Why I Started Blogging

Wendy the Super Librarian had an interesting post a while back that got me thinking. The part of that post I am going to focus on is where Wendy talks about how blogging has changed over the last five years and not necessarily in a good way. With the explosion of the blogging community and blogs playing a more important role in book marketing, more and more blogs have taken a more businesslike approach to blogging. Things like "page visits", "ARC reviews" and "author interviews" are becoming more and more prevalent.

At the end of the rant post, Wendy asks the question: Just step back and think for a moment. Think back to why you started blogging. Think back to a time when blogging and the online romance community made you happy. Think back and remember. Hold on to it.

So Wendy, this one is for you. I liked the question you posed and I chose to ponder it. Why DID I start blogging?

My discovery of the romance community went a little something like this:

Romantic Times - reviews and message board
All About Romance - reviews and message board
From the message boards found bloggers - Sybil, KristiJ, Jace
Those bloggers led to other bloggers - Wendy, Lori, Nath, etc.

The online romance community fills a void in my life. No one I know spends a lot of time reading books, let alone romance books. So when I discovered message boards that had literally hundreds of people who read the same kind of books I did, I was in sheer heaven. Problem was, when someone recommended a book, if you weren't aware of their taste in reading, you might end up with a less than stellar book. That was where blogs were helpful. After reading an individual person's blog, you could get a feel for the type of books they liked and know if you would like the same books they liked based on their past reviews.

Many times if a blogger recommended a book, I would look back in their archives to see how they felt about a book that I really loved. If they gave it a good grade, then I knew we would have similar tastes. If they hated everything I loved, then I would know which recommendations to steer clear of. Sometimes, I would look up a book in the bloggers archives only to see that the book hadn't been reviewed.

Eventually, this led me to want to start my own blog. I wanted to be able to do for others what these bloggers were doing for me, giving me a place to recommend and talk about romance books. When I started my blog, my goal was to review every book I read. Yes, you read that right. I did say EVERY book I read. So far, for close to two years I have been able to achieve my goal. The main goal for my blog was to be a review database so romance readers would be able to decided for themselves which of my recommendations would work for them, based on my own preferences and dislikes. Hopefully, they would have enough background information to make an informed decision.

That in a nutshell was the reason why I started blogging and until I get tired of it or run out of things to say, I will continue to do it. I love statistics and numbers and seeing my database of reviews growing every week makes me giddy. I am a complete dork that way. Believe me, it is very easy to get side-tracked when other bloggers start talking about ARC's and site traffic. I start getting worried that maybe I am not as exciting as other blogs. Maybe people want to read author interviews or maybe I should be giving away books left and right. Then I slap myself around and tell myself, "Stop it, damn it! You don't have to do what everybody else is doing. Just stick to what you know, and what you wanted to do. Don't worry about everybody else!" I usually come to my senses after that.

Now you know.