The Blogger Positivity Campaign organized by the Jillian of Jillian’s Books aims to spread love and bring back some much needed positivity to the blogging community. Today's post is an extension of the campaign and I have chosen to share a few things that have changed (for the better) over the course of 3 years in the community!
When I joined the community back in 2012 book blogs were pretty much solely focused on book reviews. A few months later, I couldn't help but notice that the book reviews were getting a lil generic and sometimes downright boring.
Bloggers are experimenting with new mediums like podcasts, Instagram (Anyone else, envy those gorgeous as fuck bookstagram pictures?!), vlogs, comic-like reviews and my personal favorite, interactive chat/discussion reviews. These bold and novel ideas really showcase the individuality of the blogger and make the whole blogging experience WAY more personalised.
Bloggers have also ditched the commercial-like reviews, spammy copy + paste posts, silly gimmicks to gain zillions of followers (looking at your random giveaways - Giveaways are flippin' awesome especially us broke as hell bookworms and I really appreciate the generosity but when the whole thing goes over the top it tends to come across as a ploy to gain followers the easy way) and flashy advertisements. Instead, there are more well-thought discussions, essays and opinion pieces. Bloggers also integrating their other passions like photography, coding, design and gaming with their book blogs and thus, churning out fresh and exciting content posts that really bring the community together!
There's a lot of focus on quality over quantity in blog content. Personally, I'm loving this change so keep on rocking hell out of your blog, people! ;)
G O I N G B A C K T O O U R R O O T S
Remember when we started our little book blogs? We were so in love with books and couldn't wait to share our favorites with the rest of universe. Only fast forward a few months and we seem to have forgotten why we started blogging in the first place. Chasing those pageviews and clawing for the newest ARCs were really sucking our blogging mojo.
Thankfully, bloggers are now starting to get away from all this and are taking a more laid back approach - There's a focus on importance of community (all while building and growing their blogs too!) and I for one am glad to see all the awesome positivity back where it belongs! Reviewers are also cutting down on ARCs and giving their attention to backlist titles. It's really nice to see readers bringing back their old favorites not just for nostalgia's sake but also because some of these titles end to get lost in the shuffle of over-hyped, newer titles whereas they really deserve the spotlight.
TALK TO ME:
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| Happy Blogging! xx |
Do you believe that these changes are positive?
Have you noticed any other changes in the blogosphere?
Oh yes, I do believe that changes you mentioned are very positive. Not all the blogs changed, there still are plenty of what I call "promo blogs" out there. But many blogs went this new direction and I like it. I myself went through some changes in last year. I decided to completely forgo promo posts and blog tours and concentrate on more personal kind of blogging. Constant promo posts and phrase like "best book ever" in every single review gets old pretty quickly...
ReplyDeleteI've definitely noticed these changes in the blogosphere too and I'm happy with the way things are going at the moment, so I totally think they're positive changes! I especially love that backlist titles are being highlighted more and more often!
ReplyDeleteI notice it too! I'll admit I do book blasts still, but it's a rarity. In all honesty, blogging has switched over to social media - there's just more time to reply to tweets than visiting since a lot of us are heading to college now or soon.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a beautiful post! I love the diversity in everything, like you said :) When I joined the community, I thought it was only through blogs do people talk about books. Now there are bookstagrams, BookTubers, and the like -- people found so many ways to share love for books, apart from blogs! Also, I love how post content have changed overtime. I used to see only memes like Top Ten Tuesday, but now people are so creative by thinking up of their own meme, which is lovely :)
ReplyDeleteI've strangely noticed more and more people starting shops and businesses, and while there are good sides to more book merch, I get a little frustrated seeing the quality of design that people are doing.
ReplyDeleteIt really is great to see these changes in the book blogging world, and I especially love the diversification. I don't actually read too many book reviews personally (bad for a book blogger, I know!), so I love all the innovative new content people are coming up with, especially the discussion posts, as it's so easy to get involved.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree Nuzaifa - the amount of diversity in not only the book blogosphere, but in books in general, has been growing over the past few years and that makes me so happy. It really shows how much impact campaigns such as We Need Diverse Books are having in not just the blogger community but on writers as well. Thanks for sharing and, as always, fabulous post! ♥
ReplyDeleteYes, totally agree! I'm so happy that we have started caring less and less about ARCs and those stats, at least for me. I find reviews helpful but they do get boring sometimes so I love being able to read different posts-- such as this one!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that many blogs are moving into those directions, which is great. However, there still are plenty of blogs that fit into the "standard" moulds. It's just that more and more of use are searching for fresh voices, so we don't notice the blogs that don't appeal to us as much anymore.
ReplyDeleteI like that it's become an acceptable thing to try to fit in backlist titles and that we encourage each other to do so. I do think too though that we all go through phases and this comes back to the diversification thing of everyone is doing things their own way and that's great!
ReplyDeleteI really love seeing the different ways bloggers have organized their reviews. It's very inspiring to see something that isn't only a x amount of paragraphs like an essay. I totally agree that it really pushes you to do something creatively.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see more bloggers talk about backlist books. It really has been non-stop talk about 2016 books, and that's awesome, but I want more attention on the backlist books!
Oh, I've been noticing the same lovely changes in the book blogging community - especially the latter you mentioned. It seemed, for some time, that all of us were becoming far too caught up in the ARC craze and the constant race to gain more and more followers, but I am so very glad that we are remember why we are here in the first place. It's all about the books, just as it should be. And that makes my heart sing. <3
ReplyDeleteI love this post so much Nuz! It's been amazing discovering new blogs and all the interesting content that everyone posts these days. I admit when I first started blogging there was a massive focus on blog tours, author interviews and stuff like that but there has never been a better time to be a book blogger!
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things to love about our book blogging community - I'm glad you've taken note of some positive changes!!
ReplyDeleteNicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction