The Future of Cooking Up Romance

Elisabeth Lane The Future of Cooking Up Romance

Elisabeth Lane The Future of Cooking Up Romance

Hi guys! Been a while, right? 2018 was a rough year. I read a lot and worked a lot (I’m a professional baker now) and one of the things that fell by the wayside was my blog. The problem was that the average Cooking Up Romance post takes 20-40 hours of prep time and I just couldn’t face it. The last thing I wanted to do when coming home from a job where I was on my feet all day was stand around in my kitchen all night and test recipes. I was too physically exhausted and let’s face it, emotionally exhausted from our current political reality to even think about trying to sustain the level of focus it takes for me to produce one of those posts. I won’t say there will never be any more recipe posts on Cooking Up Romance–in fact I’ve got one in the pipeline now! But from now on, you can expect to see other types of content too. And hopefully MORE content! Don’t get discouraged if the recipes are what you love. Hang in there for a few weeks and see how the new plan develops. Because I will still be sharing recipes. Just differently.

Next thing: several bloggers have reflected over the past year that book blogging doesn’t seem to be what it once was. Real, honest reviews seem to be falling by the wayside as more book bloggers are focused on promotional opportunities for writers, readers rely more heavily on Amazon and Goodreads reviews for their book purchasing decisions and big corporate romance blogs have closed up shop. Not quite simultaneously, as this trend has been developing for a few years I think, we have seen an explosion of romance podcasts. For years and years the only romance-focused podcast was the Smart Bitches podcast. Now there are literally dozens. I have been super excited to see romance enthusiasm push into new media! But, um, I don’t listen to podcasts. For me, every minute I listen to a podcast, I’m lamenting the amount of time lost to audio books. I have very limited listening time because I’m not a person who can listen to a thing and pay attention while doing something else. I can’t split my focus.

You know what I do love? YOUTUBE. I discovered makeup YouTube in a big way in 2018 after watching just a couple of channels in 2016 and 2017. It was only natural that I go looking for romance-focused Booktube channels! But I was sorely disappointed. I found Steph’s Romance Book Talk, Books Are My Hart and Fangirl Musings, but the vast majority of channels I found talked about romance only occasionally if at all. And there was A LOT of YA, a genre I just don’t really read. Do you see where this is going? I love books. I love YouTube. The natural, eventual outgrowth was starting my own Booktube channel. The first video is already up and explains where I’m going with the channel. Hint: There’s BIG NEWS over there too so really, really go watch the video.

I’ll be uploading twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays. I’ll accompany each video with a blog post giving you more info, links to the books I talk about and what I’ve been cooking that week. I hope that sounds fun to you guys! It’s a project in development so I’ll adjust as I go.

Thanks for sticking with me through this year of transition. I truly love being a part of Romancelandia as a book blogger. I’ve found so many wonderful books, made so many amazing friendships and even as I struggled with the concept of my blog, I knew I still wanted to be a part of this community. Love you and hope your 2019 is getting off to a phenomenal start!

One comment

  1. How absolutely fascinating! I am very excited for you and for this new direction and I’m going to go watch the video right now. Congratulations on discovering new things you enjoy!

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