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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3159 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 28, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I really like reading book review substacks/blog where someone I generally trust with intellectual ability and honesty goes over a book and critically describes it. It’s a great way to discover new ideas and books to read.

I am also realising that I should start taking more notes about books I read if I want to keep better memories of important insights. But I am honestly too lazy to write notes just for myself and then later check them out.

So my idea is to start a book review substack of my own. Competition is fierce in English language internet and many people are much better at this than I can ever be. But I see a big opening in Turkish internet for this sort of thing. There is a hunger for new ideas but very low foreign language proficiency. So I would be reading mostly non-fiction books in English (and couple other languages) and then write about them in Turkish. I believe I would be good at choosing books of interest to the local audience. I think I can gain a decent following but I am dazzled a bit by how to start something like this.

Should I just write a couple of them to basically no audience and then try to advertise by the blog twitter interactions? I know a fair amount of people with some reach in intellectual circles but I don’t want to associate the blog with my real identity since I don’t want to be restricted by political and social taboos or any unlikely but possible legal problems.

Anyone can give advise how to start out?

Not much advice, but I agree that there’s a huge gap in Turkey for this sort of thing. Start small and see what happens, just be careful not to translate anything too spicy or Baskan will come knocking.

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