I don’t normally do posts in response to these debates that randomly pop up on book blogs and end up causing a big drama… but, Margo (read: my laptop) is refusing to let me comment on
this post, so I kind of wanted to address the issue here instead.
Go read
that post, I’ll sum it up but I won’t be mentioning everything.
The person who wrote the post basically made generalizations about US book bloggers vs. UK book bloggers… and it was kind of insulting towards the US bloggers (and some of the things she said made it sound like she was speaking for all us British people, I just want to make it clear that she's not).
Here’s the thing about my blog: it’s a shared blog and it always has been.
Over the past few months the number of us posting reviews has dropped down to just myself and Julie (when before we had a few other people reviewing; some in Australia, some in Wales, some in the US).
Julie is from the US.
I’m from the UK.
And we’re not that different at all. We both participate in memes, we both post reviews (although, really, Julie has definitely been reviewing way more than me) and we both promote the blog when we can… and I like to think that neither of us are obnoxious/annoying about it.
That post kind of implied that the majority of UK blogs post quality content while the US bloggers just post memes and try to get more followers and things and that the UK bloggers don’t care about getting comments or anything like that.
I can’t speak for everybody but I started book blogging because I love talking about books and sharing my love of books with people - there have been times where I’ve stumbled across a book review and it’s made me read a book I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise and I’ve loved it… I like to think that maybe I can do that for other people too.
I’m pretty sure all book bloggers care about how many readers they have, they may not get obsessive about it or anything but it is great getting comments and it’s great seeing your follower count go up because it makes you feel like people actually like your blog and like you really are sharing something you love with other people.
I would still book blog even if I had no followers - I mean, I wasn’t even aware of all the other book blogs when I started this blog, it was honestly just because I loved talking about books and I invited my online friends who shared that love of books to blog with me.
I participate in the Waiting on Wednesday and In My Mailbox memes because they’re fun and I love reading other peoples posts for those memes - if people didn’t like reading them, they wouldn’t be so popular and those two memes have made me aware of so many brilliant books that I maybe wouldn’t have heard of had I not seen them on someones IMM or WOW post.
Actually, I think that was mentioned in the UK vs. US Book Blogs post:
"I also find that I am increasingly unaware of the books they mention."The way she spoke about it, it was as if that were a bad thing... that is one of the things I love about book blogs, it makes me aware of books I had never even heard of before. Some of my favourite books are a result of someone in a different country recommending them and I probably wouldn't have found out about them otherwise.
She said that it's a bad thing because the books seem very American based - I want to read books that are good, where they are set doesn't matter... if I'm in the mood to read a book set in the UK then I will look up some books set in the UK and buy them, but I have no problem at all reading books set elsewhere (in fact, only one of my favourite books has a UK setting and that is Stolen by Lucy Christopher, although even then, it's mostly set in Australia with just flashbacks of the UK and British people).
We love books, right? That's why we book blog... so finding out about books we've never heard of before because someone mentions them on a blog, that shouldn't be a bad thing at all.
These two questions were asked in that post:
Do you find that you prefer reading blogs based in the same country as you?
My answer: No.
Where the blogger is from doesn’t matter to me at all and the only time I really notice the difference is when they post vlogs and I’ll hear their accent and remember they’re not from the UK or when I spot them using American terms or American spelling… otherwise, I don’t even notice.
Have you noticed a big difference between UK and US blogs?
I pretty much covered this above, but as for specific differences there is only one that I’ve noticed and that is the ARC thing.
American bloggers who receive books for review tend to get more of them and different ones than UK bloggers I’ve seen (because a lot of the books aren’t published here in the UK and US publishers aren’t big on shipping ARC’s internationally, I don‘t think).
I don’t see that as a bad thing at all though because like I said, a lot of the books aren’t even published here in the UK and I have found so many books I want to read through US bloggers mentioning them in their IMM or reviewing ARC’s.
Julie is American and I’m Scottish - she doesn’t tell me what to post and what not to post, I don’t dictate what she posts either and there still isn’t much difference in the content we contribute to the blog (hell, like I said somewhere above, Julie usually posts even more reviews than I do -- she even has her weekly Historic Saturday reviews so the American of this blog posts more “quality” content than the UK blogger does).
There are more US book bloggers than UK book bloggers. There are blogs out there that will only post memes and seem to use their blogs as a way to get free books (whether by posting about contests for extra entries or by trying to get ARC's).
The fact that there are more US bloggers than UK ones means that there will be more US blogs that are like that (especially seeing as it's kind of pointless for a UK blogger to start up a book blog for those reasons considering the majority of contests are US/Canada only and US publishers won't ship internationally).
But, just because there are more "bad" US book blogs doesn't mean they're all like that or that UK bloggers are superior in any way, the majority of book blogs I follow are run by Americans (a few are Australian or English - there could be other nationalities but I don't make a habit of going out of my way to check where the blog authors are from) and all of them post great content.
Sorry about this. I just wanted to say why I disagree with what she had said and respond to the questions she asked.
-The Scottish One.
Later.
Edit: She has posted
an apology to anyone she offended with her post, before anyone gets too annoyed with her.