What If the Blogosphere Decides to Pack It In?

By Ron Hogan on July 21, 2008 9:00 AM

Shortly after I put up Friday’s suggestion that book coverage isn’t dying but evolving, I got an email from Colleen Mondor calling my attention to two recent posts that bring a needed perspective to the shifts in MSM and online book coverage. At Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Jules Danielson and Eisha Prather lament that they no longer have time to blog about books, at least not the way they feel they ought to: “I’ve also been getting kind of resentful: of the fact that I kept reading books that I’d never have chosen to read on my own,” Prather explains, “that I felt guilty when I picked up a book I had no intention of blogging about, that the blog took up all my free time—the way it became another job, basically.” Their solution? To drastically cut down on the reviewing and focus on interviews with illustrators (which appear to largely fit into a ready-made format).

Jen Robinson read that, and was moved to ask herself: “Is my blog a job or is it a hobby?” The answer, she realizes, is neither:

“Ultimately, the reason that I spend so much time on my blog is… because I truly feel like if I can help even a few parents and teachers and librarians to find the right books for even a few kids, I’ll have made a positive difference in the world. When someone tells me that their child spent hours lost in a book that I recommended, I know that I’m doing something worthwhile.”

But even with that self-knowledge, Robinson knows “I need to spend less time on the blog, even if I don’t want to. If I don’t, I’m going to turn the whole thing into work, and/or get burned out.” Which brings me back to Mondor’s email, and her observation that “publishers clearly are embracing the internet but very few of us are getting paid to do this and we just can’t keep up with their demands.” As a result, she warns, “Cracks are starting to form all over the place—just small cracks right now, but they are certainly going to grow… If publishers aren’t careful, the only ones willing and able to devote time to reviewing might be those folks who have a lot of time on their hands and are excited to receive any free books at all. In other words, the quality could degrade down to Richard Ford’s infamous Terra Haute scenario.”

So how do we stop that from happening?

“Publishers clearly intend to use the blogosphere to spread the word on books,” Mondor concludes. “We are just going to have to figure out a way for it to be funded … or otherwise it could all fall on top of itself as the most successful are incapable of keeping up with their success.”

That’s one solution—if we agree that independent bookblogs need to expand to match the desire of publishers to promote as many books as possible. But what if it’s not the blogosphere that needs to grow but the industry’s expectations that need to shrink? There are still some bloggers who would reject any development, including sponsorship or advertisements, that turns their blog into something other than a respite from professional responsibility, a personal space where they are beholden to nobody beyond themselves. Such blogs may be “forced” to stay “small,” but ironically they may well retain an authenticity that garners them a more substantial readership&#8212and, consequently, makes their judgment all the more valuable.

Then, too, there will be bloggers who want to create circumstances that will support a lifestyle in which they can dedicate themselves to writing about books and authors—they will have to figure out how to turn that into a career/job/income stream. Can a bookblogger build an audience that would attract sufficient interest from advertisers and/or sponsors to publish independently? Or should bloggers look at which MSM institutions could have bookblogs but don’t and start drafting proposals?

Whether MSM book coverage evolves to incorporate the independent blogosphere’s more engaging qualities (such as authenticity, passionate authority, and conversation), or mainstream coverage withers away until there’s little left but bookblogs, though, we do need to recognize that not every bookblog is going to endure. In fact, I seem to recall that if you look at the broader statistics, most blogs don’t last very long, for any number of reasons… but often because blogging becomes so burdensome that it’s easy to quit, even if greatness lies just outside one’s grasp… and, let’s be honest, easier when it doesn’t.