Blogger Interview: Boekenzee

Posted January 4, 2013 by Lola in Blogger Interview / 3 Comments

YourSiteTitleEvery saturday I interview a blogger. Today isn’t saturday for a change, because I have a cover reveal tomorrow and I prefer not to post two post on the same day. Because if I post two posts on the same I have the feeling that one of them doens’t get enough attention.

So today I interview Emma and Anoeska from Boekenzee, this also is the first interview whith two bloggers. Emma and Anoeska run Boekenzee together and both answered the questions for this interview!

Also this is the first Interview I do with a blog that doesn’t review their books in English. I live in the Netherlands, which isn’t a great place to live if you love reading. Reading is less popular here and no awesome authors ever come to the Netherlands. I do think it’s really awesome that Emma and Anoeske have a Dutch book blog! 

Hello Emma and Anoeska! Welcome to Lola’s Reviews! I am so excited to have you on my blog today. I love your blog because it’s one of the few Dutch book blog I follow and I also like the name of your blog, Boekenzee (in English this means something like sea of books). 
Emma: Thanks so much! Interviewing bloggers is a great idea!
Anoeska: Thank you so much for having us!

Why did you decide to start blogging? 
Emma: For me it was something I have wanted for a long time. A lot of my Goodreads friends had a blog and I really wanted one too. I just didn’t want to do it alone, I do have a life besides books! I don’t always have time to read and write reviews, so I wanted someone to share it with. That way, one of us is always active!
Anoeska: I’ve been following other blogs for a while, but I never came across a Dutch blog that reviewed Dutch and English YA books. Emma and I both love reading and we have similar taste in books so we came up with the idea to start a blog together.

How did you came up with the name for your blog, Boekenzee? 
Emma: Haha! Yeah. I think we kinda struggled with the name. We started a brainstorm and couldn’t really come up with anything. We tried stuff with our names. EA-books, stuff like that. I remember we both wanted the dutch word for books in it (boeken) and we just mixed and matched. I like Boekenzee (Sea of Books) cause it also says something about the way the blog is going to look and I think it’s a pretty name.
Anoeska: We wanted a name for the blog that would show immediately what the blog is about and would be easy to translate to the look and feel of the blog. After our brainstorming session we came up with Boekenzee and we both really loved it.

How old is your blog now? 
Emma: We started our blog in August 2012. So we’re super young! It’s hard being a Dutch blog though, it’s harder to find followers. I do feel like we have a bunch of loyal followers, people really read our posts and respond to them. I think loyal followers are more important than having a lot of followers.
Anoeska: It’s important for us to share our love for books with other people, so if we only had one follower that we inspired, our goal would already be accomplished. We hope that this year more people will learn about our blog and get to know great new books because of it.

What do you enjoy most about blogging? 
Emma: For me it’s giving my opinion about books and introducing people to books. I don’t really have a lot of people to share my passion with, not everyone understand and not everyone thinks about books the way that I do. So for me, it’s writing how I feel about a book. Plus the responses you get are great and seeing how many people read what you have written!
Anoeska: For me it’s the same. It’s a way of giving my opinion and share my passion about books to people who want to hear it. It’s great that we get so many positive responses, that way we want to keep on blogging.

How did you decide on this design for your blog? 
Emma: We did it together. We’re called Boekenzee (Sea of Books) so blue is the obvious colour. For me the design isn’t done yet, I want something prettier but for now I am happy with it. It takes way too much time to change your design.
Anoeska: The design was the hard part, but with the name of the blog we knew what colours we wanted to use. So first we thought of that and then we discussed what kind of typography we would use and where we would put our widgets. I really like how the blog turned out.

I think it’s very nice you decided to make a Dutch book blog (there aren’t that many Dutch book blogs), but I wonder why did you decide to make a Dutch book blog instead of an English one? 
Emma: We talked about this a lot. For me it’s easier to write in Dutch, it’s easier to give my opinion about something.
Anoeska: It is easier to give my honest opinion in Dutch and we also want to reach people who don’t know that many great English books. So that way we can write in Dutch about Dutch or English books.

Thanks Emma and Anoeska for the interview! 

Even though Emma and Anoeska write most of their posts in Dutch, many of the blurbs and such are in English, so even for English people this is a blog you should check out! You can find Emma, Anoeska and their blog here:
Blog: http://boekenzee.blogspot.nl/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boekenzee/254917897961799 
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Boekenzee

Do you have a blog and you want me to interview you as part of my Blogger Interview Saturday? Send me an e-mail at lolabookreviews@gmail.com

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