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The last issue of Bookslut is now up and there will be no more. I can’t claim to be a regular reader. I used to be, back in the early days when blogs were new and I was new to blogging about books. Bookslut is where I got my book news and where I learned about interesting authors I had never heard of and other literary goings on. Bookslut founder Jess Crsipin has an article at the Guardian that is somewhat sad on a variety of levels from her closing the blog to what she has discovered about a certain lack of interest in readers in obscure books and unknown authors:
In order to make enough money to run a real publication, you have to write about books everyone has already heard of. You have to indulge in clickbait. You have to narrow your conversation down to the one that is already happening elsewhere. This reinforces the white male-dominated paradigm, where one type of voice is elevated above all others. It’s not just the publications that prefer these voices, it’s the readers themselves. I saw time and time again how little interest there was in radical voices, writers of colour, obscure women writers. I had given up on the site making money, and I would just shrug and continue to publish the voices I was interested in.
It’s a rock and a hard place, this book blogging thing. We do it for love of books but should a person want to try and make a living out of it, well it quite possibly changes what you read and write which is unfortunate but not entirely surprising.
I never even considered trying to make any money from blogging but I appreciate those like Crispin who have. They raise the bar, provide a sort of standard to aspire to. She will be leaving a little hole in the internet.
On a more upbeat note, I am considering reading/rereading some Betsy-Tacy books after watching this video from the University of Minnesota:
I read and loved a number of the books when I was in grade school. I think between my best friend and I we read every one our school library had. This was so long ago, however, I have almost no recollection of them at all. How could I not remember they are set in Minnesota? They are a big deal here and the houses of the girls Betsy and Tacy are based on have been turned into museums. I even went so far as to look up what kind of biking adventure it would be to get there and while I could ride there in about 5 hours, that would leave little time for a look around, rest, and ride back. Not to mention there and back would total about 154 miles/248 kms. Kind of far for one day.
Nonetheless, I am curious about the books and curious to discover if any of them might jog loose some childhood memories. With my huge reading pile at the moment I doubt I will get to this project any time soon. Perhaps it might be something to plan for winter? I bet they would make some cozy reads.
I was only ever an occasional reader of Bookslut but I read the farewell piece and thought, well, so what? Two things came to mind: one is that we who blog cultivate a readership but can never count on it. People move on, interests change, someone comes along who does it better, maybe a whole lot of other people start doing the same and some blogs get drowned out. Whatever. Nobody owes us anything.
And secondly, if making money is important, then obviously there have to be compromises. We live in a market. It’s very hard to make money out of any obscure interests or personal agendas whether it’s books or anything else. You might hope to have an influence, but you can’t blame the market for being what it is. Authors have to write clichéd commercial fiction so that they make enough money to write poetry or literary fiction. Musicians have to write advertising jingles and inane pop music so that they can fund the composition of weird and strange modern music that nobody wants to buy. Bloggers who want to monetise their blogs have to offer readers what they want. It’s how it is.
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Oh Lisa, ouch! 😉 Seriously though, you are right and I agree with you. Readers come and go and there are a lot more book blogs and ways to get book information these days than back when it all began. And unless you’re a huge, multi-topic blog site, I think monetizing blogs has never been successful, especially just for books. And yeah, you have to give the market what it wants, even if you think it should want something else. Not to say a niche can’t be found, but the niche is not likely to be lucrative.
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Thanks for linking that video! I’ve been thinking lately about doing a big Betsy-Tacy re-read project. I never read all of them but I loved some of the early ones and Betsy’s Wedding, which was in my school library.
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Liz, glad you liked the video! You remember more about the books that I do!
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I’ve found some of Crispin’s remarks to be a little odd, especially that Guardian review, where she suggests that there aren’t any enthusiasts left. Of course, that’s not true. I guess my feeling is that making big money in any pursuit requires some compromises. It’s a shame that the best content doesn’t always earn the most,.but that’s a problem much older than the Internet. What the Internet does offer is a forum that anyone can participate in, and that’s a great thing. The connections I’ve made through blogging are their own reward, just not a financial one.
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Teresa, yeah, there are still plenty of enthusiasts. I agree, making any kind of money from blogging particularly about books, requires making some compromises. And you’re right, that is older than the internet! I find the connections I’ve made to be their own reward too. But then I never wanted to make a career of blogging so I suppose that gives me the freedom to not be disappointed about quite a few things Crispin seems to be disappointed about.
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Interesting issue you’re dealing with here, Stefanie. Your post just begs the question of why we blog in the first place. When I first started Ripple Effects to post movie reviews upon the prompting of my son, oh, about nine years ago, I’d no idea what a blog was. I thought it was just a personal journal which I kept online, that’s all. As more people came to read, I then began to concern myself with number of views, subscribers, etc. etc. I know if I write about popular movies, Hollywood blockbusters, superheroes and CGI spectacles, post more pictures than words, shorter posts – preferably length which visitors can read in less than one minute – I’ll have much more traffic than if I write about indie / artsy films. Sure it’s my own blog I can post whatever that pleases me. But of course, it’s not as simple as that. Can we remain ‘purists’ and still have a ‘successful’ blog? With book blogs, it’s that issue of the popular vs. the literati again.
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Arti, you are right, it all comes down to why we blog in the first place. If you care about numbers and comments and trying to make some money then I think you have to play to what is most popular — the blockbusters or at least the really popular and known. If traffic doesn’t matter, then there is more freedom. I think you are right in noting post length too. I think the internet and blogs have allowed me to get a taste of what “the market” is and means that I would not otherwise have had or understood.
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It is very sad that Book Slut has to close its publication.Again I was not a regular reader, but someone who will wander over time to time! However I agree with Teresa and have similar thought…I understand Crispin’s concern, but trying to make money outside the established paradigm is an old problem and goes beyond the Internet era. I am not saying it is not a problem, but I am saying that it is not limited to the internet. We all blog because we love books and we love talking about that. I never considered making money of it, and while I understand those who may want to do that, for me the intangibles have been great – I have made a host of friends, I have been exposed to books I would have never touched even with a barge pole and my mind has opened to ideas, beyond books! Should I chose to make money of my blogs, I have a feeling that I have to give up on the above and that is not a choice I want to make! Ultimately, the way things work and I am not saying they are fair, you have to chose and decide on your priorities.
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cirtnecce, I agree, the problem doesn’t belong only to the internet. I think in the early days of the web there was a lot of idealism that things online would be totally different. It was naive, I can;t fault anyone for being hopeful 🙂 The intangibles of blogging are fantastic and something I really value. That’s what makes it all worthwhile to me.
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I think perhaps the difference is also that Bookslut was bigger than just one person’s blog, which made it theoretically easier to monetise, but in practice harder to control the content on it. I certainly found it difficult, when I was working for Quadrapheme, to spend as much time as I would have liked promoting books that I thought were genuinely brilliant, because they didn’t have a huge publicity machine behind them, which didn’t get enough people interested, which didn’t drive traffic to the site, which meant we couldn’t grow our readership (or get paid, which is almost a different issue for me, although I think an equally pressing one. Doing something “for love” or “for exposure” is great if you can, but people can burn out doing things like that with no recompense. I love writing about books, but I’d much rather write about them and get paid to do so. And the publishing industry can be excellent at making you feel guilty for your failure to pay attention to the book that they’ve so nicely sent you, even if you’re doing it all on your own time and dime.)
My point, I guess, is that I see a lot of the same books being covered on review blogs and in broadsheet reviews and being publicised on Twitter, and at least half of the time, when I’ve tried those books, they’ve disappointed me in some way. And I do find the relentless optimism of book publicists extremely wearing. Not every book is “brilliant” or “timely” or “important”, and that’s really absolutely fine, but no one’s going to buy a shiny new volume that just is what it is, quietly. Barbara Pym would never be published if she were writing today; neither would most of the women that Persephone Books, for instance, has reclaimed, despite the huge fuss that’s made of them on book-Twitter. They’d disappear into the machine that pushes books like Elizabeth Is Missing, All the Light We Cannot See, and The Miniaturist – none of them terrible, but none of them the scintillating phenomenon of excellence that marketing tells us they are. I have to say I appreciate Jessa Crispin’s attempt to make that point, from her angle.
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Sad that Bookslut is disappearing. The point about the seeming lack of interest is deeply worrying. Would there be room for something like the wonderful Virago Modern Classics today? However we do seem to see rather more interest in good translated fiction than in the past: there still is passion about books from some publishers and readers.
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Ian, I think you are right regarding the bright spot of a growing interest in good translated fiction. I suspect the interest was always there and the publishers were just to afraid of the risk, but the small presses have shown them, are showing the big houses, that translations sell.
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Elle, yes, Bookslut was more than one person’s blog, more like a magazine in many ways. What a sad thought that Pym would not be published today, but I think you are right. Oh those publicists! They are just doing their jobs, but yeah, every book is the best book they have ever read, gush gush gush. The performance always makes me laugh. I get tired of seeing all the same books covered too so I purposely go off the beaten path looking for other books hardly anyone is talking about and try to find a nice reading balance.
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Maybe we can keep a shadow of the Bookslut flame alive that way 🙂
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Funnily, a good friend and I were lunching today and were talking about the issue of “clickbait” though we didn’t call it that. We were talking about it in terms of the news. As more and more news moves to the internet it’s the popular news – accidents and disasters, sports, celebrities that get the most interest. And they’re the ones that will get the advertising and will therefore continue. We decided we need to donate to some of the sites we read that offer more in-depth, quality analysis. I do donate to some, but not enough I think.
As some of your commenters have already said, it was ever thus. If BookSlut needed to make money to live then I can understanding giving up, but I guess for most of us here it’s a hobby. We all know – even before we write them mostly – which of our posts are going to get the most interest AND they’re not the ones about obscure classics, experimental writers, translated fiction from unknown writers etc. But there’s great pleasure in doing those, and in knowing that you are contributing to world literary culture by documenting these little known works on the internet.
In the print world there’s a range of producers from the most popular, dare I say lowest common denominator, journals and commentators to the smallest niche ones. Is the situation worse in the online world? I’m not sure. But perhaps I’m being simplistic?
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whisperinggums, I don’t think you are being simplistic at all. And I don’t think the situation is any worse in the online world than in the real world. In some ways I think online is better because, while perhaps Bookslut couldn’t make money, there are those of us who blog about books as a hobby and have the freedom to talk about whatever we like and I think it provides a great mix of the popular to the obscure. As much as I love blogs, I also enjoy in-depth professional reviews and criticism and that, I think, is what is so difficult to sustain on the internet and in real life too.
As for clickbait, I resist it most of the time but I am only human after all 🙂 We already see on TV and radio that the disaster, sports and celebrity “news” is what people tune in for and what advertisers pay for so it isn’t much of a surprise that it happens online too. I think, as you indicate, it is up to those of us who care about quality to support it as much as we can.
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Every book blogger faces the dilemma over well known and obscure titles. It may not be a dilemma over just money – it affects the number of post readers and comments. Posting on something less known is going to get less discussion. And I wonder if there’s a fragmentation too? There was the report about the growing gap between the top-earning authors and the rest:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/most-authors-earn-less-than-minimum-wage-from-their-writing-survey-finds-10191009.html
Maybe when the chasing pack keeps growing, so too does the choice, and the atomisation of the readership?
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Jeff, yes, I do think there is a degree of fragmentation. Back when Bookslut began there wasn’t much competition online yet but these days it’s really overwhelming. That might affect the writers in the article too. There more writers there are, the more there is to read but the number of readers isn’t increasing at the same rate, nor is the amount of time the people who do read have. It’s tough, that’s for sure. And anyone who wants to be an author had better have back up income and real determination and drive to publish.
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Stefanie, somehow I never read the Betsy Tacy books as a child (too busy with Sweet Valley High, I guess! Ha ha!,) but I feel like I’m hearing more and more about them lately, and now I’m curious. Gonna have to try one!
Very interesting about Bookslut and the reasons she closed it down. I’ve only visited the site a handful of times. Since I’m fairly new to blogging, I’m not sure what to think about the monetizing issue. The market for books is small to begin with, in comparison to beauty bloggers or other types of bloggers. Of course the bigger names and dominant power structure will generate the most clicks. But there is a growing diverse blogger movement and hopefully in ten or twenty years, that will reflect in more books by authors of color and other marginalized voices getting bigger readership – and money!
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Laila, I’ve been hearing more about the Betsy-Tacy books too and not just because I live in Minnesota! I wonder if there is a kind of revival in the works?
I’ve always thought trying to monetize and individual blog was kind of odd, and a losing proposition, especially a book blog. But book sites that are more than just a personal blog, more like a magazine, well, go for it if you can but if it doesn’t work I wouldn’t be surprised. Books, as you say, are a tiny market in comparison with other types of blogs. Doesn’t mean we don’t all wish it were different, but that’s the reality and it is pretty hard to change it.
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It’s too bad about Bookslut–I did read it on occasion and was in my feeder, but then I noticed fewer and fewer posts (or maybe my link was off). I prefer sites that focus on the lesser known books and authors, because I can read about the newest blockbuster everywhere else (and sometimes it feels like being bombarded). I have never contemplated blogging for money–I would be even poorer than I am now if I tried! 😉 I think you really would have to be big and probably mostly very mainstream to try and make a living off it. As for Betsy Tacy–I have a few of those books and always think when I pick them up that it would make a nice little reading project. You should go for it–and take pictures of the places you visit please!
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Danielle, yeah, you’d either need to love poverty or need to blog about really popular things in order to make any money 🙂 I think I might put together a Betsy-Tacy project but save it for winter and then in spring next year make a literary visit to Mankato. Something to look forward to!
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How DID you not know the Betsy-Tacy books were set in Minnesota? I knew that, and I don’t know any damn thing about Minnesota. My main memory of these books is how much they always wanted to go to Milwaukee. They made up a song about it, and I tried to think if there was a city in an adjacent to me state that was as exciting to me as Milwaukee was to Betsy and Tacy. :p
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Jenny, I know! Perhaps I did know but have forgotten? My dad was born and raised in Minnesota so it is something I would have picked up on in the Betsy-Tacy books. Memory is a funny thing! Funny they wanted to go to Milwaukee and not the Twin Cities, but I guess Wisconsin is more exotic 🙂
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Perhaps this is me being a old book blogging curmudgeon, but while I feel sad when anyone decides to quit doing something I personally love to do, I don’t bother with the things that get others up in arms. I read what I want – even if that is an not-yet-released novel. I never look at my stats or worry about page views. I write what I want, length be damned. I will never make money from book blogging, and I know very few who have. Those who have no longer blog but have taken up writing for another site or organization. It’s not that I think there is no money to be made in book blogging. I think we, as bloggers, have structured our relationships with publishers so that we cannot make money. Food bloggers and mommy bloggers and lifestyle bloggers all get paid for their sponsored posts. We accepted books for free and were glad to have them. There is no way any publicist would pay us now for something we have so eagerly snatched up for nothing. To me, that is the fundamental issue with why book blogging for money has been so unsuccessful. It is a shame, but unless we change that relationship, I don’t see it changing, and the Booksluts of the world will continue to fold.
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Michelle, an interesting perspective regarding our relationship with publishers! I think that relationship goes back long before the internet ever came into being since publishers send free review copies to newspapers and book review publications like the New York Review of Books. I know a few bloggers who have tried advertising on their sites but it generated hardly any income and served to only annoy readers.
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You could also join the Betsy-Tacy listserv which usually does an annual group read of the whole series. It is fun to discuss the books together!
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CLM, now that’s an idea! Thanks!
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