I promised content and I deliver!
Today, we talk about book blogging in terms of the book review, critical and objective critiques, and the need for professionalism when you do professional reviews (remember, the moment you exchange anything for a review, you’re a professional now!).
Enjoy and please feel free to discuss or comment below!
Right, so I’m obviously a bit behind on Ye Ole Blogging and Reviews, good sirrah!
There is a good reason for this, though! Unfortunately, it’s not something I can be completely clear and transparent about *quite* yet. What I can tell you are these things:
In other news, I have decided to take a chance and focus my writing and marketing efforts by enrolling most of my books into the Amazon Kindle Select program. Yes, I know it’s giving into the evil corporate overlords, but you also have to realize that I’ve sold almost no books EVER through all the other channels I was putting books out through. Outside of free books, which really don’t count as ‘sales’ when they don’t translate into reads of the sequels, there was never really an ‘upside’ to having a wide distribution.
Will this pan out into better interest and more focused promotion? I don’t know yet, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?
This past week, I had a bit of an emotional snap. A crisis of faith, an overload of frustration, or the straw that broke the camel’s back, any and all of those might be apt descriptions for my state of being at the time. They say, and I agree, that being an author is a battle of attrition and the greatest asset needed to fight that battle is an abundance of stubborn determination, and my own supply seemed close to spent.
My closest friends sought to console me, bolster my confidence, and provide their own advice as to the cause of my problems. What they concluded on I then put forward in a more clinical fashion to some of my colleagues. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised when they all fell into agreement. It seemed that the ultimate cause of my issues was that I spread myself too thin.
You see, my foodies, it came down to a choice, one that I will paraphrase here: Do I wish to be the guy who supports authors and does work for them who does some writing on the side or the full-time author who also happens to be very supportive to other authors? My fellow book bloggers out there who are consistently active in supporting and reviewing will understand, but for others, you may not realize how much time, energy, and resources goes into a consistent schedule of reviews, interviews, and advice. A lot can go on behind the scenes, especially follow-up to reviews if the author is looking for deeper insights to your critiques.
Not only that, but my advocacy was crowding out my own writing not only in the matter of time, but in the matter of what some would call ‘branding’. My book reviews and writing articles were drawing far more attention than my own works, the thing that actually is my primary career. Instead of seguing from reading reviews or articles to then go on to the books themselves, the average visitor halts there. J. B. Garner, Author, is lost behind the guise of the Starving Reviewer.
Does this mean the reviews and articles are stopping to be replaced by daily book promotions? No, I’m not that kind of guy. I have supported authors to try to pay it forward for those few that have done the same for me, and my conscience would be ill at ease if I abruptly cut off all those who are still waiting in my TBR list. All the same, expect more content here to be directed or to reference my own works. The fact is that I am an AUTHOR first and I must act like one, instead of the nice guy who pats other authors on the back.
So as I put together my schedule for the next couple of weeks, I’m left pondering something that comes up in my brain matter from time to time. Should I add multimedia content of some kind to my reviewing and writing work? I mean in the vein of podcasts or YouTube content, where you can get a more visceral feel for me, the reviews, the writing, all that sort of thing.
Much like my Patreon experiment, there’s no losses to be had, exactly, outside of an outlay of time. I have a good-quality microphone and a passable webcam, so podcasts would be easy and YouTube content would be simple enough. Still, I’d be interested in what you, my readers, might think about this.
Would you like to see multimedia content? Vlogs, audio reviews, ramblings about writing, and who knows what else. If you would like to see such things in the future, like this post and feel free to comment below.
Until next time, good reading, good writing, and good luck!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 47 trips to carry that many people.
Do you ever wake up in the morning and get to work with each day ending as if you’d forgotten something?
Welcome to me this past week plus!
I’ve honestly been so busy taking care of normal life, dealing out a chapter or two of my next two novels, and doing revisions, that I frankly have totally forgotten that simple ‘every day make a blog post’ promise I made myself. Bad me. Very bad me.
I am starting to grasp now the attraction of media sites who handle an author’s promotional needs. It’s so very easy to get it lost in the, well, writing!
J. B. Garner - Musings of a Starving Author 