Why Do YOU Blog?

A couple of days ago, Kristi from The Story Siren posted an entry about Bloggers and Authors. It opened a discussion to all of us about whether Blogging is a such a good way of promoting books.

To us, the bloggers, or at least, to some of us; blogging about books is a way to share our love of reading with others all over the world. I fell in love with book blogging because I had no one who felt the same way I do about books near me. Discovering the Book Blogging Community, to me, has been a life changing experience. Without it, I wouldn't know all I know now about the YA Book-world and its authors, I wouldn't have bloggish friends and I wouldn't be in touch -and wouldn't have built a friendly relationship- with my favourite authors.

I blog because I love it. I love sharing my passion for books with the world, and I'm not afraid to say it for fear of being catalogued Nerd or Bookwork or something worse. I squeal in bookstores when I see a book that I didn't know had been published in my country, and I don't care if anyone's around to watch me, but I will do a happy dance.

I don't blog to be Internet Famous, I don't even care about my follower count (but I do love all of my followers!), and I certainly am not after free books or swag. When I started blogging, I didn't even know you could get free books. And considering I'm an international blogger, I still don't get any. I may have gotten three books for review last year. Whenever I get a request to review a book, I get excited and honoured to have been taken into consideration by the author/publisher. Because it tells me I must be doing something right. It tells me that the time I spend reading, and blogging and writing is worth it. People actually hear what I have to say.

People hear what you have to say. You don't have to be scared or feel sad because you don't have many followers and your post won't be read by many. If it's read by just one person, feel happy about it. I do.

And about blogs being a tool for Authors to promote their books, that's exactly what they are to them! We give their books free publicity in exchange for nothing. But it's also a way for us to connect, let them know we love what they're doing, learn what they're up to, etc. etc. etc.

A blog can sell a book, four books, a dozen, but it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't be our primary goal. Let the publicists/agents/booksellers/publishers do that instead. Let us spread our love for the book. It's like a contagious disease: I love it, tell you to buy it; you buy it, tell someone else to buy it; and so on and on forever.