I had the opportunity to be on the other side of the blog interview, with this feature about my blog Hot Pepper Latte from Rakuten Kobo.
In case you couldn’t tell, I love reading. So I was thrilled to participate in Kobo’s series of features on bookstragrammers — Instagram users who focus on sharing book reviews and photos. It’s a pretty large community that I waded into in 2017.
One of my favourite questions was about my view on this unique intersection between reading and social media:
“I’ve never been prolific when it comes to blogging, instead focusing on producing one to two quality posts per month and often taking month-long absences. On Instagram and other social media sites content goes stale so much faster. There is a real pressure to keep churning out posts to keep up with some of the top followed accounts which seem to post multiple times a day. It was very stressful for me at first but then I came to accept that that is just not my style as a reader or a blogger.
“Now I choose to post less often on bookstagram but what makes the community that there are some real interactions in the comments of posts. It’s not just about posting all the time. People in the bookstagram community seem to genuinely want to share thoughts and feelings about books. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading a trendy new release along with everyone else or catching up on the classics. Book lovers just love talking about books! And they have a ton of opinions.”
Catherine Vendryes, “Meet the Bookstagrammer: @hplreads”
Catherine Vendryes 