Category: Uncategorized
Discussion: What Makes You Follow a Blog?
I know we just had a discussion on Friday, but this is more open-ended than my other one about book review request forms where I was specifically soliciting advice.
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Why do some people follow one blog and others don’t? What makes you want to follow a blog?
Obviously subject matter and your level of interest in it is important. I, for example, wouldn’t follow a blog devoted to football because I really dislike football. That only makes sense. But sometimes I’ve unfollowed blogs despite the fact that the subject matter is great. Sometimes it’s because the blogger never responds to comments, never posts on a regular schedule and/or gets boring/loses that spark that made me follow the blog in the first place.
So what I want to know now is this: What makes you follow a blog? What things do you look for in a blog before you decide to follow it? Are there any follower dealbreakers for you?
Discussion: Book Review Request Forms
As I cryptically hinted at yesterday I will be changing the way I accept book review requests in the future to avoid such a horrible backlog. How will I do this? Well, instead of leaving authors with no guidelines which they seem to take as an invitation to be lazy, I will make them fill out a form. Yes, some authors will rail against the injustice of it all and how much time it will take, but those are the authors I really wouldn’t want to review anyway. If you can’t follow my rules, I’m not going to read your book. Plain and simple.
So my question for you guys is this: What would the ideal book review request form include? Would you ask authors for things like the genre, book blurb, target age group, etc? Do you think a review request form is the way to go? Or should I be trying something else to avoid my backlog as well as badly behaving authors?
Remembrance Day
As is my tradition, I won’t be doing a post this Remembrance Day. I will be at home remembering a man I never met: my friend’s grandfather, who was a Filipino soldier who escaped from the Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan (Bataan Death March). He served in the army in his country with pride and went through a living hell that didn’t magically end when the war was officially over. I will also be remembering the countless men on my mother’s side of the family who served in almost every single one of the wars Canada has participated in. And of course I will take time to reflect on the countless men and women who were and still are affected by war.
So instead of spending today here on my blog or elsewhere on the internet, please take some time to reflect on what Remembrance Day means to you.
The More Followers I Have, The More I Get
As you guys have realized, I’m pretty open about my blogging stats. I like analyzing them and hearing your thoughts on things like why certain articles are doing well or why traffic could be down in a given month. But one thing has been puzzling me of late: followers.
You see, I was flipping through my ‘Trophies’ in WordPress (which is a feature that shows when you achieved certain milestones in likes, comments or followers) and saw that I had 200 followers on January 31, 2013. That’s a year and a couple weeks after I started my blog. I figured that was pretty good, getting 200 followers in only a year considering that I don’t blog on controversial things that get lots of clicks.
Then I noticed another trophy: I had 500 followers on September 26, 2013. Less than 9 months after getting my 200 follower trophy, I suddenly had 500 followers. That’s 300 followers in less than 9 months. Considering it took me a little over a year to get just 200 followers you could say it took me by surprise. Then I started thinking: the more followers a blog has, the more new followers it seems to get. But why is that?
Is it because people seem more attracted to bloggers who look like they have their act together? Or is it because they see a good commenting community? Could it be because more people hear other people talking about the blog? It’s hard to say.
What do you think? Why do blogs with more followers have an easier time getting new followers than smaller blogs?
Discussion: Do You Read Self-Published Books?
As a book blogger I do accept self-published books and I’m one of the dwindling bloggers that does, it seems. I’ve been burned by self-published authors before (see this lovely incident) but overall they’re a great bunch of people trying to get their unique stories out into the world.
That said, of course self-publishing has its downsides and these are the common stereotypes that you find in the media. There’s poor grammar, spelling, pacing, badly developed characters, etc. And that’s why some people choose not to read self-published books.
What I want to know now is this: Do you read self-published books? Why or why not?