The usual yearly question: there is still need for me to be here?

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I really enjoyed the retreat in New Orleans, and among the reasons one is that I realized the genre has grown to be independent. And that is a marvellous thing. Yes, it's not I'm searching for compliment, but when I opened this blog 5 years ago or so, I was almost an exception, and more or less, all the authors, and readers, of M/M romance came here (and to the other 2 or 3 blogs reviewing M/M) to search for info. Now there are plenty of blogs, and groups and publishers and authors, and you can find recommendations almost everywhere.

What I noticed at New Orleans was almost an opposite thing: there were readers and authors who have never heard of me (and that is fine, I'm only yet another blog), but there were readers coming to me saying thank you, and I love your blog and what do you do is awesome... and I didn't know them. If I have to be sincere, I receive so few comments that I know almost everyone who has left them. They are friends, or authors, I'm in good relationship; but I didn't know most of the people coming to say hi and sometime I have the feeling to be in an island with a paper journal, i.e. no communication with the outside world.

So I'm applying a suggestion someone gave me at the retreat, ask a direct question. I know you are there, there are many hits, there are the Amazon referrals, always growing months after months, there are even some authors telling me they saw the increase in sellings once I post a review. But that is not why I'm doing this, the only reason is that I love books and I'd like to share this love. So yes, I need, once in a while to know that if I decided tomorrow to close down this journal, someone will miss it (me). Probably in a week or two they would find another blog, but at least they would wonder what happened. Will you miss me?

(PS: I'm not closing the blog tomorrow, there are the Rainbow Awards that will last until December... half-joking, half-not-joking)

Comments

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

yes, and even if it sounds strange, sometime they are making me even more "sad": there are days with more than 1.000 unique visitor (and more than five time page views) and no comments at all, my worst month was april and the worst day had "only" 523 unique visitors and 6 comments, so yes, the average is 1 comment 100 lurkers, but now there are days with 1 comment. That made me wonder if maybe people had found somewhere else what they needed.

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

I understand completely. In a way it made me feel weirder/worse also when I realized it.

I also believe that there has been a change in lj commenting generally, though I could be wrong. I feel like things are much more diffuse -- spread out over tumblr, twitter, dreamwidth, as well as other blog sites, and it feels like not as many people comment to ANYTHING, even to communities that are for huge things? I have wondered if there has been a change in lj ~culture such that people just aren't commenting as much, period.

Another thing I've noticed is that when I make a post contains recs, I get zero or just one or two comments. And that seems true for other reccers too. People just don't have things to say, I guess?

One thing I've been doing when I think of it is doing more polls. People seem more apt to respond to those, probably because it's so easy and feels less scary or whatever. That probably wouldn't work for what you do, though! <3

I'm sorry you've been feeling that way.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I had to put the filter on anonymous comment (that retype the word widget) due to the amount of spam I was receiving after LJ got attacked. But the anonymous comments were (and are) not many, so I don't think it depends from that. Maybe it's simply that people are no more using LJ are their main journal, but I still like it