Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022.
Yay, another freebie week! I quite like these as it allows me to go back to some of the earlier topics, especially as I only started doing these fairly recently. So as I’d done both April 1st and April 8th previously, I’m moving on this week to…
June 30th: Freebie!
Joys & Pet Peeves of the (Book) Blogging Community
(KRISTIN @ LUKTEN AV TRYKKSVERTE)
Prompts: What are some things you love about the blogging community? What are some things you dislike? When do you feel the most/least connected to the community? What are some things you’d like to see changed when it comes to blogging? Have there been any major changes in the community since you started to blog that you love?
There’s a lot to love about the blogging community – there’s definitely support, and a willingness to help others. There’s a lot of bloggers who put a lot of time into crafting truly helpful posts about how to get arcs or things to consider when blogging, etc. It’s really nice. It’s also great to see people sharing the books they’ve loved and often advocating for indie books, diverse books, etc. And such a variety in the types of things people post! It’s great!
As for things I dislike – this isn’t just the book blogging community, but across different forms of social media there’s definitely those who just seem to be there for clout, and those folks who make everything feel really transactional. It’s a different kind of pressure, but it makes it seem like you have to do x and y or participate in different things to get ‘noticed’. Again, not something specific to book bloggers, but it feels common in book(ish) spaces. I’m not a comments person – I don’t like leaving comments, as I often feel like I don’t really have much to add, but I feel bad about not leaving comments, and sometimes it can be a little stressful trying to come up with something to say, without feeling like I’m bugging someone? That’s all totally on me, but sometimes it does feel like if you’re not commenting often or blog hopping a lot, you’re doing something wrong (though I do read a lot of different blogs and, where I can, I will ‘like’ posts!).
One of the things I absolutely love about the community – The Write Reads. If you’re new to blogging (or been doing it for a while but struggling to connect!) this can be a really great way to find and get to know other bloggers. I remember being so nervous before approaching, wondering how I could be part of this group, and finding out all it takes it liking and retweeing the blogoftheday and reviewoftheday posts! And, bonus, you get to read awesome posts! When I’m featured it’s nice not just because of the stats boost, but the Twitter comments and responses to the post itself can really be a great reminder of how much fun this community can be.
I don’t think there’s anything in particular that makes me feel less connected? I know sometimes I might struggle to ‘connect’ myself, but that’s more an internal thing. The only major changes I’ve seen, and I think it is a shame, is the rise of more visual forms of ‘book’ content – I’m more of a words than an image person, but it can feel a little off-putting when you see how much attention these types of social media get, especially from the ‘industry’ itself, compared to the humble blog! And BookTok definitely has much more attention paid to it than blogs ever had, as far as I know. It’s kind of weird, but for the people creating the content, absolutely best of luck to you, and there’s still positives to it. It just seems to be younger folks driving this change towards more visual platforms, and if it helps them connect more deeply to reading, then, well, that’s never a bad thing.
Unwrapping Words 