The Birth of a Book Blog

by Sophie Epstein

Hi, I'm Sophie Epstein! I'm a twelve year old girl, and I'm the author of the book blog Mrs. Magoo Reads. Below is the story about when and why I started it, and a little more about blogs in general.-----

A little over a year ago, I became fascinated with the concept of a blog. Anyone can have one, you can write about whatever you want, and people from all over the world can read it. Pretty cool. So, as any eleven year old would do (I am now almost thirteen), I decided that I wanted to start one.

Step one was getting my parents' permission. My mom was worried about my getting stalked (she has read the many stories in newspapers about cyber-stalking); therefore I had to run all ideas by her before beginning anything. So, I had to think of a fun- and safe- idea. I thought... and thought... and finally decided to create a blog about something I love: books.

After getting the okay from my parents, I started my blog. It is located at www.mrsmagooreads.com. It has come a long way from when I first started it, but I'll be writing about that in later posts.

A blog, by definition, is "A website on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative".

Here are some fun blog statistics I got from http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/04/06/blog_usage_statistics_and_trends.htm

There are approximately 120,000 blogs made every day

There are about 1.4 new blogs created every second

So think about it: by the time you've finished your latte, 2,520 blogs have been created

There are about 1,500,000 posts written each day

There are about 17 posts made every second

By the time you've finished your latte, 30,600 posts have been written

There are approximately 70,000,000 blogs total

For someone about to start a blog that she hopes will attract visitors, these statistics can be quite daunting. After all, you're competing with 70 million other blogs, and not all are going to be winners. Luckily, Mrs. Magoo Reads now has a growing following that has developed over the past year, which I hope will continue to expand in the future. My TV debut (which I'll blog about later) certainly helped to get visitors.

There are also various blog hosts (similar to a web service) that a blogger can use to get started: blogspot, wordpress, and weebly are just a few. I use blogspot, the most popular and well-known host. You can find tons of different layouts all over the web that you can use.

Browsing the blogosphere, you'll see that there is an almost infinite number of subjects blogged about: blogs like mine --- book blogs, and blogs about cars, movies, computers, cameras, sports, dolls, furniture, food, fashion, games, music, TV shows, and so much more. Look for any subject, and you're sure to find it.

What about you? Do you have a blog? Which blog host do you use? What do you blog about? Why do you blog? What are some of your favorite blogs?