Book blogging is different to lifestyle, fashion or beauty blogging

I recently came across a twitter thread with people discussing, whether book bloggers should charge for reviewing a book. It was mainly lifestyle, fashion and beauty bloggers saying that it’s a joke and book bloggers should get paid etc. They also became mean towards a fellow book blogger, saying she charges for sure, but just says she doesn’t, there were all kinds of other comments too.

My comment to that: These people are NOT book bloggers, so they have no idea how this whole thing works. They think they know everything better and only because it works one way in their blogging world, doesn’t mean it’s the same for every type of blogger.

Book bloggers usually receive a book by the publisher or author either in paperback or as an ebook. The book bloggers then read it and write an honest review. So we basically receive the book for free and write down our thoughts. That said, it’s not that we get all the books for free. I still buy a lot of books and review them as well.

We all do it for the love of books and not because of money. I would never come up with the idea of charging for my book reviews. Of course there are people out there, who do that for a living, like journalists for magazines. That’s very different. It would also be great, if we could make money like this, like lifestyle and beauty bloggers, but that’s not the case.

My blog is my hobby. I have a full time job and that's where I get paid. 

Most book bloggers review with honesty and integrity. I never just praise the book, because I like the author and want to stay friends with them. Amazon doesn’t allow paid for reviews and usually authors and publishers want us to post our reviews on Amazon.

Everyone is of course entitled to his/her own opinion, but if you have no idea about something you better be quiet. And it’s important to always respect other opinions and be polite. What I saw on twitter back then really shocked me, especially because it was bloggers I follow.

It’s seems that our way of blogging is a joke to them! They all really have to learn a lot!