How internet book sites went the way of classical music radio: now, to survive, you have to stick to what people already know.

Jessica Crispin explains why her blog, Bookslut, closed:

I miss the internet. I know that, technically, the internet still exists. It’s the Facebook-, Twitter-filtered series of algorithms designed to put cat videos, think pieces, and advertisements in front of you. But I get nostalgic for the days before money invaded the internet – the early 2000s, in particular, when I created the literary blog and webzine Bookslut.com.

Back then, nothing you did mattered. And that gave you freedom. Back then, the online book culture was run mostly by enthusiasts and amateurs, people who were creating blogs and webzines simply for the pleasure of it, rather than to build a career or a brand. I know that nostalgia is a stupid emotion, but still I regret the day money found the internet. Once advertisers showed up, offering to pay us to do the thing we were doing just for fun, it was very hard to say no. Or understand exactly what the trade-offs would be.

The problem with doing what you love as a day job is that you have to make compromises in order to make money. Ask every twentysomething who dreamed of being able to pursue their love of writing as a career how fulfilling writing those Buzzfeed lists and clickbait headlines are. The thing that made you love writing is very rarely the thing that will actually get you paid.

When you’re just an enthusiast, you can write about anything you want. You can publish long interviews with writers that only 20 people have ever heard of, knowing full well that maybe two dozen people will read all the way to the end. You can write serious, long reviews of books from small presses and faraway countries. Your only restriction is the limit of your curiosity.

But you probably won’t get much attention. And in the world of online publishing, attention is everything. Your revenue stream is linked directly to how many clicks and page views you stack up, and that 8,000-word interview with a Nigerian author published in English for the first time just isn’t going to draw the crowds. Which was the most disappointing revelation about the books world: even an intellectual is susceptible to clickbait. They might carry a New York Review of Books to read on the subway, but tweet a link to a slideshow of 37 regrettable Ernest Hemingway-inspired tattoos and they are all over it.