Why are Reviews the lesser viewed posts and why do we keep writing them?!

Published on by Alex @ WhimsyPages

When I first started my blog in March last year I wasn’t a blog reader. I didn’t follow any bookish blogs or any blogs for that matter. All I was looking for is a space of my own where I can keep my thoughts and opinions on recently read books. And if you scroll all the way down to my very first posts, they all consisted of reviews, because What else should I blog about if all I do is read books?!

After a few months of playing around with WordPress, I discovered that so many other people were doing basically the same thing as me – blogging about books. BUT! Reviews were a very small portion of a much larger spectrum of bookish posts.

It’s been over a year now since I first started my blog and experiencing it myself as well as hearing the same from fellow bloggers, I kept wondering why do we keep writing reviews when we could spend that time and effort on posts that attract more attention.

I came up with a few PROS & CONS when it comes to review posts, so please bare with me while I ramble away.

–   CONS  –

1 – Let’s be honest here, reviews are boring. There, I said it. We all try to make them engaging, fun and interesting, and we might succeed. But when was the last time you read a review on a book you haven’t read or even heard about? Exactly!

2 – Reviews are a ton TON of work. There are always a few (or many) of them pending, coming to haunt us in our dreams and not letting us pick up a new book even though all we want to do is read this shiny new book that we just bought yesterday! WHY ARE YOU SO EVIL, REVIEWS?!

+   PROS  +

1 –  No matter how difficult and time consuming the Reviews are, I love writing them. That is the first and utmost reason why I even started my blog – to share the thoughts on the books I read with other people!

I love the whole experience behind the creation of Review post, from writing them down, to editing, to arranging them in a way that might be more appealing to the readers.

2 – The process of writing Reviews make us think, make us analyse the huge bricks of paper we call books that took us ages to finish. It’s not just mindless reading, it’s critical and opinionated, and it requires hard work and determination. So,

GO US, REVIEWERS!

3 – Reviews make a difference! Whether we post them on our blog, on GoodReads, on Amazon or any other social media, some people will eventually stumble upon it and either buy the book that you praised or decide against it, solely based on what YOU had to say. Isn’t that amazing?! We are powerful beyond our imagination!

4 – It’s also a way to bond with people (even those few that take the time to read the review). They can agree with you or disagree but the conversation has already started and it is up to you to make it into something bigger.

REVIEWERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Phew! More PROS than CONS! This means that I can continue writing my beloved and time consuming reviews as much as I want because they make me a powerful magician in the bookish world and I cannot say no to that!

What are your thoughts? Do you hate or love them? And why do you keep writing reviews?

With love,

Alex

33 thoughts on “Why are Reviews the lesser viewed posts and why do we keep writing them?!”

  1. While I agree with all the points you raised here, I think it should also be noted that there ARE book bloggers out there reading and reviewing books people HAVEN’T already read, or even heard about. While I believe this is a very small number of bloggers–because let’s be honest, the reviews for more popular books are the reviews that get more easily noticed–I don’t think it’s quite fair to say that all book bloggers are reading ONLY the popular and well-known books, because this isn’t the case. Just a thought. 😉

    So I think there’s a bit of a double standard happening, honestly. Book bloggers complain about how everyone “only ever reads the same books/only ever reviews the popular titles”…and yet ignore or skip over reviews for books from, say, the indie or self published industry, even though there are just as many awesome books to be found there. Why? I’m not sure there’s an answer here, but I’m passionate about (hopefully someday) seeing a shift in this line of thinking. Of course, this is probably more on the “wishful thinking” line of thought than a probable eventuality.

    Yes, reviews are probably the least looked at posts in the book blogging world, but I say if you love to write them (as I do!) and there’s that slim chance you’ll help lead someone to a new favorite book…well, I’ll keep writing reviews, for sure!

    Thank you SO MUCH for the food for thought here, Alex! Keep rockin’, happy Friday, and happy book-ing to you in the near future! ❤

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    1. Bookish community is very diverse. Everyday I stumble upon a new blog that covers different books, different genres, has something unique about it. And I love that! I love the idea of leaving a little tiny bit of myself in every post I write, as all other book bloggers do.

      I agree that there are many book bloggers and booktubers out there who pick up not just “the most popular releases” but Indie books or books that do not get as much attention. One of my favourite YouTubers is MercysBookishMusings, she has an amazing taste in books and I often find picking up the books she talks about.

      I feel like this is a topic for yet another post 😀 (Maybe, The Truth Behind Book Reviews – Part II or What can we do to spread the love for less known books! ) But your comment definitely made me wonder about how the blog and audience in general can influence the books I pick up or even my reading tastes. Thank you for the comment ❤ (that is exactly why I love discussion posts!)

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  2. I’m new-ish to the blogging community, so I didn’t realize reviews were of the more unpopular posts! This is so weird to me because reviews are my favorite kind of post–both to write and to read. I read almost every review, unless there are spoilers in it for a book I haven’t read or if the book seems completely uninteresting to me right away. You learn something new every day, I guess!

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  3. I can’t say that all reviews don’t get attention. As Beth said in the comment above, reviews on the most anticipated or popular books will get tons of feedback, but unfortunately some books and some reviews stay unnoticed. I believe that this also depends on the blogger, it’s up to us to make it as interesting and engaging as possible. (I am still mastering the art of “fun reviews” 😀 )

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  4. Oh man, I love this post! I definitely noticed when I started Birdie Bookworm that reviews are the less viewed posts. I think there are a lot of factors. First, you’re right and reading a review about a book you don’t know, or doesn’t seem your style, is a hard thing to do. You want to stay engaged with the post your reading. I also think that people who are interested in the book your reviewing may not want to read your opinion for fear of catching a spoiler, large or small.

    I’m guilty of scrolling through reviews because I’m finding it hard to connect when I wasn’t already interested in the book. Or, I’m too interested in the book and I don’t want anything ruined for me.

    Regardless, I’ll never stop writing my reviews. It’s what made me fall in love with the online reading community in the first place. 🙂

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    1. I am guilty of scrolling through some reviews as well 😀

      Usually, I don’t like reading reviews before I read the book because I am scared that it might influence my own opinion. But I absolutely LOVE reading other people’s thoughts on the books I already read and reviewed!

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  5. they really are the lesser viewed. But while saying that I admit to skippin reviews sometimes on the blogs I follow. Like I don’t see the interesting factor or I don’t care about this book b/c I’ve already heard about it. Which is sad b/c we are here to talk about books.

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  6. I love the entire process of writing reviews, and I love that I can share my thoughts about a book with others. They may have less views than my other posts, but they’re fun to write. And I blog for myself first and foremost. Thanks for such an awesome post!
    I’m new to blogging and book reviewing, and I was wondering if you had any tips for newbie bloggers and book reviewers.
    If you have the time, please check out my blog @breenysbooks. I’d love any feedback. Have a wonderful day.

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  8. I’ve actually found that my reviews do really well – my third most popular post is a book review and I’ve noticed I’ve got a decent amount of traffic from Google searches for specific book reviews. Then again, I specifically try and review books I haven’t seen others reviewing so that mine will be different and so I think that helps quite a bit because it means if people want to look up reviews for a particular book, my blog will rank higher in the search results.

    It’s amusing because I do tend to read book reviews less often myself, but partially that’s because I actually prefer reading reviews for books I’ve already read and so haven’t read many of the books I see people reviewing.

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  9. I love this discussion, so thanks for that! While it’s true that reviews seem to get less traffic than some other types of posts, I think it’s important to remember that people often read reviews weeks or months after a review is posted and most often people don’t bother commenting. I love it when I do get a comment on an older review.

    When I’m struggling to write reviews (and I often do!), I try to remind myself that reviews are the real reason I started my blog. Knowing someone read a book because I recommended it just feels good!

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  10. This is a great discussion post – and something that I feel most of us have noticed as bloggers. Reviews are some of my favorite posts to write now that I’ve gotten a template going that works for me, but they just don’t get as much attention as my other posts. You’re right – I don’t go to a random blog and read a review, because what’s the point? I don’t know their taste, I don’t know what sort of books they like, so how can I even begin to judge a book based on their review? But it’s great that when you’ve been in the game for a while, you start to make a mental list of 5-8 reviewers whose opinions you trust, and those are the reviews that you DO enjoy reading. 🙂

    ~ Aimal @ Bookshelves & Paperbacks

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    1. I was a little bit apprehensive to post this discussion, but I am very glad to see how many people commented and how many agreed with what I had to say (although even when people disagree I still love it 😀 ) And you are right, when I scroll through the posts by bloggers that I follow, there is only a handful of them that I stop to check out reviews and I am guilty of skipping paragraphs to get to the actual rating. (Bad, bad Alex!)

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  11. This is such a great discussion! I absolutely love writing reviews, but I weirdly hate reading them, unless it’s on Goodreads and I’m specifically searching for books to read! So it’s always a toss up when deciding what to post. I agree it’s fun to fangirl (or fanhate…?) a book!

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    1. Thank you ❤ GoodRead! Yes! Although, I never EVER read any goodreads reviews before I finish the book. I feel like I get influenced by other opinions very easily, so I try to stay away from them and only when the book is rated and the review for it is written is when I get the courage to check what other people thought about it 😀

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  13. It doesn’t really help that reviews are subjective – people tend to only read reviews of books they’ve read or are interested in, which isn’t likely to be every single book we read/feature on our blogs. BUT I like to say my bit about a book now that I’ve been in the habit of doing so for so long 🙂 It makes me feel more organised somehow?

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  14. I’m relatively new to blogging. Before now, I’d never really paid too much attention to the blogging community. But, I’ve decided I want to go into online publication as a career. I really like the idea of sharing ideas and opinions with others and getting conversations going. So to do that I’ve started up a review blog. I write about books, comics, television, movies, just the things that I’m passionate about. The problem I’m running into though is that my blog isn’t getting any traffic, and I know that I don’t have many posts up yet but it still makes me nervous. I love doing it, but if I’m going to make a living I know I need an audience.
    I think the reason why review posts are less viewed than others because it’s not personal. When people think about blogging, the majority probably think of a person writing about their life and their experiences, not breaking down the elements of or describing a book. Granted there is some conversation in that, but it probably isn’t the same to most people. I think if you keep up with the publishing industry or the film industry or whatever else it is you like to talk about you are probably the most likely to have readers and followers, but it isn’t guaranteed.

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    1. That is true. I love scrolling through “lifestyle” blogs because of the pretty pictures and just little sneak peeks into other people’s life 😀

      There are still a lot of people who like reading reviews or look for reviews on certain books, hope they will notice your blog soon ❤

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  15. I love this post! Were basically on the same page when it comes to book reviews!! Anyway, I just came across your blog and the first thing I noticed are your instagram pics. You take such great photos!!! Nice to meet you. 🙂

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  16. Pingback: Book Reviews | How to overcome writer’s block – WhimsyPages

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