Blogger burnout is real — especially for book bloggers who lean heavily on writing book reviews.
After all, reading is time consuming, and if you pick the wrong books, or put undue pressure on yourself to crank out content, you’re going to burn out pretty fast.
This is compounded further when you have a pile of ARCs to read, not to mention your own backlog of purchases that, somehow, only ever seems to get bigger.
But fear not — I come with advice. I’ve put many of these tips into practice myself, and as a result, Tales from Absurdia is still operating many years later.
1) Do not compare and despair
Try not to compare your success to others.
It’s so easy to do, but if you succumb to what Cathy Rentzenbrink calls ‘compare and despair,’ you’ll feel rubbish about yourself and your writing.
Whether it’s pageviews, social media followers, the number of comments on your blog, or your success rate at scoring ARCs — others’ successes are not your failures. Maybe you can learn something from another blogger, but do not judge your own performance against others.
You may have less free time than others, or perhaps blogging, or promoting your content on social media, doesn’t come naturally to you. And that’s okay.
It’s hard not to compare yourself against your peers. I still find myself doing it weekly.
But when those intrusive thoughts rear their ugly heads, knock ‘em back down and remember you’re running your own race.
2) Remember why you're blogging
Take a moment and have a think about why you started blogging. Perhaps even write down a couple of sentences on the topic.
It could be that you wanted to chronicle your thoughts, or perhaps you wanted to join a community of readers. You may have started blogging for more self-indulgent reasons (and that’s fine — even Orwell claimed that some writers write for ‘sheer egoism!’)
Are these reasons still valid? Have they evolved in any kind of way? This writing exercise is a great way to focus yourself back on why you began spending your time talking about books to strangers on the internet.
3) Stop requesting ARCs
Right. It’s time for an intervention. Gather round closely for one moment, and repeat after me — Stop. Requesting. ARCs.
Seriously, if fear is the mind-killer, ARCs are the blog killer. This may sound counterintuitive, but when you’re under pressure to read for a deadline — and then you’re suddenly approved for five more books — reading can become a chore. If you’re not enjoying reading, you’re probably not enjoying blogging.
Those impulsive requests because you liked the cover or the blurb will chew up your time, prevent you from reading what you actually want to read, and sap your motivation.
I’ve stopped requesting ARCs altogether, but you needn’t do this. Simply reign those impulses in a little.
4) Be realistic
Let’s be real — there are only 24 hours in a day. If you work, that’s at least 8-10 hours.
You may be a parent, or have a dependent. You may also want to get some sleep too.
Some days and weeks, you just can’t get things done. Be realistic about this, and manage your own expectations. It’s easy to berate yourself for not publishing anything, or not getting to the book festivals you really want to visit, but as I wrote earlier — you’re running your own race.
Be kind to yourself, accept that you won’t always be able to work on your blog.
5) Take a break
I don’t know a single blogger who hasn’t considered packing the whole thing in — myself included, sometimes weekly — but more often than not, a break is just the thing you need.
This could be a week, a month, or even a year.
Take as long as you need and the answer will come to you. And if you’re sure you want to quit blogging, that’s okay!
But give yourself the space to think about it first. A break is always better than a knee-jerk decision.
Got any more tips? Post them in the comments below and support a fellow blogger!
1 thought on “How to Avoid Book Blogger Burnout”
Very interesting blog post.
I am guilty of all of these apart from ARC requesting, which I’ve never done.
The only additional tip I can offer is to learn to say no to requests for reviews. I always feel sorry for people, and I know how hard it is to get reviews, but if I say yes to too much I end up in a panic.
I learned the importance of saying no during the Edinburgh festivals, where I review every year for another publication (not my blog). I sort out my schedule for that in June/early July (basing it on the listings available plus any direct requests I receive (of which more below).) I go to a maximum of three events a day, often just two, as otherwise I know I won’t be able to do write a decent review in the time left over. I just about manage to keep up on that basis.
When you apply for Fringe accreditation as a reviewer, you are asked whether or not you are happy to leave your email address open. I always say yes. I receive a trickle of emails during early summer, all of which I read to see if they are advertising something I might find interesting – in which case I fit them into my schedule. Come August I, like every other reviewer in Edinburgh, am running around like a demented bluebottle, and this is when I start to receive an absolute deluge of emails requesting my presence.
I do feel very sorry for shows that are getting no reviews, but really, they need to think ahead. For me to accept then would be a disaster, so I have had to learn how to say ‘thanks but I’m afraid my schedule is full’. This has taught me that I can also say no to requests for book reviews. I’ve read that some bloggers actually request books from publishers just to get free books, with very little intention of writing a review. I would feel terrible if I did that, so now I am a lot more careful about what I agree to do.
I also agree (though it’s very hard!) about not comparing yourself to others. I see book bloggers getting lots of likes and comments, whereas I get very few, but then I remind myself that they probably spend a great deal more time than I do on their blogs – maybe that’s their main thing. Also, you never know when someone will read a review – I wrote one early last year and just a couple of months ago someone tweeted that they’d been struggling with a text, then by chance saw my review and found it helpful. That pleased me more than a dozen simple ‘likes’ would have done.
I’m about to move to a new website and hope to do more general arts reviewing (of which there is very little locally), I can already see that I’m going to have to be strict with myself about how much. Some people do seem to be able to churn out a review a day, but I know I have other things to do, so I hope I’ll be able to take this at my own pace. We’ll see!