We authors have to blog, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
Published authors say you have to blog. It's part of promotion.
It's also part of getting an agent's or publisher's attention. When you send out that query letter, the first thing she (I'm assuming romance agents and editors, and most of them are female) will do is click over to your blog to see how you write. Forget that she has your letter if front of her. A letter is formal, on-your-best-behavior writing, and it should be. First impressions are important. Even if you live in jeans, you wouldn't go to a wedding wearing them. A blog is, or may be, a better indicator of how you really write.
But here's another take on blogging, as a form of online promotion, on Romancing The Blog
http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/2008/07/25/the-bottom-line-on-online-promo
According to this article (written on a blog, natch), blogs now saturate the web. How will anyone find mine? Either I spend all my time flitting from blog to blog, or I write a book.
I grant you, I don't spend too much time on my blog, only about an hour or so week. It probably shows. And even with that minimal effort, I spend half the time cajoling it past Blogger's html, which doesn't like the header information Word puts into the master file. Ah, the wonders of technology. This week I'm trying OpenOffice. Let's see if it helps.
So, to blog or not to blog? I think I'll keep it up for a while.
And for us newbie authors out there, lose the "that" as the subject of a sentence. I'll remind Shakespeare the next time I see him.
Thank you all,
Linda
1 comment:
Hi Linda, Good question about how do people find you in a sea of blogs. Well I think it's what you said--this is for promotion and we need to be doing it for our writing careers and submissions to agents and publisher/editors. They most likely don't have the time to check us out unless they are going to contract our work, however, it may help them decide to buy or not to buy. (pun intended!) But blogging can connect us to other writers as well as fans. It's true, it's up to us to promote ourselves. And I am beginning to spend a lot of time on it. Good thing I like doing it. (I work in PR so it's not that much of a switch for me.) And some us us like to blog. I tend to like it, but then I have times where I can't stand it. Still, it's a good idea. I have other good ideas too. (Check out my 'Good Promotions' post on Aug 5 on my blog.) Ok, so I'm a bit overboard with promo! LOL
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