EBIt’s the last day of book blogger appreciation week! Though of course here at Harper Perennial we appreciate book bloggers all year round. Today’s blogging topic is about tried and true practices for blogging, so I thought I’d share some tips for what we love to see on book blogs. Keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule and that these are only opinions—but they are the opinions of someone who has read A LOT of book blogs and who has to think all the time about how to distribute limited numbers of review copies and galleys. Some of these things might seem pretty obvious, but . . .
#1: NO MUSIC!
I can’t stress this one enough. Please don’t have any music set to play on your blog. While I read plenty of blogs at home, I’m also doing quite a bit of blog reading here in my office, and music suddenly blaring from my computer is annoying to everyone. This is the #1 thing for me that makes a blog seem unprofessional.
#2: Keep it simple.
I know that design skills vary, and so do personal tastes. But when in doubt, keep your blog’s design simple. I’m visiting your blog to read your writing, not to see a million buttons or flashing graphics.
#3: Let us know when you review.
If I sent you the book, please please send me a link to your review. If I didn’t send you the book but we’ve emailed before and you review a Harper Perennial book, send me the link. Or tweet it at me. There’s no way I could retweet or post all reviews on facebook, but I try to make sure I do it for most bloggers at least once every so often, and I send ALL the good reviews on to the editor and author.
#4: Don’t just tell me to send you stuff.
This one might be a little less obvious. I’m always very happy to add a blogger to our email list. But please don’t email me and say “I like literary fiction. Send me some books!” (I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve gotten emails not far off from that.) I wish that I had time to read every single blogger’s blog cover to cover, so to speak, and recommend things immediately, but I don’t. Our entire marketing team is two people (yes, that’s two people marketing more than 150 books a year), and it’s just not going to happen. The best way that I get to know blogs and bloggers is by what you request and what you review. If you’ve taken the time to do some research and figure out what we publish that you might like, I’m much more likely to go read your blog and figure out what else you might like. Saying “I’ll review whatever you want me to review!” (and that is an exact quote) only shows me that you don’t have a vision for your blog.
#5: Don’t ask for 100 books in the first email.
This is the opposite of #4 in some ways, but nothing bothers me more than someone who sends me an email with a long list of books (like we’re talking 10 or more books), some of which are Harper Perennial and many of which come from other Harper imprints, asking for all of them. One or two, sure. Even five? Sure. But if you’re asking for more than that, it’s suspicious—especially if I then never see any links from you, or you “review” each book with one sentence on your blog. And while we’re at it, if we’ve got a relationship established, and you see an Ecco book and you email me to ask if I can get it for you, or put you in touch with the marketing person for Ecco? That’s great. If we’ve never worked together before, but you only have my email, and so you acknowledge that some of the books aren’t Harper Perennial but you need some help finding the right person? Fine. But if you’re a book blogger, and you want to be treated like a professional, it makes sense to put some effort into learning about publishers’ different imprints. Does it matter to the average person? Maybe not—but I’m not sending the average person review copies.
I don’t want this entry to seem super negative. The vast majority of the book bloggers I deal with are amazing and have made my job amazing. But there are some bad apples out there, as well as people who just don’t know better, and I think a lot of people are afraid to turn people down or point these things out for fear that someone will take to twitter and complain.
