Being a Book Blogger is Harder Than it Looks

Yes, it really is. Having a book blog isn’t simply read a book, write a review, find some cute gifs, post it and make sure the link uploads to your social media. It is actually much more complicated than that.

Deciding which book to review can be impossible. If you read a lot — which most of us bookdragons do — you won’t have only one finished selection to choose at the end of the week. Plus, there’s absolutely no rule that says the next review you write has to be of something you just read. We’d also like to discuss childhood favorites, assigned classics, and movie novelizations. Unless there’s an ARC that you know you should post soon (because the release date was May 31st and it’s presently June 4th), the best way may just be to flip a coin or throw a dart at a printout of a bookstore flyer.

Let’s talk about ARCs for a minute. They are not all they’re cracked up to be. Yes, it is exciting when you get to be one of the first people to read a new release you’re really excited for. (I do enjoy this part myself.) However, there are also some downsides to ARCs that I think are worth discussing.

They’re time-consuming. It can be difficult to read on a deadline. What if your schedule gets turned upside down and finishing the ARC prior to its sale date just isn’t a possibility?

They may be disappointing. Those bloggers who have been getting ARCs for a couple years now will tell you that just because a book is an advanced reader does not mean it will be the most amazing literary thing ever.

You can feel like you’re reading out of pure obligation, rather than for enjoyment. I know some bloggers have in fact decided to stop requesting ARCs, because it was dampening their experiences too much.

Striking the right tone is key, and not automatic. Hands up — who here has typed a paragraph of a post, deleted it, repeated this process, and again…and considered throwing yourself off the top of your bookshelves. It is hard to keep producing content that’s interesting, engaging, humorous, insightful, and doesn’t cover the same 14 books over and over.

What happens if your TBR has done away with itself? This actually happened to me. About 8 months ago, I had a TBR that I anticipated would take me the whole year to complete. How wrong could I have been. I finished it somewhere around 6 weeks ago, and am struggling to build up the next. What am I going to blog about?! I feel like screaming from the rooftops.

You hit a reading/posting slump. Your usual genres have become mehhhh. Your favorite authors have swanned off to Costa Rica for a 700-day hiatus. You don’t feel like posting on that fashion magazine you devoured at the doctor’s office out of sad desperation. Send. Help.

Blogging takes more time than a TARDIS can provide. Oh, the number of instances in which I have begged for a time machine to add 5 hours to my day. After you’ve created the post, searched for images, added said images, re-thought some of the text, edited, changed some of those images, and double checked your facts on book details, you are effectively dead, and only have about 45 minutes in which to clean your house, cook dinner, feed the cat, give the kids a bath, and turn in overdue library DVDs.

Sometimes getting that post up is Mission Impossible. You’re halfway through writing your review, and the kids have devastated the couch. The cat just couldn’t keep that hairball in any longer. Your family informs you the inside of the fridge resembles an uninhabited cave.

Or you realize you just don’t know what to say about that book.

Mixed feelings do not for a comprehensive post make. Haven’t we all finished a novel or biography and just thought, “Well…wow. Huh?!” There were parts of the story you liked, and others that made about as much sense as a peregrine falcon becoming a ballerina, so your overall impression can be summed up this way: !@$#%^&*?! But your subscribers would really prefer: “I liked the character growth between Samuel and Bonita in the early chapters, but once Bonita decided to run away to Hong Kong to raise minature pandas, I felt the forward momentum was lost.”

And there are days when you just cannot form those words.