If you have been in the book blogging community for any amount of time you will have probably noticed three things about us: (a) we love our lists, (b) we love our reviews, (c) it seems like readers much prefer lists to reviews.
I have read many blog posts pondering the lack of engagement on slaved-over review posts. It would appear, across the board, that review posts get fewer views and fewer comments than lighter, perhaps more fluffy posts (like those list ones we all love and adore).
But why? And perhaps more practically, is there any way we bloggers can change our reviews to reach a larger audience? Review posts, perhaps more than any other type of posts, are kind of the reason I started blogging about books. I loved books and when I finished one all I wanted to do was talk to my friends endlessly about the characters or the plot or the infuriating lack of historical inaccuracy-- but of course even the best friends tire of hearing un-requested book reviews, so I turned to the internet.And when my review posts got the least engagement (sort of like my poor put-upon friend whose eyes start to glaze over after 10 min of book-opinion-outpouring) I began to wonder why. Were my reviews boring? Too general? Too specific? Not about the latest-greatest-shiniest book? ((to be fair I have held back from writing a review about one of my favorite books because not only is it impossible to find online it also isn't in most libraries and that just seems like a self-indulgent thing to write about!))
Of all the myriad of possibilities I would like to put forth one possibility: are my reviews too long? Are shorter reviews 'better' ones? Should my reviews fit in a succinct paragraph?
One of the reason that I myself don't read every review on my favorite blogs is because I am very specific about how much information I want to know about a book before I read it. In fact I would rather know next to nothing about the specifics of a novel-- I just want to know what genre and if it was well-written. Many reviews (rather reasonably) talk about the plot or character developments.
But if I see a post that is a paragraph long-- if I know that the blogger only has a super limited space to talk about this book-- then most likely the review focuses on the large picture things (amazing character development, poetical writing, stunning imagination), aka the things I'm most interested in.
My conclusion (shorter reviews are better because they are almost guaranteed to be spoiler free) is based off of one data point (me!) so help me out here! Let me know what types of reviews you prefer-- do you love sinking your teeth into an essay-length piece or do you prefer zoomed-out summaries? Do you want to know what happened in the book or how it made the blogger feel? Inquiring minds need to know. As you can see my theory is still hazy and incomplete-- help me out in the comments below.
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