Leaving Bookstagram for a Booksletter
Why I left the 'gram & the pressure of book aesthetics to focus on the essential: reading books that I love and writing about them.
I have been keeping a book blog for 4 years now, but with the discipline of a dissipated puppy. Sometimes, I would go on a post frenzy that would span several weeks, after which I would abandon my blog to gather virtual dust, until the next writing spike.
Fast-forward a couple of years and 2020 crept on the world, blowing up my social life and mental health into smithereens. To be completely honest, I was secretly relieved at the (very) beginning of the lockdown by the prospect of having more time to focus on healthier hobbies (reading) rather than downing pints at my favourite haunts after work. Obviously, that feeling did not last long.
I had been lurking on Bookstagram for a while and decided to jump on the bandwagon. I believed that joining this online community would give me the “push” I needed to write more, read more, and discover books from other book bloggers.
Wait, hold up - what is Bookstagram?
Bookstagram is the name coined for the space on Instagram curated and dedicated to book lovers who review books and share their thoughts with their followers. More times than not, it is a relatively healthy community that lives on a particularly unhealthy platform.
During my time on Bookstagram, I’ve discovered many interesting accounts that offer fresh perspectives on reading. I became more conscious of the importance of diversifying my bookshelf thanks to bookstagrammers such as:
noriandtales (who brings excellence to my feed with her impressive general and cultural knowledge and by creating a strong intellectual engagement around faith and books with her followers)
mybookworldtour (who is reading a book authored by a woman from every country in the world)
southasianbookclub (who highlights books written by South Asian authors),
BookOfCinz (who showcases books written by Caribbean authors)
kamalizareads (a curated list of books created by “Rwanda's only All Black Women, non-binary & Black Feminist Community Library”).
(this is not an exhaustive list)
I learned about how ARCs (Advanced Reader’s Copies) were mostly sent to white bloggers living in the US (even when the book was written by a Caribbean or South Asian author), or how some celebrities unceremoniously slapped their awful book club stickers on anti-racist books written by Black women to gain “woke” points on the “Good Ally” bingo.
So, why have I decided to take a break from Bookstagram?
TL;DR: Instagram algorithm, pressure to post, pressure to “read-perform”, and a growing distaste for the Instagram book aesthetic.
In mid-2020, Instagram rolled out an algorithm that drastically reduced the organic reach of content creators. The pressure was on these content creators to promote their content via paid Instagram tools, or to keep posting regularly (read that as everyday, or multiple times a day) to stay relevant and to keep appearing on people’s feeds.
While I did ‘sign-up’ on Bookstagram as a way to encourage me to write more reviews, I felt that the this new algorithm put pressure on many accounts to post more in an attempt to retain their audience’s attention. Instead of well-thought out captions and prompts, I quickly felt like I was consuming vapid and effortless content, much like those cringeworthy Facebook quotes that get mass-shared by family members. Bookish content became standardised, with the same type of pictures (a book laid on a wooden table of a café with flowers peeking in the top right hand corner and an art latte coffee set daintily on the other edge), the same prompts, the same takes, the same hashtags, the same comments.
I can’t blame content creators - when you’re doing this for free, you get “paid” in reach - the number of likes, shares, comments, and views you get on your posts and stories. The more people read your content, the more followers you get, and the more likely you are to receive ARCs and get invited on popular Instagram lives. It is part of the game. However, at the end of the day, I felt that it was disturbing to incentivise something as nurturing as reading.
I caught myself strategising about getting the best photo op with my book, framing it with cacti or a freshly baked banana cake against a yellow wall. I would feel ashamed when my posts garnered a few measly likes, especially when I took the time to write the captions. It got to the point where I no long wanted to post anything because I feared that my content would bomb. Ridiculous, I know.
While I did learn a lot by sifting through the many posts on Bookstagram (I reiterate - there was, and is, a lot of high quality content living in that space) and by virtually engaging with Bookstagrammers who I now consider friends, I believe that it is not the right medium for me to express my thoughts and reviews. Writing, and reading, are personal hobbies that gives me so much joy. Transforming it into yet another goal-oriented activity, with engagement KPIs and to-do lists, is nothing short of soul-destroying. Think about it: I would deliberately trim down Instagram captions because I felt that nobody would read it - after all, Instagram is primarily a picture sharing app. Nobody signed up/followed me to read an essay about that one book I am obsessing over.
So I am switching to this Booksletter format (is that a thing?) to give myself the space and the unlimited number of characters to write about books, without the performance pressure. I won’t be leaving Bookstagram permanently, mostly because I don’t want to miss out on the content produced by some Book bloggers that I love, but I won’t be posting much anymore. I’ll go back to lurking on the sidelines - I’ve always felt more comfortable being in the background anyways.
I would obviously feel humbled if you decide to subscribe to The Brown Bookshelf newsletter and engage with my content, but my one and only goal for this platform is to keep writing and reading as regularly as I can; that book sitting in the back of my mind won’t write itself, and I need all the training and practice that I can get.