You gotta have a book blog to create buzz around your book. I knew that when I set up this blog. But it’s confirmed in yesterday’s New York Times in an article, Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book. The article quotes three nonfiction authors on their blogs and their books-in-progress: John Battelle (“The Search”), Chris Anderson (“The Long Tail”) and David Weinberger (“Everything is Miscellaneous”).
The article wisely points out: “Authors’ blogs also change the solitary mission of writing into something more closely resembling open-source software.”
My favorite quote: Battelle “calculated that last year he wrote 74,000 words for his book, and 125,000 words on his blog.” As he puts it: “It is very satisfying to write something and get an immediate response to it.” Yeah, I know what he means. I’m awfully simple minded that way. A blog is so, well, satisfying: scribble your idea, read it over, edit quickly… and click Publish Now. Then hope you get some Comments. Positive or negative, doesn’t matter. It’s the feedback that writers crave.
So… why a book blog? It’s a way to draw on the
“collective intelligence” of your readers to get feedback, ideas, tips on who to
interview, pointers to articles to read, etc. It can build buzz for your book after it’s published. See Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars and Susannah Gardner’s Buzz Marketing with Blogs.
However, a book blog may or may not mean that you are inviting readers into the writing process. Some authors are more willing than others to post drafts of chapters. Robert Scoble and co-author Shel Israel have been postings drafts for months to Naked Conversations (the blog for their book about business blogging). In contrast, David Weinberger, a co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, tells the NYTimes reporter that he’s not going to seek so much input from readers this time around. It made the rewriting process cumbersome and time-consuming.
Count me in the “a bit shy” category about this. I’ll see as I get further along…
If you know of other “book blogs” by all means add them in a Comment below.