Hiya everyone! I am back with a discussion post, but this time it revolves around a topic from Let’s Talk Bookish.
For those who aren’t aware, Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme hosted by Rukky @Eternity Books and Dani @Literary Lion. Today’s topic is – Appreciation For Book Bloggers. Of course, this is not something that is rarely discussed in the bookish community, but it is an important thing and I would like to put forward my thoughts on this as well.
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When you take so much time and effort (and sometimes even money) creating a blog and regularly writing new content, it is natural to expect some appreciation for your efforts. Taking my personal example, I started off very ambitiously and wrote my first couple of posts in the same month I created this blog. And then I saw that my posts got hardly 1 or 2 views, and this made me question my decision of starting a blog in the first place. If nobody is interested in reading what I write, then why should I? This was something of my mindset then. I got quite discouraged, and discontinued writing anything on this blog for a couple of months.
Probably because of the blessing of the bookish gods, one fine day after 2-3 months of creating this blog, I published another post. This one too was a major flop, but I this time I kept going. Slowly, I made friends here, people started reading my content and interacting with me. Even today, each of your views and comments on my posts makes my day. So yes, my readers make me feel appreciated.
And there are also days when I feel particularly desolate, when I feel that my content is under-appreciated because only about 20 people read my posts. But then I am still pretty lucky to have these people, no matter the number, who always are so sweet and supportive. They encourage my to continue writing, and it is because of them that I have grown as a blogger.
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Everyday more and more people are taking conscious efforts to promote and support book bloggers. I have come across many such initiatives and it makes me happy to see all the new creative ways people are finding to recognize book bloggers. For instance, Sofii has created The Definitive Book Blogger List over at her blog, and it is such a cool idea to compile a list of book bloggers! Thank you Sofii for this amazing initiative!!
I’ve observed that it is generally book bloggers who appreciate the work of their peers the most. Since I am a book blogger myself, I relate to that feeling of elation when someone posts a positive comment etc on my content, hence I try to do that for other bloggers as much as I can. That’s probably the case with most of you, right?
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I can’t speak for others, but I know that the only compensation I want from the book industry in return for my work on this blog is for book bloggers like me to be recognized as an important part of this industry. We constantly highlight new books and authors, discuss important topics that readers should be aware of, give trigger and content warnings to readers and so much more. Still I feel that the role of book bloggers is often dismissed as trivial. That needs to change.
And with that, I have said everything I wanted to. I do realize this discussion is quite short when compared to my others, but that was probably because I was pretty blunt and said what needed to be said in a few lines.
Do you feel appreciated as a book blogger? What more do you think can be done to encourage book bloggers? Chat with me in the comments, I’d love to have a friendly discussion!
See ya!
A Bookworm's Paradise 