With this blog a little over a year old now, I thought I'd evaluate if it is being effective and achieving the goals I set out when I started the thing. For those who may not have read the early posts, I started this blog to help promote myself, gather an audience, and ultimately help sell the books I am writing.
In reviewing the last year, I think it is clear that I have gathered an audience. It is bigger than the people who have subscribed because I hear from people about various posts who are not on the subscription lists. To this people I would ask to take a few minutes to formally subscribe. It will help gauge the size of my audience.
And since I now seem to have an audience, I have achieved the goal of promoting myself. The blog goes out to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Goodreads, and some other sites I don't recall. I've also posted links in Delicious, Digg, and Stumbleupon, I believe. All in the effort to get the blog and myself noticed.
The part that seems to have fallen flat is the selling of books. I'll be the first to admit that I am not actively promoting my novel at the moment because I am waiting to hear back from the publisher I sent it to. So let's put that part aside for the moment.
The part I want to focus on is that blogging equal sales. That seems not to be true, unless I'm doing something wrong. And that may be. If anyone sees the error, please let me know. But I think one reason for the disconnect is the audience for the blog is not the audience for the novel.
To correct that, it occurred to me that I might want to start a second blog (God help me!) to attract the audience of the novel. This blog would focus on the characters from my novels, relate the history of my fantasy world, and describe different places and magic items. A Facebook friend of mine does something similar to this by writing mini-stories with the characters from her novels.
I figure it is worth a try. However, I would like the opinions of others. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment