Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Review-- The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs

Title: The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs
Author(s): Rebecca Gillieron and Catheryn Kilgariff
ISBN: 9780714531519/ Marion Boyars Publishers, 2007
Genre: Internet, Blogging
Rating: B

First Line: To my way of thinking, the best book bloggers are individuals who have no grist or motive other than a love of books and a desire to share their finds with others.

It should be obvious why I bought this book: I'm a blogger, and I blog about books. I wanted to see what these two publishers had to say about a subject I hold close to my heart.

The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs is divided into chapters according to the various types of blogs: Booksellers' Blogs, Publishers' Blogs, Fan Blogs, Writers' Blogs, etc. As I read, I found several blogs that are familiar to me, but I also found many more to check out. Gillieron and Killgarriff both believe that book bloggers have a very important function in the world of book publishing today:

I would like to see the voices of the book bloggers heard even louder. I think there is a major problem, despite the pages of feverish comment on literary prizes, radio shows, interviews and profiles, in that the media manages to talk about books in a way that goes over the heads of the vast majority of people. The book bloggers have developed loyal audiences, and I compare them most closely to newspaper columnists who may be your favourite to read each week in the Sunday paper. You get to know a personality and a style, and you find nuggets of new information each week, which makes you go back the following week for more. The book bloggers have another twist which makes them more loveable-- they write their thoughts for free.


There are dozens of nuggets of information in this small book, and best of all, a list of all the book blogs' URLs in the back to make it easier for you to find them. I found this book very easy to read (despite several typos!), and a very informative look into the future of book publishing and selling from the viewpoints of two UK publishers.

If you've reviewed this book, please leave a link to your review in the comments, and I'll add it to my review!


11 comments:

  1. What?! There is a book about book blogs? Who knew!

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  2. ha, I saw Jena mention this on Twitter the other day.

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  3. What an irony! A book about blogs instead of a blog about books. As I look up from this comment, I see I'm not the only one to note this. Oh, well. A lot of us think in the same way.

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  4. Leave it to you to find this book! It sounds like an interesting one.

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  5. I have this one in my TBR. I've looked through it, but haven't read it straight through. Nice review.

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  6. If you are reading "The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs", you may just be a bookaholic!

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  7. I think I actually typed "bookaholic" into the search engine for some reason, and when this title popped up, I couldn't believe it! LOL

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  8. I think I read something about this book a while ago. It sounds interesting, but given the way book blogs - like any other blogs - come and go, I hope it has a regularly-updated website to go with it :-). Thanks for the review!

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  9. Good that some books acknowledge how important we (the blogs) are :)
    So far I have not really considered reading about blogging. It certainly takes enough time to read the books I review, write the posts and follow other people´s amazing blogs. If I had to study the subject also, it would be a full-time occupation for me.

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  10. Dorte--Normally the only time I read about blogging is when I'm actually wanting to do something with my template and I need to find instructions. I decided to read this just in case I'd missed any book blogs to add to my Google Reader! :)

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