The post I wrote about blogging and responsibility a couple of weeks ago seems to have struck a chord with lot of readers, both those who blog and those who just enjoy reading them. The responses were great and gave me a lot to think about.
I noted in the post that there were a few other things on my mind in relation to blogging I thought might be worth writing about. More specifically, I thought it would be worth looking at how blogging has changed in the last few years and what, if anything, that might mean. It’s interesting to take stock of what’s out there now and what’s been out there in the past, and it’s also interesting to think about the kinds of things that aren’t gone but have instead shifted. As blogs have grown in popularity, the way people interact and engage with them has grown and changed as well.
Like last time, I’d love anyone to weigh in on what they think about these or any other blogging-related topics. What I see is from my own experience, as well as those experiences of people I know who blog or read blogs and have been for a while. The three topics I want to delve into — crediting, commenting, and critical reviews — are things that are on the forefront of my mind and they’re things that matter a lot to me in terms of how I can be a better blogger within the blogging community and as important, to our readers here.
Crediting
In the last few weeks, citing and giving credit where credit is due has been popping up in the blogging world. There are two thought-provoking posts from the library world (here and here) and there’s a post from Molly at Wrapped Up In Books.
During the same span of time, I stumbled across more than one post written on other blogs that mirrored things I’ve written, almost down to the voice. And these weren’t coincidence type posts; these were posts that were on a very similar topic that wasn’t necessarily timely to what was going on in the bigger world of books and reading. In none of those posts were my posts noted or credited. While I think it’s fair for anyone to write on anything they want to, it’s also obvious to me when people have written a post that’s been inspired by another; perhaps it’s because I read so many blogs. Perhaps it’s because I know my own voice and writing well enough to ferret out the sorts of passages and thinking patterns that I go through when I work something out in writing.
Seeing those posts and seeing no credit to me at all, not even in a passing manner, made me very angry. And it makes me equally angry when I see posts by people I read being used in the same way: as springboards without any passing credit.
I think it’s easy when you’re new to the blogging world to think everything on the internet is free. Unfortunately, what I saw didn’t come from new bloggers; they came from established ones who should know better than that. Rather than acknowledge their post was spurred by another interesting discussion, those posts were written without any contextualization and without any credit. When there’s no credit given, and when it’s obvious that credit should be acknowledged, it’s not borrowing; it’s stealing.
Having your work stolen is shitty.
When I sit down to work on a post that’s adding to a larger discussion or trying to spur a larger discussion, I also open up Google and do a little searching. I pull open my Feedly saved posts, as well as the things I’ve saved in Pocket, and I look to see what, if anything, other bloggers have said about this topic. In many cases, the reason I find myself interested in writing a big post is that it’s something I’ve been thinking about because someone else has written or discussed it. It only makes sense for me to sit down and dig through what people have said or not said and raise those posts into my own piece, in order to ground my argument and to give credit to those sources. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with them, but it means I acknowledge that they had an idea and pursued it; it would be lazy and, I think, unethical of me to ignore than, even if I disagree completely.
The work people put into blogging isn’t free work. It’s a passion but it’s also a passion pursued at the expense of something else. What’s being said and what’s worth expanding upon doesn’t come from the ether. Actual, real people sit behind those words and use their energy to pursue ideas. To not credit that work in some capacity is theft.
It is hard to keep track of what and where you’re reading things. But there are easy-to-use tools worth looking at in order to be a better, more ethical, more thorough blogger. Feedly and Pocket are my go-to choices, since I can bookmark and save interesting things in each, then I can search through them. But it’s also easy enough to hop on Google and refine your searches to a certain time frame, when you know or remember having read a post on a certain topic.
By no means do you have to look everything you’re interested in writing up and build your own work around those who’ve written on it before you. But good writing does build upon the work of others, so taking a little time to do research — then crediting that research — is just good practice. When we write our monthly genre guides, for example, we know other people aren’t necessarily talking about those topics at that particular time. We also know, though, that doing our research then linking to what we’re looking at only makes what we’re doing more enjoyable to use and more valuable to readers.
Write whatever you like and however you like to. Just give credit where credit is due.
Commenting
One of the biggest changes in blogging — one related to the issue of crediting — is the decrease in commenting across blogs. We’ve definitely noticed it here. Where we used to see a large number of comments, we now see relatively few, even though our readership has grown (some bloggers have noted a decrease in readership but we continue to see ours increase). Some days, it’s disappointing; you work on a blog post or a review for hours and hours and no one says anything about it. Other times, it’s almost a relief no one commented because it’s a post you didn’t feel entirely sure about or didn’t think was your A game.
In many ways, I find it more disappointing to see work I think is fantastic by other people have no comments on it. This is such a great piece! It should have loads of comments! Why is no one listening and responding to it?
The answer is, I think, that the way people engage with content is significantly different than it was a year, three years, and five years ago. One’s blogging content and response can’t be gauged anymore by a number at the bottom of a post. That’s not where readers are looking at and thinking about your work. Engagement is no longer within the blog; it’s beyond the blog.
Bloggers are on Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook, and any number of other social networks. So are blog readers. Because of the way information’s shared and dispersed, the commenting on a piece is no longer on the blog post itself. It’s through shares on social media, through responses that pop up when a post is reblogged on Tumblr. It’s through how many tweets and retweets a piece gets. It’s also through the discussion that post can spur on podcasts, on other blog posts, and so forth. Because blogging is such a large thing — and the word blog itself means such a bigger thing than it once did — people want to comment, talk about, and share what it is they’re reading. A post about magical realism in YA might not see a single comment, but it might be tweeted by 100 people, reblogged by 50, discussed on a bookish podcast, linked up 15 blogs on weekly link round ups, and so forth. Your work has been seen by thousands at that point, even if it hasn’t been commented on by a single person.
Rather than your blog existing within itself and within this community of bloggers, it’s grown legs and reached audiences both familiar and, maybe more interestingly/importantly, those who are unfamiliar.
Reaching new eyes is exciting and it’s what drives new people to become regular readers. Reaching new eyes also means that it’s harder to pinpoint engagement and it’s harder to figure out who your readership really is. We rarely see where our posts end up unless we spend a long time researching where they’ve been shared socially. Sometimes, those pop up if we go into Google Analytics, but for the most part, I’d rather spend time writing and reading than tracking down every instance where my work ends up.
And this is where crediting becomes really important, too.
When a blog post is credited as a source or inspiration for another post, that’s how the initial blogger can often “track back” where their content is landing. For me, this is exciting because I love seeing what people are taking away from my writing but more, I love that it opens up new voices and blogs for me to read and follow. It’s the new way to engage and grow the community. No longer are their big roundups of “necessary to read” bloggers like there was early on. Because this is such a huge world and because it’s expansive in terms of content creation and dispersion, finding where people are reading my work gives me an in to see what work I should be reading, too. When you credit where you find inspiration for your work, you help grow the community, not shrink it.
Is it still a bummer that commenting on blogs seems to be a dying art? Sure. But I like to remind myself it means that the comments we do get are really worthwhile, and even if we don’t reply to every single one, we do read them and appreciate them. I also like to remind myself that engagement now isn’t contained to one place.
There’s something fun about seeing one of your blog posts pop up on your Tumblr dash weeks after it’s been written and seeing that people have not only shared it, but they’ve added to it.
Critical Reviews
There’s not a lot to explore in terms of critical reviews in the YA blogosphere, is there?
I feel like a lot of the staple critical reviewers — ones who have been doing this for a long time — are still doing it. I think about The Book Smugglers, Liz Burns, Leila Roy, and a few others are still writing some of the most thoughtful, deep, analytical reviews out there. Those reviews take exceptional amounts of time to write, and it’s not just about the book that these critical reviews are worth reading for. It’s also the craft of writing the review itself; they can be creative, exciting, and sometimes funny pieces of writing in and of themselves.
Review writing is an art in and of itself.
I read a lot of blogs, but I have become particular about the ones I read for reviews. I don’t like seeing blog tour reviews for the book that a publisher is promoting at the time. I like having the book on my radar, but seeing one, two, or three week long blog tours doesn’t excite me, nor does it compel me to want to write a review of the book, unless I know my take aways from the book differ from the ones I’ve seen (positively or not).
A big reason I love critical reviews is that they’re often of books that aren’t getting the big marketing and publicity attention that other books are. Whether or not I agree with the review, I find that the critical, thoughtful, an analytical reviews are the ones that make me most want to pick up a book because I know that it’s something that’s going to make me think — both about the book and about the review writers.
As I’ve said again and again, critical reviews are not negative reviews. Critical reviews are thoughtful explorations of what does and does not work in the material at hand. Some of the best critical reviews are entirely positive, but what separates them from a lot of other reviews is they offer a huge slice of the person behind the review. They’re often more personal than a personal blog post because they let in opportunities for vulnerability that the reviewer doesn’t always know they’re opening up: their biases, their preferences, their world views, their passions. These reviews allow me as a reader to really get inside the book and inside the head of another reader. It’s hard work, and it’s the kind of work that isn’t always rewarded with the kind of engagement other posts are — either in comments or in sharing — but it’s work that is rewarded in terms of what core blog readers (who are readers in general) want.
That’s why I blog and that’s why I read blogs. It’s engaging with other readers.
Which is why I wonder: where are the newer critical reviewers? Where are those newer critical voices? Who can we read and think about and who is going to open us up to new books worth checking out? We’ve had our eyes on a few bloggers who came for a few months, wrote great reviews, then disappeared. We had our eyes, too, on bloggers who were critical reviewers for a long time then decided for any number of reasons that writing critical reviews was a thing they didn’t feel comfortable pursuing anymore.
I know I’m eager to see more. I can’t be the only one.
Interesting post. I think critical reviews of books in general are something more required, all across the board. I review books I've read over on my blog, but not critically, and neither do I intend to; my blog's something I do for fun, and critical reviews are not something that should be done lightly, positive or negative.
I don't read YA, but Khanh over at The Book Nookery posts some excellently critical pieces that I like to read nonetheless. Just adding that to the mini-list you have there ^__^
Nothing wrong with reviewing how you want to. That's part of the beauty OF blogging. I'm mostly curious whether there are more YA bloggers who are newer that I'm unfamiliar with who are doing more critical reviews.
Thanks for the heads up on the blog to check out. I definitely will!
I'm terrible about commenting. I am trying to be better. I just get nervous and don't know what to say other than, "Good job!" or something similar.
Anyway, I love your blog- it's always filled with interesting thoughts about books and the young adult market/community. So keep on keeping on.
I'm not always great at commenting, and for it, it's simply a time thing (I read so much). It's easier to share socially for me for some reason (or save it and pop it in a link roundup, which could also, I guess, be a time TO comment).
Thank you! I appreciate that 😀
Maybe it's b/c I only read a few reviewers (y'all and Liz Burns spring immediately to mind, not sure if what happens at Someday My Printz Will Come or Crossreferencing really counts as "reviewing"), but I don't really see how you review a book without looking at it critically. Isn't the point of a review to talk about what works and what doesn't and to think deeply about how the author achieves (or doesn't) whatever she/he set out to do? Otherwise, it seems to me that you just have a glorified plot summary…and I can read that on Amazon. I salute those of you who manage to produce high quality reviews and blog content on a regular basis. I managed to keep my blog going through last summer, but when I attempted to do it during the school year, life happened and I couldn't put in the time or effort I felt was necessary to produce high quality, useful reviews. Bravo!
I think Someday and Crossreferencing totally count (both are in my regular reads, but both aren't updated as much in the summer).
It's fascinating to me how there haven't seem to be more new critical reviewers. It IS time consuming and requires a lot of effort — which is something not everyone obviously has. I just would love to see more, since I see more of the promotional stuff across the general YA blogosphere than I am interested in (not that it doesn't serve a purpose, but it doesn't do much for me personally).
The change in blog commenting has been really interesting, definitely solidified by beginning to use Twitter, the loss of GoogleReader (and taking way too long to get comfortable with Feedly…), and ultimately reading way more posts on phones/tablets (where commenting is way less convenient). Also starting the university, which just messed up everything (tests, hooray!).
As for critical reviews, I have several thoughts. I see this discussion pop up in different corners of the book blogging world quite frequently, often with people defining "critical review" in completely different ways. Truthfully, I've started to avoid these discussions by now, largely because they're often colored by some form of elitism or other in defining the high quality reviews.
As a reviewer, I'd like to think I write critical pieces (or reviews), but it's really hard to define that. Usually I'll write about my response to a book, and I'll very rarely talk about the plot. I don't quote much from the books I read (often because either the eBook I checked out from the library has expired, or I read the book in another language), and most of the books I review are… unfamiliar, to say the least. These are often the factors that people use when they determine what's a good, critical review. Your definition seems much more about personal investment (something I definitely agree with), meanwhile I've seen other very vocal pieces that argue that a truly "critical" review is one that is much more abstract and requires pure objectivity (which I find to be utter crap, because reading isn't objective. Ever.).
Most of all, though, I think is how genre-niche many blogs are today. I still read young adult, but I mostly review international literature on my blog (and these days, I talk almost exclusively about my women writers in translation project…). I've seen this shift happening on other blogs as well – places that apologize for reviewing a non-young adult title, or blogs that feel the need to justify having reviewed a non-genre book. It's a disappointing trend in the expansion of book blogging – there are so many more bloggers today than when I began that finding those whose blogs you'll enjoy usually falls strictly in line with what niche they belong to. Hopefully it's not a permanent state – I think the book blogging community is best served by its diversity.
(sorry for the essay… I guess this is what happens when I don't comment enough – thoughts just get bottled up!)
Google reader's death I think is a HUGE HUGE HUGE aspect of it. Feedly is good when you get the hang of it, but it's not the same. Even before Google reader died, there was Google Buzz and that made commenting/discussing posts fun and worthwhile (it got me to comment more than I normally would when people would talk up and share things among one another there).
As far as critical reviewing, I don't think it's super hard to define, but I think people assume it means negative, which it doesn't.
While I like critical reviews that are deep, that depth isn't in being completely objective. You should be objective on FACTS of the book, reviewing the book for the book (in other words, saying a book failed because it didn't live up to some expectation you put on it isn't objective, whereas saying it failed because the character arc never worked or there were plot holes, those are more objective measures).
I think your comment, too, about genre-niche definitely impacts a lot of things. The apologizing is interesting; I sometimes feel like I should do that when I don't review YA, but then I remember it's okay. People who aren't interested skip that and come back another day with stuff they are interested pops up.
And I think that critical reviewing ties into that, too: I think the personal depth comes through in those critical reviews when you see people read, review, and reflect on a variety of things, rather than one very specific thing (though there's nothing wrong with those very specific focuses — but it makes those out of the blue ones even more interesting and showcases your mettle for reviewing, you know?)
Re: critical, I'm thinking more about Mark Thwaite's recent Guardian piece, where he basically complained about the death of "quality" literary blogging. Which is… elitist and absurd. I've seen a lot of the "Literary" sites/blogs try to make this point that a critical review requires some sort of academic-level intellect and analysis. You're right that a lot of people also conflate critical with negative (and besides, what's wrong with negative reviews? Sometimes they're necessary!), but that's less what I was thinking about. This is probably something I should have responded to in post form, now that I think about it. I'm having lots of thoughts. I might yet do that, actually, depending on how hard it looks like my next exam is going to be…
Interesting stuff, Kelly. Thanks! I especially think that you're right about commenting. I know that I am MUCH more likely to share a post on Twitter and FB than to comment. I only take the time to actually comment on the blog if I have something particular to say. And even then, I sometimes say it on Facebook instead. The latter would be when the post inspires me to want to discuss with my own followers. But of course I always credit it 😉
I find sharing on Twitter easier than commenting or rounding up a bunch of posts into a links post easier, too. I always think if I have more to say, I'll write a piece on it — and maybe I need to be better about ALSO commenting on a post when I choose to link/share it.
I think the key is the crediting, for sure.
Great post, Kelly! I have noticed that my own commenting has dropped off – I don't make the time anymore. Funnily enough, I have seen a steady stream of comments (maybe even an uptick?) on my blog posts. At the same time, I've read several blogs that discuss the way that blog commenting has died down overall.
It's interesting to see these three issues all at once – I feel like a lack of crediting would go straight over my head, as I don't read as many blogs as I used to. And critical reviews: I feel like I have a few blogs I visit over and over for those, and I wouldn't know how to search out new ones. Perhaps a clean-out of Feedly and Bloglovin' are in order… (along with a mile-long list of other projects, oh my!).
Anyway, thanks for making me think. I'm off to check a few of your links. *grin*
I feel like finding new blogs is HARD. I don't know why that is. Maybe I'm not reading enough link roundups myself? Or when I read a post, I don't always read through the back posts of whatever they credit to see what that blogger's about.
Good points, all of these. The credit thing I hadn't noticed; I guess I don't read as many blogs as I think I do. But commenting, definitely. Sometimes I'll look over a post I wrote and I would swear there was a comment conversation I was having, but then I'll realize it was on Twitter.
Critical reviews is an interesting one. I don't see them much; that's why I like your blog so much. I try to mostly do those, but I'm still figuring out what my relationship to things like Netgalley and Edelweiss are, and sometimes I have nothing interesting to say about a book and yet I feel obligated to post a "review" about it. And that's terrible, because generic, summary-only reviews are what I hated writing when I wrote for other publications, and I don't read them on other blogs because I find them uninteresting. I've become what I hate, I guess.
I'm rambling. At any rate, this is some good food for thought.
The crediting thing I notice more when it's personal to me than not — which I think is likely the case for most people, since you'll notice when your own work isn't being given a "hey thanks" vs. someone else's. But your comment there about commenting vs. Twitter conversation, that happens to me sometimes, too. I try to save those conversations or acknowledge them, if I can (or sometimes I'll be going at a long discussion with someone in email and know I need to write and acknowledge it came from a private discussion).
Part of me wonders if the decrease in critical reviews is that relationship with eARCs and what is/isn't necessary to do. I think I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, but if I don't find a compelling reason to write about something — and for me, "compelling reason" could be simply "don't have the time" — I won't. It hasn't resulted in any issues, and if it does, I figure I can always find the book if I want to read it later at the library or buy a copy.
Yeah, I think I need to work on my guilt stuff. I know Netgalley etiquette is to always respond and review, but more and more I find myself just going "Thanks. We bought this book," or something along those lines, or I forget altogether. Because really, critical or thematic reviewing is so much more interesting than just general ones!
I'm still clocking in under two years, so I haven't had that much time to see the blogging community change, but it's refreshing to see discussion of the decline of critical reviews vs. the one I see so often, which is "Why are reviews the least read content on book blogs?" In a way, I think that discussion is the answer to your question about the lack of critical reviews. Many of the conclusions I see bloggers coming to when discussing the decline in reviews end in the suggestion that reviews remain short (so readers will read them), fun/full of gifs?, or some other of goofy form of entertainment. It's sad, especially because I think newer bloggers attach themselves to those suggestions.
I do think the reading of reviews is part of it. I think our reviews get about the same in terms of readership as other posts; I know, at least for myself and from what I've heard from other bloggers, reviews are less likely to be read day-of post than they're to be read after someone else has read the book (which could be days or weeks or months or years, which can then be a deterrent for commenting).
I have no issue with people reviewing how they want to, but I know for me, gifs/"fun" doesn't do a thing for me. It doesn't actually tell me anything about the book nor about the reviewer. I get why people do them and like doing them (totally fun) and wonder if what you're saying re: the advice new bloggers get is true.
I always like to comment, because as you pointed out, it provides good feedback to people who have poured their heart and soul into a blog. When you really love a book, reviews are fun to write. but I worry that the writer may think I "just don't get it" if I write something less than flattering. In any type of writing, it takes a lot of confidence to put a point of view out there, and internalizing that voice inside only comes over a period of time.
I always try to write comments because it's true that you want to give feedback to someone who has taken the time to put her heart and soul into a project. When it comes to reviews, if I love the book, it's easy to comment, but if I have issues with some of the writing, I worry that since we're in an impersonal space, my criticisms can be taken out of context by both the author and reader. Reading other reviews is helpful and I'm doing more of that, which is helping me to better define my critical voice.