Whatever

My boyfriend is a game designer and has both a website and a blog because he feels like he should. He feels it's necessary to further his career, and he spends hours crafting each blog entry.

And although he's an award-winning, talented game designer and writer, he hasn't seen a significant increase in sales due to his web presence. He's starting to wonder if maybe instead of working for four hours on that blog, he should be working on that hot new RPG or boardgame.

Either that or just tell himself he's got fifteen minutes per blog entry.

As a midlist author (nonfiction as opposed to fiction) who also has a moderately successful blog, I can say that really, the best reason to maintain a blog is for one's own enjoyment and benefit. Sure, I like the fact that some folks enjoy reading and commenting there, and it's been terrific for meeting new people (heck, I met my fiance via our respective blogs). And I believe it's important for authors to have some sort of Web presence, and blogs are preferable to static Websites because there's the potential for interaction.

But evaluating my blog solely as a marketing tool? I doubt very much it's had a significant impact on book sales. That might be because I don't have La Scalzi's energy: I only post a couple of times a week. [Then again, my posts are loooong... :)] Still, just because it's not a significant sales booster doesn't mean it's not worth my while. I consider the blog my writing laboratory, a place I can churn out random thoughts, explore topics, try out a few witticisms, and get a bit of reader feedback in the process.

So, whether or how much one blogs is entirely up to the individual author. If there's not ANY kind of payoff, even in terms of your craft, then perhaps it's NOT a good use of your time. There's such a thing as diminishing returns, after all.

The same yardstick applies to other forms of authorial marketing: readings, interviews, emails from readers and the like. All these things are necessary if you want to increase name recognition and by extension, your books slaes, but eventually you hit the wall of diminishing returns and have to make a choice between your promotion and your craft. Most of us who love to write will ultimately choose our craft when we hit that wall.

Find a balance, I'd say, between blogging, promotion, and your actual "real" writing work. And realize that this balance will be a bit different for everyone. Don't start a blog because you feel you "ought" to do so; do it because you want to do so. Because if it's not fun for you, it's not gonna work as an effective "marketing tool." People respond to the fun, not to the marketing...

I think both Keri's BF and the writer you note over at Ficlets suffer from the "it must be perfect" syndrome on blog entries. That's not the point - building a community of readers is. All you're trying to do is build awareness, hopefully positive awareness. If you start a blog and let people know about it, then can read it. Those who blog can link to things they think their readers would like. Search engines will find you and rank you (most esp for your name).

It will take awhile - unless you're already famous, expect it to take 1-2 years of near-daily posts to build awareness. There are exceptions, but damn few.

Well, not to state the obvious, but...

The most surefire way for him to achieve greater name recognition is to provoke Scalzi into calling him a hideous arse-candle. That'll shoot him straight to the top of the charts.

I think authors sometimes forget what's going on in the background. Getting the book on the store shelves is a critical, and non-automatic, part of the process. Also, getting reviews requires a fair amount of work. For every actual review, I've been running 2 rejects and 1 "book in black hole" incident.

Blogs, author's webpages and suchlike are add-ons to these activities.

To blog or not to blog... Well, no. The question is really: to self promote or not to self promote.

One thing writers, especially new ones*, forget is that there are far more books being published today than in previous times. So the same amount of promotional money has to cover a lot more titles. As a writer, you have one title to worry about, maybe two (at a time, I mean). Your editor has dozens, your publisher hundreds, and your bookseller thousands. You care about your book more than anyone else: anything you can add to the house's efforts is a plus.

*and yes, I know WJW isn't a new writer

Yeah, JD definitely has that "my blog must be perfect so I'll spend all afternoon working on it" disease. I think I'll start pushing him to simply post the interesting stuff he runs across every day on the net. He sends it to me in email anway; it's just a bit more work to put it up on Livejournal. He's already a "name" in the gaming industry, so this is mostly to keep himself on the industry radar.

John, do you ever wonder what it is (besides bacon cat) that brings 25K unique visitors to your site each day? I agree that it certainly IS work to develop and maintain a presence such as yours or Cory's or Neil's.

Here's the thing about WJW's comment that bothers me. According to what he said, he wrote a book that was *different* than all his other books, but was marketed to *his* audience. To me that's a BIG DUH! If this was a break out book that should have brought in a new audience, why not release it under a psuedonym. A transparent one, but one that would/could be viewed differently by the booksellers and potentially new readers. A reputation is a reputation.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

Patrick M:

"John, do you ever wonder what it is (besides bacon cat) that brings 25K unique visitors to your site each day?"

I always assumed it was the fabulous prizes.

My impression is that the people with the most successful blogs are those that can blast off an entry without much effort while maintaining solid productivity in the rest their lives.

Will merely having a blog and writing something engaging and controversial will--alone--gain publicity and a readership? I'm not sure about that. To start, you'd need connectors to help readers find your amazing controversial piece of blogging genius, regardless of how amazing it is(which goes back to trying to piggyback on somebody else's fame, as was proposed).

I wonder what portions of your readership came from what area. How many Googled you after reading your books and how many found you from a link from some other site? It seems like a chicken or egg problem. Maybe a combination of the two.

The thing about all of the people under discussion is that they've used existing success in one field to leverage new success in the other - John and Cory Doctorow from blog to novel, Neil Gaiman from novel to blog. Are there actually any instances where an obscure/midlist novelist has started an obscure blog and built it up in such measure as to significantly impact book sales?

If we don't say it enough, thank you for the wonderful prizes.

The Great Turtle give away was definitely my favorite prize opportunity.

Jp:

Theoretically, I imagine it could happen. But what are the chances of a blog and a novel becoming popular mutually exclusive of one another's influence?

It seemed as though one must precede the other in the genesis of the combination. The stronger of the two influences will likely be the catalyst the weaker. Which means, you still have to be really good at at least one of the two things for the other to work.

In coming up with my own personal marketing plan for my book, I ran some numbers. I calculated that Tor is going to print up about 7000 copies of the book for the first run (based on my advance, the royalty schedule, and a few other things). In order to sell through my advance, my book has to sell about half of the printed copies, and a book won't go on to further printings and later trade and mass market paperback and foreign sales and all that unless it sells through.

So, there's the problem sitting in front of me, I need to link up 3000 books with buyers in the next three months or so or the book sinks without a ripple. I can't do that on my own but I think I can help, a little. I imagine the reviews are going to sell the most copies. But some of the books will sell because people met me at a con and thought I was a nice guy (I am, really!) and some are going to sell because I had some short stories in Asimov's and F&SF and the Year's Best.

Will those sales get me to 3000? I don't know, so I'm going to have the blog. I get a few dozen hits a day, not 25,000, and my Technorati score is usually over 1 million. It costs me very little and it's enjoyable to write the thing, so it's cheap marketing and it keeps me out of the pool halls. And if it nudges my book sales past whatever magic number Tor has in mind for calling me a success and buying my next book (which is almost finished) then it's worth it.

And if it doesn't work I'll get myself a cat and some breakfast meat and start taping.

Matt Jarpe,

It appears to be working - I just pre-ordered Radio Freefall from Amazon.

Cha-ching!

Matt Jarpe and/or Scalzi, I'd love to try the "bacon on cat" method of upping my readership, then start posting original stories/novel excerpts to wow my new readers, but I'm a vegetarian. Will faux bacon/tofu sausage work as well? Or maybe processed cheese slices?

BTW, John, thanks again for the fabulous prizes. That mannequin leg sets off the colors in my living room nicely.

It's a major award, Carol Elaine!

Carol,
If you're a vegan you would have to go completely exploitation free and tape tofu bacon to a RoboPet.

Janiece,
Speaking of awards, you are the winner of a retroactive contest I just made up. You are the first person to buy the book based on my online presence. Free T-shirt!

http://feedback.matthewjarpe.com/2007/07/13/a-new-contest--and-we-have-a-winner.aspx

The rest of you, see what you get? Major awards. Stop by sometime.

Thanks, Matt! You're a peach. I'll always take free stuff.

Thanks for the tip, Matt. I'm not vegan, so I should be able to use one of my real cats.