Is Podcasting the New Blogging?

I feel like the book blogging community is going through growing pains and changing a lot.  I’ve seen lots of blogs that I love stop blogging and it’s mostly because people just don’t have time anymore.  I’m feeling this same adjustment.  I don’t have the time to blog 5 days a week like I used to.  When I get 3 posts up I’m happy.  I also seem to have less time to comment on other blogs.  I see a trend of more and more blogs getting co-bloggers to help get enough content on their site.

I was talking about this with my friend, Karena, and she said that she thinks podcasting could be the new blogging.  She loves podcasts and talked about how convenient they were.  She felt like she was learning something as she did chores around the house or driving.  In other words, she could listen to things when she didn’t have time to actually sit down and read blogs.

I didn’t know what to think of that because no book bloggers that I know of listen to podcasts, let alone make them.  But Karena planted that seed in my head and I looked up some podcasts on my new iPhone.  I found 10 podcasts that I wanted to try out.  And I love them so far.  When I thought about it, the connection between podcasts and blogs totally made sense.  I mean, newscasts really came from the idea of someone reading the news to you because you didn’t have time to sit down and read the paper anymore.  A podcast could be as simple as me recapping the books I read and got and talking about the books that are coming out.

It had me seriously considering starting a podcast for two reasons.  One, I feel like hobby blogging about anything, but especially books, is going to become less and less common because people don’t have the time anymore to read tons of blogs.  So I wanted a fun way to bring my blog to more people.  Two, I literally could not find a young adult news centered podcast.  I wanted something that talked about the latest releases in the YA genre, current events in the YA book world, the YA books that they were reading, and news about YA authors.  If you have one, tell me!!  After lots of searching I found my very favorite podcast, Book Riot, but they talk about all genres.  That’s not a bad thing and I love the current events they talk about.  I just wanted one that was more focused on the books I like to read.

As much as I want to start a podcast, I don’t think it’s possible for me right now.  I would need someone to do it with me.  I would need equipment.  I would need to learn a lot about the technical things.  But the biggest thing holding me back is I would need to do it consistently and that’s not possible for me right now.  But I might want to someday.

One of the first things I noticed about podcasts is that they are almost always sponsored.  I looked up Book Riot‘s website and I was surprised to see that there are 4 editors and over 30 contributors to the site and they are all compensated.  Granted it doesn’t say how much, but I’ve always thought that book bloggers should be paid.  Not like tons and tons of money, but enough to make it worthwhile and cover the basic expenses.  Just because you love to do something and would do it for free, doesn’t mean you have to.  Authors love writing but no one expects them to just do it for free because it takes work and time.  So does book blogging.  I think what book bloggers do is invaluable and I don’t see why they shouldn’t be given something for their time.  I kind of think that book blogging will eventually become a community of a few huge sites with lots of contributors.

Here are the podcasts that I started listening to:

 

What do you think of my theory? Crazy or no? Do you listen to podcasts about books or anything else? I want recommendations if you do!