One Comment

  1. Kristi Lea
    Nov 06, 2012 @ 16:24:18

    I think it depends on what you are blogging for 🙂

    I’m not sure I ever saw author blogs as a tool for authors to reach new readers. Personally, I have enjoyed reading blogs from authors I already like. But I’ve rarely started reading a new author because of a blog. I rarely even pick up a book based on an impartial blog-based book review (if such a thing exists). I always got the impression that writers blogging about their latest book was like preaching to the choir. (Granted, fellow writers are also readers, and it can pay to keep an existing fan base anticipating the next new thing).

    I think blogs in the general sense (not specific to writers blogging about their writing) can be an effective mechanism for the blog reader to get updates. I have used RSS readers (these days, just Google Reader) to track blogs. I see what is new without having to surf from site to site. But I read blogs on cooking (recipes!), home decorating, coding (I’m a software engineer), actual news, shopping (Woot has some funny posts…). I see Dilbert and xkcd via RSS reader (cartoons, not really blogs, but blog =? rss feed). I read more blogs than I do paper newspapers because the content is more specific to what I want to actually hear about.

    For my in-person friends who used to blog about their daily lives, they have pretty much all quit and moved to Facebook.

    And I see fewer and fewer blog posts by writers and publishing professionals these days. I think there is more fear of having words come back to haunt you. Plus, it’s not really the cool, new thing anymore (I’m not sure what the cool, new thing is…facebook? twitter? actual human interaction?).

    But for other topics I follow, I see something like 200+ new posts a day (some I read every post, many I just skim the headlines and look at the pictures) 🙂 So if blogging is dead, the rest of the world hasn’t caught on.