Meredith's Monday Musings: Blog Hops!

Hi Everyone!!

It's Monday again! Today is a special Monday, it's the Monday before Valentine's Day! Who here is excited for that holiday? I have to say, I'm not so excited about it so much this year as I am about the day after Valentine's Day when all the candy goes on sale. LOL! Today's Meredith's Monday Musing topic is: Blog Hops!!

I love blog hops!! They're so much fun! For those that don't know, a blog hop is essentially a linky list that connects a group of similar blogs together. This is nice because a reader can go to the blog hop's main page and go to the week's blog hop list, and jump from blog to blog on the list.

For readers, especially new ones in a new sub-genre; blog hops are great because it gives them easy access to many blogs that focus on that sub-genre. They can find a lot of new authors and stories that they'd possibly enjoy. Plus, if a reader is wanting to become an author, a blog hop is a great way for that person to get to know other authors in the sub-genre that they want to write in.

For authors, I think that blog hops are a great promotional tool! Let's say a reader who loves "Author A" reads her blog post for that week's blog hop and she decides to click on the linky list to read "Author B's" blog post and falls in love with "Author B". Boom. As an author, you just gained another reader, who will hopefully buy all your books because they love them. I think that's awesome! As authors, we don't know which readers will and won't read our blog posts when they're connected to a blog hop. I believe that it's a great way to get new readers.

Also for both readers and authors, it's a great way to keep up with what everyone else is doing. For readers, this could mean finding out what book your favorite author(s) are working on next. For authors, this could mean seeing a trend in a lot of age play books being written and so you either decide to get on the bandwagon and write an age play book too or deciding to take your own route and write something else.

With all of the above being said, I'm very sad to see that there has been a steady decline in blog hop participation in the past couple of years. I don't understand why. I know that some authors say that they don't like doing blog hops because they feel like they have to read and comment on everyone's posts in the hop; and that's time consuming. Or, some authors just don't feel that blog hops are worth the time and effort for the exposure they get on them.

Each person can decide what they want to do to promote their stories, however, I still believe that blog hops are an amazing tool to promote books.

Authors, what do you think? Do you guys think that blog hops are becoming a thing of the past and not worth it?

Readers, what do you think? Do you guys think that blog hops are fun to read?

Have a great week, everyone! :-)