Last week, Parajunkee’s View polled over 200 Book Bloggers and asked them some serious questions. Questions that might be personal to each blog, or sometimes self-evident. The answers that were received were surprising. You might be interested to see what your other Book Bloggers feel about touchy subjects, or their blogs in general. Today’s Book Blogging 101 will be all the results.
Blogger Behaviors, Drama & Social Networking
Haul Memes
Some hate them, some swear by them, some think it is a way for Book Bloggers to rub it in how many ARCs they get. Here is what they really feel about Book Haul posts.
When later asked about Blogger Jealousy — basically do you get Mad when you see a Book Blogger with an ARC you want, only 9% answered that yes, they did get mad.
Memes
There are some bloggers that make an ART out of the meme. There are some that have a NO MEME policies and others that say the only way to get people to go to their blog is by participating in a meme. But, what most agree on, is that there is a point where enough is enough. I asked for a number, and what I got was actually surprising. A good portion doesn’t even really care – this is what they responded with:
Independent Authors
Again with recent drama a lot of bloggers have come out to say they will not review Indie Authors, but does this just seem like the majority because of latest trends? The answer is that it is actually very RARE that a book blogger will refuse to read Indie Authors, the percentage is actually 13% saying NO indie authors. This should come as a relief to some authors.
Negative Review Feedback
When asked if they have ever had a bad reaction from a negative review, only about 22% answered yes. Which is a relief, so it is not that prevalent, but frankly I didn’t expect it to be THAT high.
Book Blogger Turn-Offs
Ever wonder if you are doing something wrong? Scaring away potential followers? I asked for things that bother people the most when visiting a book blogger and this is what they had to say:
Other -
Badly written reviews (got a few votes on that one)
Dark Background, Light Text (got a few votes on that one)
Poor Design (got a few votes on that one)
The Scandal That Rocked The Book Blogger Community The Most
We all have our personal “favorites” – the thing that happened that made us rethink being a part of this group. I think each one might have affected us differently, but the fact of the matter is – in 2012 we are a different community then we were in 2011. So what do other book bloggers thing rocked our community the most? It would seem, still topping the list is the ugly of ugly, that nasty little case of Blogger Plagiarism that bombarded this community in April, by the blogger known as The Story Siren. And for you 2% that are completely unaware and want to inform yourself all you have to do is search “Book Blogger Plagiarism” in Google. Yet, while only 2% said they had no idea what any of these options were, still 55% claim they don’t pay attention to the drama. I guess these were too big to ignore.
Tag You’re It
Award posts, or basically just tag memes, are a touchy subject with some bloggers. Book Bloggers might even go so far to say their blog is an “Award Free Zone.” Yet, beginning bloggers might use Awards as an in to get Bigger Bloggers to come and visit them. What become very clear though, in this survey — bloggers don’t like Awards… with a whammy of 82% saying they DO NOT participate in Awards or Tag posts.
Social Networks
Only two people answered that they weren’t on Twitter, yet 33% do not have Facebook Fan Pages.
Following and Reading
When asked about how many blogs people follow the majority came back with over 500! Second on that list was 200 – 500, yet in that number, they might follow that many, but only check up regularly on about 10 blogs. That is a huge difference. And while I applaud the people that answered they check up regularly on 100+ blogs – the ones that answered were very few. Less than 5%.
Increasing Followers
If you want to be one of those 500+ in someone’s readers, book bloggers listed what works best for them as far as increasing their numbers.
Best Books Read This Year!
I only listed books that had more then two entries.
That about covers it kids…I hope you learned something, or maybe just reaffirmed your stance on different subjects. If you think my data is wrong, let me know!
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Really interesting results!! It was a great survey..
I’m actually really surprised how big of a percentage “Captcha” took over as turning people off!
I cant see any of the graphics in the last 2 posts in the series
Me either :/
It should be fixed now. The plugin failed. Obviously three posts overloaded the shortcodes. 1 star rating for that bad boy…
Interesting results!
BTW, I can’t see any graphic or data above the “show/hide table data” either. I tried in Explorer and Firefox.
What was the captcha percentage? That’s a MAJOR turn off for me. I hardly ever get it right on the first time, and it’s super annoying to click refresh to try to find something I can read. Please, please no Captchas!
Darn, I can’t see the results on any of them – but I hope capatchas and music(or audible widgets) topped the list of turn offs.
I’m trying to fix them…getting there.
Interesting results! I’m surprised by how few books people receive. I get more than five ARCs a week usually, the vast majority of those being unrequested. (Requested books per week probably averages to one.)
Jeez — I don’t get that many. But I don’t request or accept anymore…LOL I would bend under the pressure if I got that many
Here here! I made the mistake of accepting everything and now I’m having trouble reviewing period. *grin*
Awesome post this week! I loved the pie charts (but then again who doesn’t!) and its very interesting to see what the general opinion on some of these tops was!
Pie Charts rock my world. But I hear a certain author invented them, in a kilt…
Love this post! It’s really helpful for someone like me, who is a complete newbie to the book blogging community. I have a better idea of what I need to do and not do to gain followers. Thanks for the interesting read!
Great!
That was awesome. I enjoyed seeing those stats. And can I just say how much “SirenGate” cracks me up. Clever!
Not my idea LOL — that was floating around twitter after I think her second misnomer.
Awesome post! I’m going to have to share this one!
Excellent post. I still wish we had a national or international org. (I originally typed in ‘notional’) where I think we could address issues and standards.
This is so fascinating! It’s nice to be able to see what matters most (or doesn’t matter at all) to the majority.
Great post. Thanks so much for this, I learned a lot. I still have no clue what a haul meme is. I am not even sure I know what a meme is!
There was one scandal that wasn’t mentioned that affected a lot of us adult blogs. That was the use of “man candy” images from google. I know a blogger was sued (and lost) and everyone started taking down photos last month.
Really interesting! Thanks for compiling that info!
Cool. Thanks for putting that together. It is always fun to look at information like that. I can’t say it will affect how I blog or that it really told me much I didn’t suspect. Still thanks. It was fun to read.
This was really fascinating. Thank you for putting it all together
As usual, another great post with interesting insights. Now if I could only remember what I answered.
I love the pie charts……Im glad to see that the meme thing doesn’t bother much of us……:)
Wow, a great post! thank-you so much for sharing, its nice to see what does/doesn’t matter to other bloggers & is a great way for us to work out what content we should aim at posting more of.. I loved your pie charts.
Sharon
Love this post! I was so scared I was doing too many MEME’s glad most don’t care. This post basically answered all the questions I had since I still consider my self a newbie, with lots to learn. Also I only been blogging for two months and I didn’t know about blogger scandals but I just researched it all, so I feel very informed and shocked!
Hmm I knew that giveaways were a top way to increase traffic to a blog, but sadly shouldn’t it be the quality of posts? *sigh* People want what people want and I guess giveaways or hops are the way to go. I know that seems to be the case with my blog. Maybe I need to concentrate on the QUALITY of my posts more.
Thanks for this great post BTW. Very eye opening and nice to see what the consensus is. You always have amazing posts and ideas.
Awesome post! I really appreciate the what brings in more followers question, I’ll have to do a giveaway soon!
Love this! Thanks for putting it together. I didn’t find any of it *too* surprising, I don’t think. I agree that quality posts should be what gets numbers up, but unfortunately giveaways have definitely been the biggest number increase for me as well. Hopefully people will see how annoying captcha is and make the change, but I don’t know… I see people complaining about it all the time, and the people who have it on their blog don’t seem to notice.
This is great! One of my biggest deterrents from blogs is definitely Captcha, as well as the look of the blog. I hate it when I can’t read what’s going on because other things on the blog are too distracting.
As for the best books — I totally agree with Grave Mercy! Though, half of those, I hadn’t even heard of!
I’m just recently getting out of the haul memes … I did like participating in them, but then I felt like I had to accumulate MORE books each week so that mine would look good. Now I’d rather get back to just reading the books I have, books from the library, rather than getting a TON of review books.
As for getting more followers, I do some giveaways but I don’t do them often. I think it’s a great way to get more followers, but I’d rather get people who appreciate the content, rather than people who just stop by looking for giveaways.
Thanks for sharing!
Super awesome series, thank you! Some of this was really eye opening – I was surprised by how low blog hops rated in generating followers or traffic. I LOVE blog hops and always find fabulous new blogs to follow because of them!
I don’t know if it was on your list but my big turnoff on blogs (the busy side bars get me, too) is not allowing “name/URL” comments (just allowing comments via one of the pre-defined accounts). ::wails:: but I don’t have an account with any of those options!!!
I was surprised by that also.
Oh dear Captcha..That’s probably my biggest turn off. I hate having to decipher what the letters and numbers are, I just want to post my comment thank you very much! I also pretty much ignore sidebars..To me that’s like ignoring ads lol even though I know lots of people don’t use ads.
Great survey! I love this type of stuff. You should make infographics
Especially that new blogger captcha with the pictures! I never can figure it out. Takes like three times.
Cool love seeing what everyone really things. Captcha really annoys the heck out of me..i am an idiot and cannot read those words and end up doing it over and over..grrr.
These results seem to match pretty closely with what I would think too…ads turn me off immediately, especially blinkie ones :p I also have no tolerance for the plagiarism ridiculousness or the bullies out there…seriously people, we’re supposed to be adults. Thanks for sharing…very, very interesting!
I absolutely love, love this series. Thank you for taking the time to collect, analyze & share all of this data. I really loved reading this!
I had forgotten about all those “blogger awards” until you mentioned it. They used to be really prominent when LE first took off running, but I don’t think I’ve seen one anywhere in a long time. There’ll still around?
Great post as always Rachel! I love these BB101 posts. They always give me so many ideas…or is that a bad thing? *grin*
thanks for sharing.