Book Blog

A book blog is firstly a blog or web log. Blogs emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The history of the blog and techniques for creating and employing blogs are well documented. However, like a variety of topical blogs, there is no information on the precise origin of the book blog. There is a "Blogging for Dummies" 'guide, and numerous other books on the blog phenomenon. However, there is but one title in print on book blogging, The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs: the new literary force published in 2007.

Most newspapers in the U.S. have eliminated their Sunday book review sections, including such popular Sunday book reviews as those in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. The New York Times maintains the only longstanding Sunday book review section among American newspapers, though the Wall Street Journal, the only major newspaper that has not seen its print circulation decline introduced a Sunday book review section in September 2010.

Like much that has been in print, book reviews have moved online. Amazon.com reader reviews have clearly filled much of the void created by the disappearance of most professional book reviews. But there are questions about their integrity as well as their true expertise.

Book bloggers write and publish independent reviews of books. Anyone who can go online and set up a blog on Google's Blogger platform or on WordPress, can establish a book blog and begin reviewing books. And indeed book bloggers have proliferated to an extent where they cannot be ignored in the marketing campaigns of publishers as they have become truly influential. Book blogs have even received mainstream recognition. In May 2011, the first BlogWorld convention was held at the Javits Center in New York City as part of Book Expo America, the most important annual publishing convention. In May 2012, Goodreads, the book social media site (whose acquisition by Amazon.com was announced in March 2013) and the Association of American Publishers announced the winners of the first annual Independent Book Blogger Awards. Evidence of the importance of book bloggers in book marketing is reflected in the targeting of book blogs by publishers in their seasonal campaigns. For example, Dutton, an imprint of the Penguin Group in its Fall 2013 catalog of forthcoming titles, described marketing plans for prominent bestselling author, Elizabeth George's new mystery to include "Targeted onlinemarketing,including blog campaign." This is but one example as this catalog and those of other publishers are filled with book blog marketing campaigns. In addition, NetGalley, the prominent online source of electronic pre-release review copies of books provides these to not just the traditional recipients of books ahead of release, but to book bloggers as well. On the NetGalley homepage: "If you're a reviewer, blogger, journalist, librarian, bookseller, educator, or in the media, get a FREE NetGalley account to read and review titles before they are published." Of course not all book blogs receive the same attention. Invesp, the online marketing consultancy, ranks the top 50 book blogs based on a number of standard online measures: Feedburner RSS membership, unique visitors, Google indexed pages, incoming links (or backlinks), Google Pagerank, and Alexa rank. Google pagerank, which to a great extent reflects the quantity of inbound links is as high as "7" for some book blogs. This compares favorably to the publishing industry standard, Publishers Weekly, which has a pagerank of "6." Of course, among the many thousands of book blogs, there are those that generate little traffic and have pageranks of 0.

While individually, no book blog generates the amount of traffic that the online version of a major print publication's reviews, such as that of the New York Times, in aggregate they are impossible for publishers and authors to ignore. Aside from soliciting reviews, publishers also work with book bloggers providing free books for promotional book giveaways by the blog in order to generate "buzz." In addition to book blogs there has also been a proliferation of book review websites. These tend to position themselves as professional. Sites such as bookpleasures.com, the Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Journal of Books, and the Internet Review of Books appear in some cases to have page ranks that rival those of the leading blogs,. But these sites seek to replicate online the print reviews that have disappeared. Book Blogs are something different.

Resources

• Book Blogger Directory | The Big Blog of Book Blogs
• The Book Blogger List
• FutureBook: Book blogger and reviewer listing