Why Blogging Might Be Bad For Your Reading And What You Can Do About That

Hello, lovelies! I’m pretty sure this is the longest title I’ve ever used – I really hope you will read it until the end, bear with me there, people. I’m not sure if it is a book discussion, it’s more of a blogging discussion. I want to talk about the way blogging has affected my reading schedule and how it might interfere with yours as well.

Blogging is soooo evil, keeping us away from reading.

When I started off, I’ve seen some posts about this, bloggers complaining about how blogging affected their pleasure in reading, how now they don’t feel like they read for themselves anymore. And I was very dismissive about it, I remember my reaction very clearly, it was something like :

if you like something, read it; if you don’t, then don’t read it.

It was very simple for me back then as a reader with no blogging responsibilities to dismiss this whole conflict.

But actually, blogging can be really bad for your reading.

I can say that now after 6 months (almost seven, yaay!) of blogging. I’m sorry blogging sisters and brothers for not trusting you back then, you’re real heroes and I admire you very much.

I’ll make a list with dangers that appear in this wild blogging life that will influence your reading schedule.

#1 : Review Requests

I feel like this one was/is a huge danger for me because at first, I felt so good and honored that authors wanted me to read their books that maybe I accepted some requests that weren’t compatible with what I usually read. That’s not right for either me or the author because I might end up giving a bad rating because of this incompatibility. So, avoid doing it. Just be honest.

But it’s also hard to refuse it, especially when you’re a very small blogger and you don’t know how things work quite yet. OKAY. It’s still hard for me to say no because I want to support as many authors as possible since they put up so much work into their books, but I try to resist taking up too many review requests that I might never get to.

This might affect your reading schedule because you’ll end up with many books that might or might not be in your comfort zone, which might cause a small life crisis. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

*me being hit by all these books I should have reviewed already*

#2 : ARCs that you only read because you’re trying to be cool™

It doesn’t have to be only because you want to be cool. Sometimes you just see an ARC everywhere and it doesn’t sound like something you usually go for, but everybody is reading and you start getting very intrigued too.

 

I think this is the equivalent of peer pressure in this community. Listen to me, guys. It’s going to happen to you too. You might say that you’re immune to this, but nobody is immune to the hype all the time. THE HYPE WILL GET TO YOU AT SOME POINT and you’ll hate every second of it. Because instead of reading something you absolutely love, you’ll end up reading all those popular books and some of them will be totally worth it, but some of them will not??? It’s very confusing and risky.

#3 : Getting so many recommendations from other bloggers

Which is amazing, soooo great, I love all my blogging friends and I trust them so much to recommend me books. But sometimes when you read all these beautiful book reviews or talk to your blogging friends, you get this desperate need to read ALL THE BOOKS IN THE WORLD. And it’s very bad for actual reading productivity because you’ll just end up crying for being incapable of reading all the books (or not. it depends on how dramatic you are, I suppose)

This is a real issue for me and I had like three reading slumps in my life caused by having too many books that I want to read, which only makes me want to just give up altogether and not read for weeks. My brain works in very strange ways, I’m aware of that. Don’t shame me for this!!!

#4 : Blogging takes up a lot of time.

Blogging is the thing I adore the most after reading. Here, I said it. You can use it against me if I ever get moody and want to give up.

Buuuut you have to spend quite a lot of your time writing posts, editing photos, posting and promoting your posts on social media, interacting with the community. It’s a lot of work, let’s be honest. And even if it’s enjoyable, it takes up a lot of your time that normally you’d use for reading.

(me too, me too, dear Steve. I can’t believe there are only 24 hours in a day, whyyyy?)

Therefore, you end up reading less and less because blogging has to be cramped somewhere in your schedule too. Frustrating, but what can you do about it???

so, what can you do about it?

• if you feel like blogging interferes too much with your reading and you’re not satisfied anymore and you’re reading just for the sake of doing it, maybe take a break from blogging?
• stop accepting review requests, ARCs for a while and just read some books you wanted to read for a while now, but you never got to them?
• ask other book bloggers how they manage to juggle all of these activities. I think us bloggers should root for each other, so whenever anybody required my help and I could help them, I did. I also ask my friends for advice all the time and they help me because THEY LOVE MEEEE. (or maybe they’re just being nice)
• just keep in mind that it might happen at some point. There will come times when you don’t feel like reading or blogging or either of them and that’s totally okay.
• just don’t pressure yourself into doing any of these because you’re afraid of losing your audience, people will be here when you come back. You deserve to take a break and fall back in love with reading.
• don’t read books just because they are popular, read whatever you enjoy. you’ll find your audience, don’t worry about it! though if you’re curious about a book because of the hype, you can totally give in once in a blue moon. I understand you. We all relate.

Do you ever feel like blogging is affecting your reading schedule?

Did you ever feel like you’re not reading for pleasure anymore?

What do you do when you feel like this? What are some of your suggestions for bloggers that are in the same situation?