I was reading Krysta’s post on letting readers be readers and you know, not free un-paid marketing tools (this is mostly for those of us active on bookish internet/social media) and that reminded me of a different post by The Verge on bringing back personal blogging.
The argument for personal blogging is that we need to control our own platform (although I probably have a post/rant in me on the difficulties of self-hosting), we can be more connected to one another through blogs and comments, and that the lost art of personal blogging is great.
And you know what? That does resonate. What posts do I often skip? Cover reveals and release parties, where the entire post is a cover and a blurb. This is why I stopped participating in blog tours, actually, it felt like pure marketing and reading under pressure.
Conversely, what are the posts I enjoy, besides book review posts? Anything with a personal touch! A list of recommendations with explanations why, someone’s monthly TBR where I can feel their excitement, an end-of-month/year roundup of best books, etc. Personal doesn’t have to be sharing identifiable information, it can just be letting your personal taste shine through your blog in what you read, what you discuss, what you like to list.
I’m starting to think that perhaps it’s good that book blogging is starting to lose the attention of the publishers. Perhaps now that we realise that there’s no money in book blogging, those who continue to blog will be those that do it because they prefer a longer written medium. And then we can be more expressive (no need to be exceedingly neutral if we didn’t like a book), we can post when we feel like it (because there’s no algorithm to please), and we can write that off-beat post that we always wanted to do.
Really enjoyed reading this. Also gave me some more insight on book blogging.
I can imagine it being less fun for you when you feel like you have to do something, or feel the need to please someone else by writing a certain post. It’s simply much more fun when you’re just doing it for your own personal enjoyment. And readers might feel more connected when you’re writing like that. Honest, and from the heart.
Thanks, Thibault! Yeah, I feel like since blogging is just a hobby, I shouldn’t be giving myself unecessary stress! And like you said, the reader can probably sense it on some level
I read the article on The Verge when it came out as well and while I disagreed with some points, I agreed with the main sentiment! Ever since social media took off and everything because a marketing strategy or marketing post, blogs have also been influenced by the trend. We need to go back to personal touches and talking about our relationship with books and how they fit into our lives rather than try being as “oh you NEED this book” as possible. I’m the same as you, I skip cover reveals and tbh I skip a lot of the book reviews too. But I read almost every discussion post or personal post that I see. It’s time we started writing for ourselves again.
I felt like the article in The Verge made blogging sound very easy which is… true if you use a blogging platform but those can be expensive or limited! And self-hosting is so hard for people who just want to casually blog! It’s… a lot harder than you’d think (I’d love to hear what you disagreed with!)
And yes, 100% to what you say about “writing for ourselves”! I also enjoy the more personal posts more. But I think sometimes we sabotage ourselves thinking of what is best for SEO or to get ARCs
[…] week, I talked about why blogging should be personal, and I’m pretty sure that the topic was in my subconscious when I thought of writing this […]
This was really interesting to read after I’ve had such a big break lately from any blogging!
I think blogging breaks should be normalised as well – life has its ebbs and flows and we shouldn’t be expected to consistently churn out content when blogging is a personal hobby, not a job
[…] Eustacia posted some thoughts about making book blogging (more) personal […]