AUTHOR'S CORNER;

BLOGGING; IS IT THE MEDICINE OR THE SUGAR PILL?

Now it might just be me, but I have been growing alarmingly concerned over this new concept called blogging....and yes, before anyone decides to comment, I know that I am actually blogging right now!  However, I have found myself questioning this slightly strange and unusual activity and wondering exactly how beneficial it is.  You see, I, along with many other indie writers have fallen into the trap of the pseudo fame blogging community!  What is it, I hear you ask.  Let me explain, we blog to an audience, right?  The readers visit our pages, read our work, share and like, retweet and comment...right?  Okay, that's good.  We clap our hands in glee when we check our page visits, we congratulate ourselves on scoring a few hundred visitors that day; surely now at least half of them will check us out, look us up on Amazon and purchase a copy or two of our books?  Umm, no, not really........?????

Don't get me wrong; if one is blogging for the love of it, then by all means go ahead, blog to your heart's content!  But if like me you have been advised from very reliable sources that the best way to promote and sell your book is through producing titbits of tantalising blogs to seduce your readers, then we have a problem. Because (and yes I know I have started the sentence with because)  

though you may get a lot of page visitors, they are mainly visiting your page for the blog contents and not necessarily your books! You may have quite a few page visitors, but ask yourself, in the world of literature, how well known are you?

Which brings me to my original question and indeed nagging concern; is blogging actually the medicine to success or the sugar pill which we are given to put us to sleep for a while?  Call me old fashioned, but isn't the best way of promoting a book is to actually advertise that book?  Put posters up of the book?  Get book stores to actually put that book on the shelves?  Nowadays it seems that most indie publishers have a marketing pack ready to hand over to the author, which mainly includes joining facebook and blogging!!

And what is blogging anyhow?  I blog, you blog, we all blog! Seems to me we can all be published bloggers in our own rights!

And of course the sense and feeling of fame will grow each time we get a response or are retweeted.  I keep asking the question what is blogging and realise that even my poor computer does not have a clue as it keeps underlining the word and my page is nicely decorated with red error marks!  Blogging is a fairly new trend and it is growing simply because we live in a 'Big Brother' culture where people like to see what others are up to.  The most successful blogger, it seems are the most personal and outrageous ones!  

We love to share personal news and we love to receive other people's personal news, salivating at the mouth as we search the net for the latest piece of gossip.  As if people's personal news would be any different from our own!  Let's face it, we are becoming a nation of peeping Toms! 

In trying desperately to keep an audience, we will resort to all sorts of subjects, even bordering on the slightly obscene!  Before we know it our thirst for fame grows to an uncontrollable urge and we break the most important rule any writer can break; we reveal ourselves to the world and soon lose the mystery that used to accompany a writer!

Does it make any difference what I have done last week?  Would the world think me a better writer if I revealed a quirk in my personality?  Am I actually selling my work, or am I exposing myself?  

And is it necessary in the 21st Century for the audience to actually know me as intimately as they know themselves?  I have blogged about my difficulties in obtaining book signings, I have blogged about 

barbecues I have held, I have blogged about my child going to hospital, I have blogged about my age, my father's stroke!  Right now my readers know more about me than any potential date (yeah right) I may have.  Having exposed myself and been personal, having bared my soul for all to see (read) and left myself with no literary mystic, (which would have actually been more beneficial to my books) I feel a little blogged out and disheartened!

Has this made me more of a novelist? Or am I more qualified as a blogger?

Guys, I'm not sure this is a foolproof marketing strategy!  Because I have done my part, but yet I don't see posters of my book on the underground, no great advertisements in newspapers and they certainly have not been distributed to any bookshops which I have not personally approached.  So I ask again, is blogging the medicine to success or merely the sugar pill offered as a means to keep us busy? 

Will I give it up?  Umm....no, because like most bloggers, I like the buzz of the possibility that to my readers I am actually somewhat a little, tiny bit famous!!