{"id":9043,"date":"2022-10-16T12:51:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T10:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=9043"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:00:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:00:40","slug":"die-buchblogosphaere-ein-statusupdate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2022\/10\/the-bookblogossphere-a-status-update\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book Blogosphere: A Status Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

I\u2019ve been blogging here on lesestunden.de about books for almost eight years now. Ever since I started back then, I\u2019ve also found it fascinating to observe the entire German-language book-blogosphere. That works well because this scene is very small and manageable. In the eight years I\u2019ve been blogging, I\u2019ve therefore analyzed the book-blogosphere again and again. Most recently, I looked at its development at the beginning of 2019<\/a>. Since my Top List<\/a> is still well cared for and maintained, I want to write here about how the book-blogosphere has changed over the last three years. There was one result, in particular, that really surprised me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I\u2019d like to start with the simplest metric: the number of book blogs and how that number has developed over the past three years (by month).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In my 2019 post<\/a> you can see that for a long time the number in the Top List hovered around about 1,200 blogs. When the GDPR law was enacted in 2018, the number of bloggers dropped to 1,000. It stayed at that level until April 2020, when it suddenly jumped to almost 1,400 blogs. After that, it slowly returned to the old level of 900 to 1,000 blogs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Of course, the Top List<\/a> is only part of the truth. I suspect that a large portion of book blogs can indeed be found there, but not all of them. That\u2019s why I once wrote a small tool that searches for book blogs for me. In my first analysis from 2015<\/a>, it became clear that bloggers are all connected to one another in some way. That\u2019s obvious: you don\u2019t start blogging on a blank slate \u2014 existing blogs are the inspiration and the source of the idea to start blogging yourself. In some form there will be cross-linking, and many bloggers have a blogroll, so networking is in the nature of things. My little tool scans all blogs in the Top List and records all external links. From the links collected this way, known blogs are removed, and then a basic check is performed to see whether the remaining sites are reachable at all and whether a post has been published there in the last six months. The resulting list \u2014 already more manageable \u2014 I then checked manually and added missing blogs to the Top List. I did this in April 2020 and in the process discovered 429 book blogs<\/strong> anew. I repeated the same thing in October 2022 and found 123 blogs<\/strong>. Significantly fewer than two years earlier.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book blogging had its special hype in 2015, when publishers recognized this form of book review \u2014 together with social media \u2014 as a marketing instrument and actively promoted it. Since then, things have calmed down again, and you can tell that book blogging has been in a downward trend ever since. There are certainly active book blogs missing from this Top List, but surely not in different orders of magnitude. The number in the German-speaking world likely hovers around 1,000 book blogs. A super small niche, then. And that\u2019s no surprise: on the one hand, other forms of entertainment have moved much more into focus over the past ten years, streaming above all. On the other hand, Instagram has become a very strong platform that has replaced book blogging for many.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I asked myself how many of the bloggers from three years ago are still at it. And I was very surprised. Of the blogs that were active in October 2019, only 53%<\/strong> still exist; in other words, 442 bloggers have stopped<\/strong> blogging. Back then, there were 947 blogs in the Top List; now at the end of 2022, there are 984 blogs. So about half of the blogosphere has completely turned over within three years. Looking at just one year, 23% of bloggers stopped and were replaced by new ones. I would have expected a lot of fluctuation, but that this small space would change so much within three years \u2014 I hadn\u2019t expected that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I also wondered about the Top 100 blogs. Is motivation perhaps greater there \u2014 do those blogs last longer? In fact, yes: 62%<\/strong> of the blogs that were in the Top 100 in 2019 still exist. But only 53%<\/strong> of the book blogs from back then still belong to the Top 100, so activity seems to have noticeably decreased there as well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I should add that the old blogs haven\u2019t necessarily disappeared. Quite a few older blogs are fully offline, but many still exist \u2014 they\u2019re just inactive. The requirement for the Top List is that a post has been published on the blog within the last six months. It doesn\u2019t make sense to list blogs with no activity whatsoever, because that\u2019s exactly what visitors are interested in. Of the 442 bloggers who were still active in 2019 and have since stopped, 292 book blogs are still accessible<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looking at which blogs were active at the end of 2019 and occupied places in the Top 100 \u2014 but have since disappeared from the Top List \u2014 I recognize many names. Buzzaldrins B\u00fccher<\/a>, for example \u2014 a blog that still exists but hasn\u2019t published new posts since November 2020. Or \u201cHis and her books,\u201d a blog that now redirects to an author\u2019s site (the former blogger?), which was once excellently networked and very active. Stehlbl\u00fcten<\/a> is another good example \u2014 a blog now being maintained only half-heartedly, with only occasional self-promotional posts. Or buchrevier<\/a>, always a very critical blogger \u2014 there, too, no new posts since the end of 2020. Back then, Karla Paul branded herself on buchkolumne<\/a> as the<\/em> book blogger par excellence, but was already barely active there \u2014 and now her site has been taken down entirely, with book blogging left behind for good. These are all examples of very well-known book bloggers who once influenced many discussions and carried them far \u2014 and have now fallen silent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 2015 there were numerous topics being intensively discussed in the book-blogosphere: feuilleton vs. book blogs, earning money through blogging, or how review copies influence book reviews. I haven\u2019t seen such discussions lately, and I suspect it has become much quieter in that regard. Considering that in just the past three years half of the book bloggers are entirely different people \u2014 and since 2015 presumably far more \u2014 you get a feel for how much volatility there must be in all networks of the internet and how much more fleeting social networks are. I\u2019d say blogs are among the more deliberate social-media communication structures, since a new post requires a certain amount of work. But surely many voracious readers who have since given up blogging remain well connected \u2014 just not via blogs anymore, but primarily via Twitter or Instagram. Three years \u2014 or measured from 2015, seven years in total \u2014 is also a long time in which many people\u2019s life circumstances have changed significantly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Another question is whether collaborations with book bloggers are worthwhile if the lifespan of blogs is so limited. In my judgment, yes \u2014 because many of the blogs aren\u2019t completely offline, and existing reviews and posts are still accessible. Looking at my own blog, I see steady traffic to old posts, so older content is still being found and read. Many book bloggers also focus primarily on current literature, meaning the time horizon is limited anyway. I often catch myself specifically searching for book-blogger reviews of a book, because there I usually get a direct, unpretentious, open assessment \u2014 including of older books \u2014 and that alone is a real added value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Let\u2019s not kid ourselves, though: the book-blogosphere is shrinking. It has lost the momentum it once had, and compared to April 2020, it has lost over 200 blogs<\/strong> \u2014 so this segment of the blogging scene has shrunk by more than 17%<\/strong>. My tool for finding new blogs has also found significantly fewer than it did two years ago. Presumably, the keen reader now finds a broader range of book-related accounts on Instagram, and the content has simply shifted platforms. Instagram, however, has a different structure. For me, blogs are still a pleasant blend of quick, uncomplicated digital communication and a certain deliberateness. It takes time to write a new post, to summarize one\u2019s thoughts about a book, and to present them to interested readers. Uploading an image to Instagram and quickly typing text on a phone is a different form \u2014 the barrier is much lower, but so are quality and commitment. Even so, that too has its place, and any lament is misplaced \u2014 the community as a whole decides this for itself, based on the diffuse usage patterns of its members.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As for me, I still enjoy blogging very much, even if my pace has slowed considerably. That\u2019s okay \u2014 life circumstances have changed and I have to budget my time. But I still read a lot and with pleasure, and I\u2019ll of course continue to present books on lesestunden. I still find the blog format wonderfully well suited. I\u2019m convinced that book blogs fill a gap \u2014 perhaps a small one, but one that offers clear added value. Those personal impressions, combined with enthusiasm for literature and free of any pretension or commercial influence, all in a pleasantly tidy format \u2014 that has real worth. In that spirit: stop by regularly. I\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be a good book tip here for some of you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

How do you see it? Has the book-blogosphere changed for you? Did you blog in the past and then stop? Why? What do book blogs mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been blogging here on lesestunden.de about books for almost eight years now. Ever since I started back then, I\u2019ve also found it fascinating to observe the entire German-language book-blogosphere. That works well because this scene is very small and manageable. In the eight years I\u2019ve been blogging, I\u2019ve therefore analyzed the book-blogosphere again and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Book Blogosphere: A Status Update”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"slim_seo":{"title":"Die Buchblogosph\u00e4re: Ein Statusupdate - lesestunden","description":"Jetzt blogge ich schon bald acht Jahre hier auf lesestunden.de \u00fcber B\u00fccher. Und seit ich damals angefangen habe, fand ich es auch immer spannend die ganze deuts"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-blogosphere"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/lesestunden_topliste.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}