A Fresh New Look
Why Controversial Book Club became The YA Section
G’day, readers!
For all those who followed Controversial Book Club, you know who I am. For anyone here with no knowledge of our old blog, my name is Jack Cuison, and in this post, I will explain why the Controversial Book Club rebranded as The Young Author Section. We’ll be discussing the pros and cons of changing our name and platform and how this blog will be the same as well as different from its previous form.
To start out, I just want to address the Controversial Book Club was a fun experience and I know that we all, authors and readers alike, enjoyed the three months it was up. But when I look back and compare it to my plans for the future of this blog, I realize that Controversial Book Club was honestly more of a test run. I mean, there’s no way we could have lasted long on Blogger with the name Controversial Book Club. We wouldn’t have attracted a large audience over time with such a poor name and overly long URL. So, I’m writing this post to explain our reasoning for this transition because I’m aware that our time as Controversial Book Club was much shorter than we all would have expected.
Pros
Now, it’s time to discuss the pros. What are the benefits of rebranding to The YA Section and transitioning to Substack as a blogging platform? I bet you’ll be surprised how much better Substack actually is than Blogger.
1. Our name
One of our main reasons for rebranding is that our old name was … kind of terrible. I mean, Controversial Book Club? It was unoriginal, broad, and might make some people stray away from the blog. Now, The YA Section can also do these things, considering how propaganda-filled our current young adult library sections are, which is why we specified that “YA” in our name stands for “Young Author.” This gives our new name a more unique touch and may attract young teen writers.
2. Substack is a much better platform
Just by being on this blog, you can tell it is way better than Blogger. I have broken this point up into many little points to prevent a superlarge paragraph. When proposing Substack to the others, these were the main things that persuaded them to agree:
Substack looks a lot cleaner — I mean, just look at this blog! It’s so organized, minimalistic, and modern. Now, the customization tools are very different from Blogger, so I couldn’t make this blog look too different from other Substack publications, but it still beats Blogger, don’t you think?
Substack automatically sends out emails — When you subscribe to this blog, you can automatically receive emails every time we post! This means less work for us authors since we don’t have to design and send out each individual email like before. If you were with us at Controversial Book Club, you may recall the period when we stopped sending out emails because it was too much work. So this Substack feature is a phenomenal upgrade.
Built-in like button and pop-up — I know this didn’t affect you as a reader, but on Blogger we had to add in the email list pop-up and like buttons using HTML codes on every single post. So having both of these features built into the blog is really helpful and time-saving.
Better comments section — With Daily Controversy posts relying on you readers to argue in the comments, we needed a platform with a clean, easy-to-use comments section. But the Blogger comments space was a total nightmare! On Substack, the comment threads are much cleaner and more efficient, helping put your focus more on what you will comment rather than how to comment in the first place.
A subscribers-only chat — A fairly new Substack feature, a subscribers-only chat was automatically created when we started this blog. So now we can post updates and special offers, and even host our book club on this beautiful chat space exclusively for blog subscribers (the chat is linked in the navigation bar!)
Hosting guest authors is easier than ever — before, on Blogger, to host guest authors, we would invite someone as an author of Controversial Book Club, have them create a post (which required explanation for some), send us their post’s content, then we would remove them as an author. This meticulous process is now unneeded because now all we have to do is have them send us their post. Then we create the post for them and add them as a byline. It’s as simple as that. Substack even adds a little guest author note at the bottom of the post with a link to their profile.
You don’t need a Google account — Unlike Blogger, you can create a Substack account with any kind of email (for free!), meaning we can widen our audience to those using iCloud, Outlook, Proton, and more!
Going mobile — Blogger was never good when it came to going mobile. Our photos messed up, the pop-up was wacky, and one could never log in to comment, which defeated the blog’s purpose. On the other hand, Substack adjusts its site to go mobile: the images fit, commenting and liking is easier than ever, and there’s also the Substack mobile app, which can help you access the chat and other cool features. Downloading the app is free, but it does require an account. If you want to follow this blog but mainly read our posts on your phone or tablet, the Substack app is a must-have.
Dark and light mode — Before, you had to read our posts in dark mode because that was our blog’s set theme. Now, you have the option to read our posts with a dark background but if you have sensitive eyes, you can also read on substack.com or the Substack app in either dark or light mode. You can also adjust the fonts, font size, and more!
Substack is just better overall — From its cool features to appearance to security, Substack is a considerably better blogging platform compared to Blogger. And if you aren’t convinced … well, you should be by now. I am confident that the cons I’m about to list won’t convince you otherwise, but I have to mention them to be fair. So now, onto the cons (actually, there’s only one…)!
Cons
Look, I tried to find negative aspects about moving to Substack, I really did. But I couldn’t really think of any besides the one I listed. And I know there were only two pros, but the second one was split up into several different points; that won’t be the case with this one. I promise to update this post if I think of any more though!
1. You must create a Substack account to like and comment
For me, creating a Substack account wasn’t that big of a deal. But I know how some people are very wary when it comes to creating accounts on other websites, so this is kind of a big con. Now, you don’t have to create an account to subscribe to this blog, but you do need one if you want to use any interactive features on here, such as the comments section and the chat. But here’s what I have to say about creating an account on Substack:
Creating a Substack account won’t collect (or track, anyway) your information, put you in any kind of unsafe situation, or spam your inbox with random emails like other platforms. It will, however, help improve your experience on this blog and others on the platform. You can like and comment on posts as well as follow other users, message us, and more! All for free—they don’t even have a premium plan they shove in your face like other platforms. So if you are subscribed to this blog or enjoy reading what we write, I would highly recommend creating a Substack account for a better experience. I can elaborate this point in an entire post if you are still skeptical1, but I implore you to trust me on this if you plan on or have already subscribed to the blog and want to fully enjoy and interact with this blog’s content.
And that’s it … yeah. As you can see, the pros majorly overtake the con, so I hope you can now understand why we made the transition from the Controversial Book Club Blogger site to The YA Section Substack publication. But now that we’re here, what’s next? That’s what we’ll explore in my next point.
What now?
Now that we’re on Substack, what’s going to happen now? Will our posts be any different? Well, our hope for this transition is that nothing truly major about our posts will change. However, our posting frequency will be vastly different. Instead of posting three to four times a week, we will be posting once, maybe twice, every week on Mondays and/or Wednesdays. Because of this, the Daily Controversies will now be called Debate of the Week. Writing Tips articles (now called “Tips & Tools”), and devotionals will still be continued as posts on this blog. With our new posting frequency being weekly, we will be canceling the Verse of the Week but we will be adding a new type of post: Reviews & Recommendations, which can range from book reviews to website recommendations, and more.
Now onto our events. We will be hosting our story contests every other month and be recruiting judges rather than judging ourselves. As for our book club, we will only be hosting it occasionally, whenever we think we will have the time. While we will be hosting these events periodically, most months will just feature our weekly or biweekly posts.
While you process all of this, we want you to keep in mind that this is simply a platform, name, and schedule upgrade. The YA Section is the Controversial Book Club. We are still the same authors (mostly) of the same blog. This is just a big step in our journey. So, thank you for supporting us as we take a new route. Maybe someday we’ll register an actual domain, monetize this blog, or even transition to a higher platform like WordPress or Wix. Or maybe this won’t work out and we’ll go back to Blogger (we’re keeping Controversial Book Club up, by the way for historical purposes). We don’t know where God will take us with this blog. But we do know that it is here to stay, only now with a fresh new look.
Well, that’s my post and the very first post on The Young Author Section blog! If you have any questions about this transition or want more details, feel free to leave us a comment or DM us on Substack. If you’re confused about how Substack works and how to create an account, check out the Substack readers FAQ, found here.
Make sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss any of our posts and to access our exclusive YA Section chat. Above all, I hope you guys will stay with us even with this humongous change and if so, I’ll see you in the next post.
HAVE A BLESSED DAY :)
I would definitely do a post introducing who the "we" in The YA Section is, an "introduce the team" type of post.