Bookslut, Queen of Chicago’s Literary Web

One Chicago’s more lauded websites, Bookslut is an online literary magazine with accompanying blog that is a Bloggie Awards Hall of Famer and was Time’s 50 Best Websites in 2003. Bookslut is royalty in the literary side of the web, which is all the more interesting as it makes a point of not being part of the NYC/Williamsburg prententious literary set. Don’t get too excited about the prurient title of the site. The name “Bookslut” was a result of that increasingly troublesome task: finding a pronouncable URL.

ChicagoTechNews: What’s your monthly traffic like these days, in terms of unique visitors and pageviews?

Jessa Crispin: Monthly, it’s over 200,000 unique visitors a month that come directly to the site. I do not know how many people subscribe to the RSS feed. I’m not sure about pageviews, it’s not something I normally track.

CTN: Bookslut’s been around since 2002. How much of it’s popularity to you attribute to being an early mover in terms of literary sites, how much to your openness to non-mainstream books, and how much to your “outsider” status in the literary world? Actually, are you still considered an “outsider?”

JC: I think to the actual literary world I’m considered an “outsider,” and to a lot of the outsiders I’m considered “The Man.” It’s hard for me to say, really, because it’s such a different environment now. When I started Bookslut, it really was just me and Mobylives. But even today, there are not a lot of places like Bookslut, that combine both the daily blog and the more print-like qualities of the monthly magazine section. I think there are a lot of contributing factors, and timing is just one of them.

As far as the non-mainstream books, yes, I definitely think that’s part of it. There is only so much one person can read about Philip Roth. And this is not as true anymore, but when I started Bookslut, things like comic books were never covered by the mainstream literary press. Comics have a growing audience, and yet maybe one graphic novel every three years would be reviewed in the New York Times. (Things have changed somewhat.) The only place you’d see them covered is in these niche comic book publications, which completely fetishize comics — yeah, great, I totally wanted to read a 26-page interview with a guy who inked Spider-Man back in 1982. When I started Bookslut, I read omnivorously, and I knew other people did, too, so that is how I wanted to cover books.

CTN: How does the print media (not book publishers, the print literary media) react to Bookslut and have the reactions changed over time?

JC: Really, Bookslut was accepted quickly. I was asked to write something for the Washington Post after only a year of writing on Bookslut, and the site was profiled in newspapers and such not long after its debut. The only thing that has changed is that Phil Ponce used to giggle after saying Bookslut when I was on Chicago Tonight talking about books, and now he no longer does.

CTN: You’ve done something of a reverse commute. In the tech world, people generally leave Chicago to take a job in Austin. You left Austin and brought your job to Chicago. What did Chicago bring to the table that Austin didn’t?

JC: Public transportation. Summers I could live through. A Midwestern work ethic. It was a personal decision, not really a business decision, although Chicago has been good to Bookslut.

CTN: Who does the design, updating and technical work for Bookslut?

JC: Me. And I am not a technical genius. My strategy for dealing with a problem is generally to either turn it off and on again, or hit refresh until it starts working. I should probably hire someone to handle all of that, but webmasters charge more money than really would be worth it. After all, I haven’t broken the site yet.

CTN: Does Bookslut have any revenue streams past website and newsletter advertising?

JC: That’s pretty much it. We have an Amazon Associates account, like just about every other website, but it doesn’t bring in that much. But having Bookslut has given me access to freelance writing opportunities, and that’s part of my own “revenue stream.”

CTN: Have you noticed any of the fluctuations in the online advertising market in the past few months?

JC: Oddly, it’s stabilized. I thought it would go off a cliff, with all of the talk of the End of Publishing. It was shaky last year, ebbing and then flowing, but the last couple months have been steady and reliable.

CTN: What’s the most important thing for building an audience?

JC: Being an interesting person.

CTN: What do find to be the most challenging part of running a content site?

JC: You know, I have been very, very lucky with Bookslut. I have very dedicated, bright, interesting people writing for me. I’ve never had to compromise on the site’s content. I have never had a problem with a disappearing or rude audience. The only time I’ve ever cursed my lot in life is when my laptop suddenly won’t load Windows. For the most part, I realize I have been blessed.