Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, the meme moved to another host, Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

This week we talk about Book Platforms. Because blogs are not the only way to get your bookish content fix.

Prompts: Book blogging certainly isn’t the only online book platform. From booktok to bookstagram to book twitter, there are many different places to post reviews and other bookish content. Do you only blog, or do you have other platforms too? What did you start out doing? What differences do you notice between platforms? Are there similarities?

Do you only blog, or do you have other platforms too?

I definitely do not only blog. I use Goodreads as well, but often I do that on my phone and we all know the hastle of writing reviews on a phone. So, I often only keep to the star ratings there and write a review occasionally. I used to write reviews on Twitter, but I was always behind and therefore too lazy to catch and keep up. I also use the Storygraph, but i think I will quit that since I don’t do anything much with it. I’m too lazy to fill out all the review forms and you can’t just do a quick star rating without scrolling through the entire form. Furthermore, I sometimes read books in my native language and they have to be imported. I can choose to not do this of course, but then my challenge is not correct and I want to have evrything similar. I’m not a fan of The Storygraph honestly. Also, there’s not much of a community there and you can’t actually ffind people. Although Goodreads is super outdated, it’s still the most common and easiest platform. Furthermore, I use Instagram but I keep that in Dutch. Same for a Dutch book platform called Hebban, you can compare that to goodreads but there’s much more on that.

What did you start out doing?

I started Goodreads, although i was already on Twitter and Instagram at the time. However, I never used that for bookish content. I started my Goodreads in 2015 (I checked that up), but I started using it properly in 2016 or 2017. And I started blogging at first in 2017, so yeah.

What differences do you notice between platforms? Are there similarities?

There is a huge difference. Not only between platforms, but also between the English and Dutch blogosphere. Dutch blogs seem to disappear slowly while English blogs are more vital and still gain lots of traffic. Furthermore, there’s a huge difference between Goodreads and Instagram for instance. On Instagram, there’s a wide Dutch bookish community and on Goodreads it’s more mixed. Furthermore – and that’s what I hate about Goodreads – people post reviews before the book is even published. Can you not? So yes, there are a lot of differences. However, I believe that there are more similarities to platforms that solely focus on bokish content and more similarities to social media platforms. Instagram Reels are very similar to Tiktok for instance. I am not on TikTok, so I can’t fully state that, but from what I’ve seen it’s pretty similar.

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These are my thoughts on Book Platforms. Do you use many other platforms or is your blog the only one? What do you think about the platforms you use?