Breaking the Blogging Field

It's taken me a while to finally break the blogging field. Quite frankly, it's because I was scared.

Scared to dive in, scared to break the frontier, and above all, scared that it might be pointless. Is it?

Let's think:

Most readers out there will never see your blog when they buy your book. Ask yourself, honestly, how many books you have bought based on seeing it in a blog. Five, at tops? And that's being considerate! I've only looked seriously into one (and ended up not buying it). That is five, out of the (hopefully) hundreds and hundreds of books you have read.

Then why blog?

First, the more practical reason: The number one, number one reason books become bestsellers is by word of mouth. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had an initial print run of just 500 hardcovers--300 of which went to libraries. (OH YES, you'll see tonnss of HP references in here :) I love it :).) What sold it? Word of mouth. Getting one, even one person to buy your book off of your blog might turn into ten sales.

And then, the funner, happier reason :)

I've come to realize, blogging and networking is to meet other writers. No one else will relate to your querying woes other than writers. This is a place where we hear jokes such as "He's a new writer and he is querying a manuscript on its first draft." We laugh, because we know and relate. We understand the query trenches, the endless revisions, and the futile hopes. We can relate to the feeling of sending your query and feeling like it is just going down a black hole.

Blogging and twitter, all this stuff, is to connect with other writers. Because being a writer is insanity. Being a writer is misery.

And, as we all know, misery loves company :)

(Hm. I quite like that quote. I think I'm going to use it for my little catch-phrase, or pitch, or whatever you call it. Yay :).)