Quote:
Originally Posted by davidwfleming
[...]For example, if a person just wrote a bunch of kick-ass blog posts then, hypothetically, people would just spread the word on their own. Do people really talk about internet stuff offline? [...]
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Not sure how much they talk about it offline (my offline life is pretty isolated these days), but they certainly talk about blogs etc. online: Facebook and forums with links to blogs, blobs with links to blogs (one of my real annoyances are blog posts that are really just copies of another blog), etc. etc. etc.
BUT - and I think this is important - successful blogs (blogs that get widely quoted and linked) are mostly about the blog content. To get a blog that is widely quoted/linked (to get the fame that we might hope leads to more people reading our books) means writing something that sparks widespread interest or controversy - and since we are talking about not-yet-famous authors here, then we are talking about content that is not related to what we are writing (since what we are writing is, by definition, not yet going to spark widespread interest, that's what we are hoping to attract). ... Getting a bit circular there, but then marketing and money-making is often circular, it's getting the flywheel spinning that is difficult.
I have yet to see any evidence that says a successful blog will lead to significant extra attention to details not related to the blog - such as the latest book you might be trying to sell (which my circular argument above indicated is not about your books).
Sure I visit the occasional author's blog, but only because blogs are how people do websites these days, in most cases I'd be just as happy to visit a traditional website and see what news they've put up.