need for eye-ball grabbing stuff like GIF s to actually entice the readers into clicking the link to your post / availability of encyclopedic proportions of information on every random topic , giving the readers all this fad stuff would only further contribute to the growth this culture of mindless consumption .

Let me know your thoughts about this post in the comments section below . I would like to hear about what do you feel about the trend of book-blogging- minus-book-reviews? Are you taking to it well or are you like me ? Also share your thoughts on the book blogging elements I have termed as fads or fluff-content…

 

What NOT blogging often taught me

While you would have seen experienced bloggers putting out posts what they had learnt along their blogging journey, as a starter-blogger this post is just about my blogging journey since the publishing of my very first post on April 1st this year.

As the year comes to a close, I had a look at my blog-9 months, 9 posts (including this one) and frequency of the posts. Let me be very honest here- I was not very happy with the insights WordPress gave about how my blog was performing and I knew that it needs much more effort and time than what I am putting into it. WordPress can help me with the stats, themes, plugins, SEO and a whole bunch of other stuff.But definitely WordPress cannot help with n number of other factors . I decided to trace my blogging journey so far. It looked like NOT blogging often had actually offered me more insights into what I need to work on as a person rather than a blogger.

So, let’s begin…

I wanted to put out ” the terrific first post ”  that would get the reader hooked and he/she would connect with it from the first line and there would be more hits at the star icon and the notification bell will have more things than only likes to show. I can visualize all experienced bloggers slowing shaking their heads saying “Kiddo, dream on!!!…”.Yeah , that was a superb fantasy and in the attempt to make that come true, I read numerous blogs about must-haves for a terrific first post. Another thing that egged me to put out the “perfect” post were the compliments that I received from my friends and colleagues for my work on our  magazine.Finally,the first post came a good 6 months after I created a WordPress account and  it was written just to kick-start blogging . In the quest for perfection I lost out on experimenting with my blogging and it goes without saying-writing better.

Lesson 1: There is no “terrific” first post. Your first post would be your introduction to the blogging community. So take it easy and don’t sweat about giving a star entry into the blogging community with the first post itself. 

     I was not ready to take a fall or even stumble and because of that I was afraid of taking the first step.And the journey doesn’t begin without the first step.When it began finally,I realized that I had lost time and most importantly on improving my writing

When I was finally posting at very irregular intervals, keeping up my motivation by reassuring myself that I was “taking one step at a time”, “doing things in my own pace”, eventually I realized I needed to get people to take notice when I post when I saw my blog languishing without much views except for the references from WordPress reader. Even if I spotted interesting stuff that could have become interesting posts, they mostly became ideas-that could-have-been-posts or very late posts.

Lesson 2: Nothing can make your writing better except for writing regularly.

Perfection  is just an illusion-there is always a better way any day.

3 posts later I decided to jump into the Community Pool as I wanted to hear from other bloggers out there and I thought that 3 posts ( and maybe another 2 posts on the way ) was enough to take a dive into the Pool . Yes, the Community Pool helped my posts to reach out to wider audience. Some of them did not stop with reading the articles-they gave their opinions on the posts, some fantastic book recommendations and tips on how to improve my writing.

After another lean period of blogging, during which I read some really awesome posts and even better, discovered some wonderful bloggers, I was all fired up to put out something even if it was a month late. I wrote this post the same way as I did my very first post- I started putting out the content directly on WordPress and all editing and spellcheck was done there only and I hit the publish button on the same day. If any of my roommates had taken a peep at my laptop on what I was working on in the “it’s – now- or – never” style, I would have got some weird looks.

The extensive reading about blogging which I did during the period when I did not write helped me to a certain extent  but EOD it’s only the content and for a starter definitely writing as often as one can is the only thing.I had decided by then that all the Pinterest blogging prompts, tips to grow your blog traffic Xx times in Y months and a whole lot of blogging related extensively informative articles’ ideas can be implemented later. I need to get a decent number of posts in the blog. I can very well imagine how people feel when they get to very few posts in the Archives section. And, then came quite a decent number of posts.

          Lesson 3: If you go with research which is a good thing (not only by itself), you should also have some good number of posts to actually start out with the other things that would give your blog more visibility.

There is a saying which goes “Life can only be understood backwards ; but it must be lived forwards” . So, tracing my blogging journey so far is a step in that direction . In an optimistic note,let me count my contributions rather than the blessings as Sheryl Sandberg says. And if not during the initial months, I am happy about how much I was able to write during November and December.I believe that the contributions which we are able to make despite several roadblocks themselves are blessings in disguise.That’s because they make you stretch your limits and definitely motivate you better than anything or anybody .

As the countdown to the  new year nears the end, I wish that 2018 becomes a year where we all  do better each new day and realize our dreams . Until the next time then….Ciao!!