Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

tessmilom asked: Why didn't my diy posts get featured? Did I do something wrong? I'm not trying to be rude, I just want to know why they aren't good enough.

Hi there- I’m posting my response here because I wish to clear some things up about the role of an Editor on tumblr (as I appreciate there is very little information out there on the subject):

1. Editors are only allowed to feature 10 posts a day. 

This means that once we’ve hit that quota (even if we’ve seen lots more wonderful work being posted), that’s it for the day I’m afraid. 

2. It is impossible for Editors to see every single related post.

Due to the overwhelming amount of posts created under each individual tag on a daily basis, it is unrealistic to expect us to have seen all of the content generated that day- unless we were refreshing our controlled tags 24/7!

3. Editors are voluntary/aren’t being paid for their time.

In my case, I do it because I enjoy promoting other artists’ work that deserves more exposure, but please bare in mind that I’m a busy full-time student, and I can’t devote all my time to scouring the web (however much I may like to!)

4. Top Editors don’t have any more control than Editors.

I tend to fall into the Top Editor position for both the DIY and Crafts sections on tumblr, but I have no extra control/powers than regular editors. I cannot delete unsuitable posts other editors have featured, nor feature anymore than 10 posts per tag. Being a Top Editor simply means I tend to promote stuff that seems to be consistently popular, and generate a lot of reblogs.

5. Just because your work/posts haven’t yet appeared in a tag yet doesn’t mean it isn’t deserving of being featured. 

My advice to artists/crafters out there is keep up the good work, and if you are consistently featuring+tagging quality work that is also photographed well, an editor will eventually spot you.

I hope this helped shed some light on the role of Editors on tumblr x

So as well as maintaining my position as a Crafts editor, I will be scouring tumblr for more DIY-related posts :) If any of you guys run DIY/tutorial blogs of any kind, do let me a know, and I’ll take a look!

Do you run a DIY blog?

another-masque asked: Hi there! I run the book-aesthete blog, and I wanted to brainstorm with you about how to get 'books' as a category in Explore. It's weird for a couple of reasons: 1, most blogs about books are ALL about books, and so are unlikely to use the tag 'books', because it would be redundant. 2, when I search the tag 'books', I see a whole slew of remarkably similar posts - quotes and a link to some web site. As an editor, do you have any thoughts on how to get these blogs some visibility? Ours, but also librarlyland and many others.

Hi there book-aesthete! You know, I’m not sure how to get ‘books’ as a category. I remember seeing ‘literature’ popping up on the radar for a while, but that just seemed to completely vanish shortly afterwards?
As an editor, we are simply chosen to work for a certain category rather then the other way round- I was randomly emailed by Tumblr asking if I would like to curate the ‘crafts’ section, which I graciously accepted. In fact I remember being quite confused as to why I was chosen for ‘craft’s and not ‘books’, only to discover there was no ‘books’ genre… I think one way to get all the brilliant book-related blog’s voices heard might  be to all collaborate together and produce a well-written email suggesting ‘books’ as a genre to Tumblr.. as I certainly agree one is needed! x

“Tumblr Tag Editors keep an eye out for great posts and mark the best ones for inclusion in our Featured Tag Pages.” (Tumblr’s Editor Guidelines)

I am now on the lookout for interesting craft-orientated artwork to promote (currently, I feel that the new #craft stream is rather limited to posts about fabric/knitting based craftwork, which is lovely and all, but we here at Book Arts also believe paper/mixed media based projects to be just as relevant! So, in the interest of mixing things up a bit, if you are a craft based artist/book artist, and you want me to look through your stuff, simply ‘like’ this post, and I’ll try to take a gander at your blog (or equally, you could submit to me the web address to your online portfolio!) All the best x