Booksellers Blog

image credit: m4r00n3d via Flickr

I’ve been thrilled to see quite a few new bookstore blogs spring up over the last few months. Congratulations to all of you who’ve taken the plunge. I’ve tried to add everybody to the list of independent bookseller blogs on the side of Booksellers Blog, but if I’ve missed you, please let me know. You can leave the link in the comments so others can see it as well.

You might be wondering why few people seem to be commenting on your blog.

First: have patience

From experience, I can tell you that it takes time to build a readership that is a) large enough and b) comfortable enough to comment. Like anything else on the internet, a very small percentage of readers will ever comment. The statistic that is often thrown around is that 1-2% of readers will comment. Most readers are happy to “lurk” — that is, read your posts, absorb your information, maybe even attend the author event or buy the book — but they won’t comment. That’s just human nature. However, as your readership grows, though the percentage may not change, the number of commenters will also grow.

Make it easy for people to comment

While you may fear an onslaught of spam, comment moderation and captcha codes are hoops that many people just won’t jump through. Your blog host likely has pretty hefty spam filtering. We’ve found very little spam on our blogger blog, and this self-hosted wordpress uses a spam filter. What little spam does get through is simply annoying: someone leaving a generic comment with a link to their site. It’s easy to block. If you find otherwise, you can always turn on stronger measures later. To begin, leave your comments open and unmoderated.

Write to encourage comments

You can also try to increase the number of commenters by structuring your posts in a way that makes it more natural for your readers to comment. Asking a question at the end of the post often works well. “Tell us what you think.” “What have your experiences been?” “Leave your recommendations in the comments for others to see”, etc. I have found that this is very effective when it’s not too contrived.

Some people will deliberately leave “room” for reader comments. For instance, if you are writing a post about “10 books that feature a local setting”, it might be better to call it “5 books” and leave some unmentioned, ending the post with a “What are your favorites?”,  for other readers to add in the comments.

Take guidance from the experts

Problogger.com recently ran a great article about other ways to encourage comments, How to Create Compelling Content Through Reader Interaction. It’s well worth reading and bookmarking — and maybe even printing out to keep near your desk where you blog.

Lastly, realize that comments aren’t everything

While it’s tempting to evaluate the success of a blog based on the number of comments, there are other ways to measure how you’re doing. Are people commenting about your blog when they are in the store? Are readers emailing you directly, or calling the store to reserve a book you’ve mentioned? Are they clicking through to your website? Are others linking to your blog? Has the media picked up on one or more of your posts? Any of these, and others that I haven’t mentioned, are signs that you are providing value to your customers.

Though I do confess, I love it when I get an email that I have a new comment.