I have had
a blog for three and a bit years. I write whatever comes into my head. I have a very common name, and I wanted to build an online presence so that when someone googled 'Helen Smith' they would be able to find me - and a handy link to my reviews. But you can't really be blatant about it, you have to give people something to read in return for pushing your name to the top of the google ranking, so I try to be as entertaining as possible. One unforseen outcome is that I have met lots of interesting people and made quite a few friends through blogging - I wrote an article for the Writers Guild magazine about it after the first year, which is online
here. I wrote a follow-up about
the joys of blogging and twitter on my blog recently, and the WGGB
linked to that, too.
I have a static
website here. I'm also on
Twitter. I never, ever try to sell my books on Twitter and I don't follow celebrities. I'm there because I like the people I interact with, I find interesting links to all sorts of sites and articles through them, I laugh at their jokes, and I post things I think they will laugh at or be interested in, too.
I don't sell on my blog, either, though there are links to my books on there. I will mention if I have got a play on, or something else that qualifies as news. For the first time ever a few days ago, I mentioned in a post that readers could find my books on Amazon or on the
TygerBooks website. But I said it somewhat apologetically, as if mentioning a trip to an STD clinic, and so far as I can tell none of my readers actually took any notice of that, and I went back to the matter in hand - which is to write as if I'm having a conversation with a clever friend in a pub.
From checking my statistics, I can see that my blog is read and has been linked to by the Writers Guild of Great Britain, the Guardian newspaper and several influential British playwrights. Someone from the UK office of one of the biggest publishers in the world (not my publisher) stops by every day to see what I have written, someone from the National Theatre stops by weekly, as does someone from the office of the biggest and most successful West End theatre producer (though I wonder if that might be someone I know, I just need to work out who.) Plenty more subscribe in google reader. I'm very happy to have built a fairly influential readership over the years, and to have made lots of friends, many of whom are writers. I wouldn't want to insult any of them with sales pitches or writing tips, any more than I would lug a box of books to a dinner party and start trying to flog copies of them for five quid between courses, or stand up, ting my glass with my fork and say, 'Of course, the best way to write a book is...' I mean, who knows?
I try to observe the same etiquette here and on other forums. Obviously, one of the attractions for me in coming here is that I can promote my book in various threads - and I do it heartily and gratefully. But elsewhere, I want to join in and behave like a decent human being. There are some very funny threads over in the Lounge, for example, and I have posted in there, though I mostly lurk. But I think that if your sole intention in hanging around is to find an opportunity to say, 'Funnily enough, that reminds me of something I have written about in my book...' then people are going to scatter as quickly as they would if they went out for a quiet drink and saw the pub bore sitting at their favourite table.
So, anyway - I thoroughly recommend having a blog, joining Twitter, etc. But if you're doing it only to sell, what's the point? After you have said, 'Buy my book,' what is your next post going to be? 'Buy another one'? There's no reason for anyone to keep coming back.