So this week I wanted to feature a bunch of my most favorite bloggers. The gals that I really enjoy reading because they are authoritative, thoughtful, and creative whenever they set out to post on their blogs. I am not sure if my readership is also reading them too but they should be!
Today we are featuring my book twin, NC from Truly Bookish. She & I tend to read the same things & think the same things about what we read. Check her out on Twitter! This is such excellent advice & I am so pleased to be able feature it!
Branding your blog and changing reading taste
My name is NC and I have been blogging at Truly Bookish for about a year and a half. When I first started blogging, I was torn between branding my blog exclusively for young adult literature or making my blog more of a general book review blog.
Branding your blog to a specific genre encourages niche readers who are excited about your blog since you review books that they are interested in. There are exclusively YA blogs, paranormal book blogs and romance blogs that I adore and for awhile, I regretted not having branded my blog as exclusively YA. I love the look and feel of branded blogs, it just feels like you can lose yourself in the world they specialize it, whatever it may be.
But what happens when you have a particular brand and your reading taste changes? What do you do when you have a YA blog and you become interested in adult historical fiction? Do you read those books on the side and never review them on the blog or do you review them regardless?
I chose to have my blog, Truly Bookish, be a general book review blog even though when I started out, I exclusively reviewed YA books. As time went on, my reading tastes changed to include historical fiction and Christian fiction, something that surprised me since these are genres that I really had no interest in a few years ago. Even though I love blogs that focus on certain genres, I’m happy I left mine open and more flexible to my changing tastes. I still review a lot of YA books, but I diversify a bit more now.
Have your reading tastes changed over the years? What did you like before and what are you reading now? Do you have a branded blog? If yes, do you ever read outside of your genre and do you review these books on your blog? Leave a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts!
I'm definitely a reader who blogs across genres. While primarily focused on YA, I definitely still read and review adult books especially romance and cozies. I hope my readers don't mind when I do that. If I read much of any one genre in a row, I tend to get bored so the mix is essential!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great guest post, NC pointed out things that I myself struggled with when I first started my blog. Heck, I am still struggling with that sometimes still! And it's not only about the readership, it's also about: when do I find the time to read all those books?! YA itself is a pretty crazy business these days, and if you add to that other genres it's just tornado-crazy :)
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I remain a general blogger, because I feel that I should not have to limit myself. I like variety. I grew up reading horrors and sci fi (still love'em), I love fantasy and I adore YA, but also I do enjoy contemporary, as well as historical fiction, so why should I give this up just to fit into a specific niche better? Why would I even want to? I love YA bloggers, but I also enjoy chatting with general or paranormal, or even erotica bloggers! :D And I want to attract different kinds of people, satisfy different tastes, etc ;)
Anyhoo - great post!
My blog is kind of a catch all for all the books I love to read and my journey as a writer. I tend to read mainly YA books, so that's what I usually review on my blog, but I think if a books good then you should share it with the world, whatever the gene.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for writing this post, NC. Like I said in my email, it's something I've thought about quite a bit lately as I work on formulating my business model for my new company. I will always love adult thrillers & will always read them but I never feel the desire to review them. (Especially because I'm so fickle that often I don't even finish them!) So I've kept my blog pointed at YA because I LOVE reviewing them.
ReplyDeleteYou're always great with food for thought. Thank you again!
I'm technically a YA book blog, but I cheat sometimes and post reviews of adult books. I figure most people read other things sometimes. :-)
ReplyDeleteI am a very eclectic reader so my reviews take the form of a "weekly reading with book A & B" and I discuss 2 books (usually). I aim to make the books different - eg. 1 might be YA and the other lit fiction or something else. One reason I'm glad I did it that way is because I can get burned out by reading too many books of the same type - so I like to mix it up.
ReplyDeleteTanya
Girlxoxo.com
I love all the differing responses to this piece on blogging style! It's refreshing to know that there are those who are blogging what they want to blog!
ReplyDeleteBookworm1858, I have followed your blog for a while and love that you review across genres.
ReplyDeleteEvie, I don't want to limit myself to one genre either and I grew up reading mostly horror too: Stephen King, Dean Koontz, VC Andrews :-)
Laura, I agree!
KM, I think most people read other things sometimes. That's why I'm curious about what other reviews do. I've gotten great book recommendations from you so I don't mind when you cheat on YA books :-)
Tanya, It's easy to get burnt out on the same genre especially when so many YA books seem to be about the same topics these days. That's a great way to review.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! (Jenny -- I'm loving that I get to "meet" all of your favourite bloggers this week!)
ReplyDeleteI wondered about this too, when I first started my blog. I mainly followed YA blogs, so I thought that maybe I should make my blog YA only as well. At first, I wasn't reviewing my book club books on my blog, since they were adult fiction. But then I decided that my blog is for the books that I read, and shouldn't have to fit into a narrow definition -- I'm a little all over the place with my reading tastes, so my blog will reflect that too!
Great post! I hesitated to brand my blog as exclusively YA as well, though many of my posts are YA-centric. But I do review an occasional book that's adult fiction (v. rarely) and I review a few chic lit books now and then. I have stated in several places that my blog is YA-centric though I'll also review chic lit. I'm pretty glad I haven't labelled it as strictly YA.
ReplyDeleteGreat topic. I bore easily and read across genres and had a difficult time creating a focused blog so I decided to do a catch-all sort of blog. I realize my audience will never be huge because of the lack of focus on any one particular genre but it's fun for me.
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