Nick's Random Gibberish (16) : Do Book Bloggers REALLY Have An Impact on Book Sales?

Nick's Random Gibberish is a weekly post here at Nick's Book Blog where I, Nick, will talk about random topics from personal posts to discussion posts.

Hi everyone!

Today I wanted to explore whether book bloggers have an impact on book sales. I've had this conversation with friends in the past before where I've wondered if we, as bloggers, have a huge of an impact in the sense that we can lead to making of sales. Without any real statistics,it's hard for me to imagine if we do have that kind of power. 

While the YA blogging community might be a HUGE HUGE community with thousands of people from all over the world, we are also pretty much of an isolated community. We don't really have a solid connection with other readers. That is, what I'm trying to say is that most of our readers and commenters are actually other bloggers, at least in mine and some other friends' cases, this is true. I'm sure there are some other bloggers that actually have a lot more readers who aren't bloggers, but I do feel like they are more of an exception. I do think the majority of blog readers are bloggers. So, in a sense, when we review a book or share our excitement for it, we are basically doing that with people who are probably already aware of the book and have plans to read it. I personally don't see how my reviews might be forcing my non-blogger viewers to buy books because I don't think I have that many non-blogger viewers. I'm going to take myself as an example. Very rarely will I purchase a book because a blogger recommended it. I will only buy it if the blogger is someone I've known for a long time and who knows all my tastes better than I do and there are very few of them. So, even though a book might be in every corner of the blogging community, I'll only purchase it if a trusted friend mentions to me that she thinks I'll love it. I imagine a lot of us do the same thing as I do.

Point number 2 : ARCs. Because we are such a confined community, in a sense, and basically everyone and their mother seems to be getting ARCs these days, I have to wonder how effective of a marketing tool bloggers are. For me personally, I very rarely buy physical copies of the ARCs I might have. I only do it when the book is an all-time favorite and I know for certain that I will be re-reading it. In fact, the last physical copy I bought was for I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios, which released in early February. Now, some of you might find that a little surprising that I don't buy physical copies of most of my ARCs, but I'm a broke college student and my budget for books is so minimal. And even when I want books that I don't possess as ARCs, I usually either purchase the ebook, which is normally the cheapest option or I wait for years for the paperback to come out or I try to borrow a copy from the library. So, part of me does believe that bloggers aren't really helping in the sales of books. 

Now, I may be completely wrong in my assessment of this and I have personally heard from some indie author friends that NA book reviewers, who are hugely popular, do have a significant effect on the sales of books. I have yet to hear this from YA authors, but it might be a possibility. However, the number of indie NA bloggers is also relatively smaller than the number of YA book bloggers. If you've worked in publishing or are a YA author who has had experience with this, I would love for you to share it with me and prove me wrong.

 

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think that we as book bloggers have a significant impact on the sales of books? Share with me in the comments below!