Twelve years ago I launched BookerTalk. I was enthusiastic but completely naive about how much effort was needed to make a blog successful.
In the first month I managed to write just one short post of 240 words. Month two was slightly better since I doubled my output! That was pretty much the level of activity in the first six month. But I kept going, picking up tips and ideas along the way from people who had a much better grasp of all the technical stuff and how to engage with other bloggers.
More than one million words and 1600 posts later I’m still here to my utter astonishment.
The blog now is very different to the one I created in 2012. It’s had two redesigns and no longer focuses only on the Booker Prize contenders and winners. Over the years I’ve branched out to join various challenges and reading events organised by bloggers around the world. I’ve also created my own reading projects from the World of Literature to the latest initiative — Adventures in African Literature.
The world of blogging has also changed markedly in those years.
Rise and Fall of Blogging Platforms
Twelve years ago, if you wanted to start a blog you essentially had a choice of WordPress, Blogger, SquareSpace and TypePad. I dabbled with Google but found it clunky so opted for WordPress and have stuck with that platform ever since. The last three are still around but they trail far behind WordPress in popularity.
New kids have joined the party since then. We now have the option of SubStack and Wix. I’ve seen some book bloggers move to these new platforms because they were less expensive than WordPress only to find that they don’t have as much flexibility and don’t result in as much traffic. I’m sticking with WordPress — it’s not cheap (see my thoughts on costs below) and isn’t perfect but it works fine for me and anyway I really don’t have the energy to go looking for anything else right now.
Blogging Costs
Blogging needn’t cost you anything – you can get up and running with a simple blog completely free of charge. If you want to go beyond the basics or you want more control over your site, then you have to start paying. Each of the providers have packages giving greater storage, more design components and greater flexibility with navigation.
Guess what — those costs have gone up over the last few years.
My billing history tells me that I’m paying twice as much now as I did in 2012. It’s hard to do a direct comparison however because WordPress keeps changing the names of its billing plans and what you get for your money.
Remember the fuss when WordPress announced in 2022 that they were scrapping the model of one free and four payment plans, replacing them with just two options? Such was the backlash from unhappy WordPress customers that they backed down.
Now WordPress users have one free plan and five paid-for plans. It looks like a lot of choice but there’s a big jump in cost between a fairly basic “Explorer” package at $8 a month and the next level up — the “Creator” package at $30 a month which has a lot of whistles and bells I know I will never use. I now have to make a choice: if I come out of my current Pro plan (which no longer exists) I’ll lose the ability to use plug ins which give me a lot more control of design and functionality. But I’ll save a chunk of money that I could use on other things (more books maybe???)
More and more I get the feeling that WordPress is aiming its services at commercial users who want transactional types of sites and are prepared to pay for that functionality. “Hobbyist” bloggers like myself are not as important.
Social Media Ups and Downs
A blogger’s life was so much simpler twelve years ago. To get your blog content noticed you had to promote it on social media. Twitter was a must. Facebook and Pinterest more “nice to do” if you had the time and energy `(which I didn’t). Instagram existed though wasn’t much talked about other than a place to share your holiday snaps.
Look what’s happened.
Twitter, now rebranded for some unfathomable reason as X is in decline. Instagram meanwhile is booming, proving highly popular as a quicker way to share book reviews than blogging.
It’s not what we would have predicted 12 years ago, or even 18 months ago. Twitter used to be the main driver of traffic to BookerTalk. It was also the channel where I interacted most with other bloggers, publicists from publishing companies and authors. But then Elon Musk took charge and it all seemed to go down the pan.
In the last six months or so I’ve felt that Twitter has become less and less relevant. My feed is now full of stuff that doesn’t interest me and all the posts from people I loved to follow get lost, drowned out by the garbage. It’s no longer as easy to share items from other blogs either. I’ve clung onto my account but am not sure for how much longer. Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and invest my time in Instagram instead.
Looking Ahead
Every year when the anniversary comes around I begin to wonder whether I’ll still be blogging in 5, 10 or even 15 years time. Periodically I’ll see social media posts that suggest blogging has had its day and the future lies instead in Instagram and Book Tube.
I’m not convinced that’s entirely true. There still seem to be thousands and thousands of book bloggers around, producing high quality content and getting engagement from their readers. Book Tube simply doesn’t come anywhere near the kind of thoughtful insight you get from those blog posts. In fact I’ve yet to find a book tube channel that hasn’t left me feeling dissatisfied with its superficiality. I’m not interested in hearing about book hauls or people gushing about how they got their hands on a copy of the latest “must read” novel.
Instagram does a better job here to be fair. That channel used to annoy me because it felt people were investing more time in making their image look attractive, than in conveying information. I don’t need an image of a book cover surrounded by flower petals and fairy lights or containing an artfully posed cat with scarcely any details about the book itself. Thankfully it does look as if the tide is turning here and there are more people actually writing mini reviews alongside the photo.
So I’m not ready to hang up my blogging gloves yet thought i’m going to explore the potential of Instagram more closely. I’ll keep going with Blogger Talk until I run out of energy and enthusiasm or my readers tell me enough is enough!