Recently it came to my attention that I was lacking in basic blog knowledge and etiquette. Truly, the vast bulk of my experience lay with Darkcargo and reading a handful of other sites like The Little Red Reviewer and An American Baker in London.
Over the past 3 years, Lady Darkcargo has done her best to bring me into the 21st century. She gave me her old iPod, which I can make work, but sometimes that is more by chance than by determination. She dragged me out to my first scifi/fantasy con (Dragon*Con 2010) in Atlanta. I had never been around so many, many, MANY nice people before. I live in a little rural northern NM town. Our post office has like maybe 200 mailboxes. She gave me her old Kindle, which I really enjoy, though I am still fuzzy on what the difference is between WiFi and G3/G4. We have neither out here in the sticks, so does it matter?
And she has had me torment you, Dear Readers, at least twice a week since late last year.
Darkcargo uses the WordPress blog format to chat about books, con-going stuff, and other fun nonsense in our lives. But does merely using a blog tool make us a blog?
In order to educate myself, I participated in a blog hop. I wasn’t sure what this was, but over 200 blogs were participating in it. From what I could gather, each participating blog had this same little icon/button for the giveaway post and each site was giving something away. I participated in this bookish blog hop by going to each site, if only briefly. All in all, I probably gave up ~6 hours of my life.
Notes of Interest:
1) Most blogs were giving away books, but not all. Some gave away signed book marks, knitted items, gift cards, etc.I was surprised at the number of non-book items for a book blog hop. Some of the blogs participating had almost nothing to do with books.
2) Nearly all blogs had some sort of advertising. Some blogs had a link to where you could donate monetarily to the blog. Huh? Really? People get paid to do this?
3) Many participated in blog awards. I guess these blog awards are passed around like chewing gum – cool, but no big deal either. You’ll notice that Darkcargo hasn’t participated in any of these, so we probably aren’t as minty fresh as we could be.
4) Most of the blogs were mainstream YA fiction – I saw the same books being offered again and again. Some of these books looked cool, so I entered a few of the contests. No where did I find sites offering books, used or otherwise, by my favorite authors.
5) Most blogs required me to be a follower in order to enter the contest. I used Google Friend Connect (GFC), which I hadn’t heard of before, to follow. I think it is to go away soon, which won’t make me cry. These blogs were very number oriented – # of followers, # of hits, # of comments, etc.
I spent ~6 hours over 3 days blog hopping, entering perhaps 100 of the over 200 blogs contests, and I won 6 ebooks, all by indie authors. I am pretty excited about the books I won and look forward to reading them, but there was a lot of chaff to get the kernel. Some blogs were cool, focusing on things I enjoy – books, tattoos, cats, food, etc. So I followed the blogs I liked, even if I didn’t enter the contest.
Some things that turned me off about a blog – too much pink, too much cutesy-wutesy, too much advertising. Things that turned me on about a blog included contests that didn’t require me to become a follower, simple entry requirements, book-oriented, not driven by the YA market and publishers, indie author blogs.
After all that, I am very glad that Darkcargo isn’t so much a blog as it is a somewhat organized ongoing chat session about books and the bookish life. We don’t have paid sponsored advertising, nor participate in awards. We don’t accept freebies from publishers, etc. We have our own ongoing book giveaway, but it is simple and straight forward. No hamster treatment for you, Dear Readers.
Image may be NSFW.
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