Do you blog?

Before you get offended, let me tell you that "blog" is not a reference to anything vulgar.  "Blog" is short for a web log, or an open, online journal, updated frequently and usually written informally...like this.

Okay, so now I know what a blog is -- but what is it supposed to be about?

Some are political, some are professional, some are personal, and some are a little bit of everything.

Now, I suppose you want to know why you should care.  Let me tell you, English major friends of mine: blogs are everywhere, and they are affecting all types of communication - including books!  But back to that in a minute - first let's look at some facts about blogging.

*For the purposes of this presentation, this blog is actually backwards: read the newest post (this one) first, and proceed to the oldest.  Don't even ask me how I did this.

Blogging Statistics

"Technorati now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled every five months for the past three years.  If that growth were to continue all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009.” - Bradley Johnson, Advertising Age

That information, originally published on October 24, 2005, has been outdated one month later.  As of November 29, 2005, Technorati tracks 22 million blogs, with about 70,000 new blogs being created each day. 

“The American think-tank Pew Internet reckons that a new blog is created every 5.8 seconds.”  - Robbie Hudson, Sunday Times (London)

From Bradley Johnson, Counting Cost of Blogs, Advertising Age:

“U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs."

"About 35 million workers – one in four people in the labor force – visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week scoping them."

"Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs."

"Forget lunch breaks – bloggers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break."

"Employees this year will spend 4.8 billion work hours" reading blogs.

"Work time spent reading and posting to blogs this year will consume 2.2% of U.S. labor force hours."

Read It.  Write It.  Blog It.

Besides being tools of distraction, blogs are fast becoming recognized as tools of change.  The area with which we are most concerned, of course, is the area of books and book publishing.  There are two types of blogs that currently interest us: blogs for readers, and blogs for writers.

Blogs for readers are becoming common.  Though they vary from site to site and reader to reader, they seek to serve three main purposes:

1 - To share opinions on books of all sorts
2 - To bring booklovers together
3 - To promote books which would not normally receive attention

The third goal is perhaps most difficult and most important.  According to the article Getting the Word Out by Jessica Brilliant Keener of the Boston Globe, "space devoted to book reviews has shrunk dramatically in newspapers and magazines in the past five years, while the number of books published has increased 55 percent.  Publishers focus nearly all of their attention on the surefire blockbusters.  The result: many good books come and go unnoticed."  Blogs for readers seek to promote those lost books.  Sites include the cleverly-named and quite popular Bookslut, a sort of literary webzine with reviews, featured writing, and recommendations.  Bookslut sells advertising, pays for featured writing and exchanges free books for written reviews.  According to its creator, Jessa Crispin, Bookslut receives between 7,000 and 8,000 hits every day.  "As a result [of book blogs like Bookslut], professional book reviewers are losing a bit of their dominance over publishing ‘buzz,’" according to Randy Dotinga's article Book blogs' buzz grows louder.  "The blogs ‘democratize and level the playing field, ‘says Peter Handel, an independent book publicist in Berkeley, Calif.”

A community of literary blogs ("litblogs" for short) was founded as The Litblog Co-Op.  The goal of binding together such popular litblogs as The Elegant Variation and Beatrice.com is to promote underrated books.  The success of the endeavor is still unknown.  The Litblog Co-Op chose to promote Kate Atkinson's Case Histories last year; according to Dotinga, the book had steady sales for months after its debut.  Whether or not it had anything to do with the Litbloggers is unknown.

According to Dotinga, “although no one’s exactly sure how influential they are, bloggers like [founder of the Elegant Variation and novelist Mark] Sarvas have become the new darlings of the publishing industry.  They’re getting free review copies, landing interviews with prestigious authors, and trying to boost obscure writers – especially writers in the literary fiction world where John Irving is a bigger name than John Grisham.”

Neither John Irving nor John Grisham has a blog

All bloggers must write, although the majority of them do not write well and they are very rarely if ever paid for such work.  Some bloggers, however, blog because they are writers, either published or hoping-to-be-published.

Published authors such as Jennifer Weiner, author of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, use their blogs to promote their books and to update the public on their lives and work.  Some are formal, like part of the PR/Advertisement/Marketing campaign of books, and others are more personal.  Writes Kevin Chong of the Vancouver Sun: “Charlotte Gill, the author of Ladykiller, uses her blog to discuss her reading habits (George Saunders), her tree-planting work, and the number of espresso shots she could drink before dying (92.14).”

John Battelle is the author of The Search: The Inside Story of How Google and Its Rivals Changed Everything.  He explained his reason for keeping a blog to Tania Ralli of The New York Times: "'It is very satisfying to write something and get an immediate response to it,' said Mr. Battelle, who calculated that last year he wrote 74,000 words for his book, and 125,000 words on his blog.  'It is less satisfying to write a chapter and let it sit on the shelf for six months.'"

Authors like Battelle are also finding the interactive element of blogs useful while writing their books.  Stated Ralli, "'Blogs are a way to listen in and find out what people find funny and respond to,' said Marion Maneker, editorial director at HarperCollins's HarperBusiness unit, who said it was too early to determine whether blogs would affect sales."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." - Samuel Johnson

Okay, maybe you're not that interested in blogging.  You agree with Samuel Johnson, and don't want to write for free; what good will a blog do you?

In certain cases, blogs have worked wonders for the unpublished writer.  Take for example, Stephanie Klein.  Her blog became so popular - according to Technorati, it is currently ranked 845 out of the world's 22 million blogs - that she landed a major two-book deal with ReganBooks of HarperCollins.  A "major deal," according to Stephanie Rosenbloom's article Reader, I Dated Him, signifies $501,000 or more.

I have your attention now, don't I?

Other examples of blog-to-book-deals include Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox, Julie Powell, and Jessica Cutler, who "have parlayed their popular online ruminations/rants/reports into big-money contracts," according to Rachel Deahl of The Book Standard.  A popular blog does not signify a popular book, however, as Cutler's book The Washingtonienne has sold 10,000 copies - not a blockbuster. 

Another blogger, Wendy McClure, recently published a book called I'm Not the New Me.  Deahl stated, "McClure's agent, Erin Hosier, of The Gernert Company, maintains that her client's blog was never the selling point.  'We saw, in her, real talent,' Hosier says. 'And poundy.com was a good example in support of that.  Also, she was a columnist for Bust and had decent writing credits.  So basically it was Wendy's fresh book proposal that moved us to take on the project, not the fact that she was a blogger.'"

Here's a thought from Paul Jones, as told to Roger van der Horst of The News & Observer: "It's not really new.  Charles Dickens was famous for doing serial fiction in the 19th century.  He'd come out with an installment that would be published in a newspaper or magazine, then he'd put it all together as a book and sell it again."