AIW Going Freelance Session 4: Blogging and Your Writing Career

(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — Blogging and Your Writing Career, with Michael Yessis of WorldHum and Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800.

<<< JEFF SYPECK >>>

Oftentime bloggers are just sharp amateurs who love their topic and love writing about it, who don’t consider themselves writers. There are blogs for every obsession, every interest, including publishing. You don’t have to have an editor or agent anymore to learn about the publishing industry — everything it’s just being given away online, says Jeff. And blogs are really a handy way to meet this core group of people who are itnerested in what you’re interested in.

“It’s a medium I find very, very freeing because you get to write pieces you would never write anywhere else or that get rejected,” says Jeff. “You don’t need a newspeg, which is really nice.” He wrote an article pointing out step-by-step to do the research to find out the inaccuracy of a Charlemagne quote, and it got linked by Wikipedia and now thousands of people find it. “You’re also free to roam and experiment and go off on some tangents that a lot of newspaper editors and magazine editors probably won’t be interested in. …You don’t have to dumb down these things when you’re writing online, either. You’re writing for an intelligent, general audience, but also for specialists.”

Blogging hasn’t been particularly profitable for Jeff. “I think I get about $5 a month from people who click through to Amazon and buy something. … I don’t think it’s really a direct route to wealth and piles of money. I also don’t think it’s a particularly good platform for a book deal.” A novelist called Mark Sarba (sp?) did fairly well because he was known through his blog. “On the other hand, I think it’s a very good way to make new contacts.”

The recently retired books editor of the Philadelphia Enquirer used to go around finding people who wrote about books and he gave them their first big break writing book reviews. (He is the author of Books Inc.) Blogging is also a great way to promote a book. Jeff has been invited to give talks because of his blog wherein he can promo his book as a result of joining this community of writers and readers. “I’m also not above little gimmicks,” he says, and describes hosting his own Medieval Shark Week during the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. ‘And who else is going to let me host Medieval Shark Week but me?”

“It really is an ideal environment for an up and coming writer. You have your own printing press and a virtually unlimited audience,” Jeff says. “You’re joining a community of writers without leaving the house. You’re writing and networking at the same time. I think that’s a really handy thing, and it’s something that was impossible to do until a few years ago.”

<<< MICHAEL YESSIS >>>

Michael comes from a print background, and his travel blog started out as a side project and it took off immediately. “We realized the power of it and so we started focusing more energy on it.” It’s now the biggest driver of traffic to his site now, and they post up to 12 articles a day. Content goes through a very strong editorial filter: the way the planet is shrinking and globalization how travel can change the world.

“The blog’s not just powerful for reaching people, but it’s also powerful and flexible as medium. …In my perception, the definition of a blog seems to change every day. There are so many things you can do with a blog. you are a part of a conversation. I think that’s probably the most important thing thing to know.”

At its core, a blog for a writer is just a chronological series of writings, Michael says. “When you think of yourself as a blogger, think of yourself as being involved in this larger conversation. …The easiest way is probably just including links. (A list of examples of ways to engage people on Michael’s blog is in Inkthinker article Links from Push the Electronic Envelope Presenter Michael Yessis.)

Another way is to have an opinion and get personal. “When you get personal, you get more of a response,” Michael says. That was a challenge for him because of his distant print background, and it’s important to break through that barrier because that’s the way community is trending these days.

Although many people suggest that diligence isn’t as important on a blog, Michael says that your writing is your calling card and so you want to be accurate and correct. “It’s your call, but there are definitely pros and cons,” he says.

“As a writer, know that the blog isn’t just writing. …If you feel more comfortable speaking, put up a podcast. Put up a video. Put up a photo every now and then. it’s a nice change of pace. Your post doesn’t have to be 500 or 600 words. It can be one line and 3 links and you can come back and write something else later,” he says. “If you think of your blog posts that way, you can get a lot of mileage out of it.”

You can get your content out through sites like Digg and other social bookmarking sites. (NB: For a list of blog promotional tools, read Inkthinker article Blog Promotion Links From My BlogHerDC Breakout Session.)

“I really think that at its core, if you build something and put itout there, something of quality, you have a good chance of getting discovered. You’re only a Google search away.” Michael says that when you do something as a labor of love, people will respond to it because they see your passion. And you never know where it could go. His blog was acquired by the Travel Channel last year and now what he was doing on nights and weekends, he’s getting paid to do as his job.

((and now, to audience Q&A))

Blogs and websites can now be hybrids, with flexible templates and static pages. You don’t have to pick either/or now. For Jeff, the blog really does the job. The search-engine friendliness of blogs is really useful in rapid information dissemination, so people can find what you wrote today by tomorrow.

As an editor, Michael likes seeing the blog up front because he can just scroll down and make a quick assessment of whether a writer is good and a good fit. Jeff agrees that he’ll pop onto Google to see what a writer’s all about. “If it’s crummy or full of typos,” he says, it really does reflect badly. Jeff has hired entry-level writers based on blog quality.

Editors and agents may not be out there looking for a writer specifically, but if you send them a query or something, they will want to see what you’re all about and they will explore an INDIVIDUAL. “It gives editors a chance to see how writers perform without an editor. …Will it be clean copy, or is it going to be a mess that this person is going to give me,” Jeff says.

Michael says he has seen an increasing number of people turning their blogs into books. A recent example is Stuff White People Like. Another is the Chuck Norris quotes guy (I can’t find this link — will check with Michael). The person who runs the books blog that Jeff mentioned earlier turned his blog into a novel.

Michael doesn’t believe that print is going away, but it’s definitely hurting and blogging and microblogging are on the rise and will ultimately be the dominant forms of communication. Jeff says he’s skeptical of anyone who pretends to know definitively where the industry is going, but it’s clear that things are changing. “I think it’s fun and interesting though,” he says. “You may get me on Twitter yet.”

Says Jeff, “A blog is usually the representation of a writer’s quirky interests.” But if you have two seemingly disparate things, the thing that holds them together is that you’re interested in them. “Some people may come for the basic stuff and stay for the other stuff. You can’t really worry about turning off readers, because on the other hand you’re providing them with something they do want. if they don’t like something you’ve written on a given day, they’ll skip over it and come back the next day.” He shared an example of a woman on capital hill writing about breeding some type of long, floppy-eared rabbit and politics. “Sometimes quirkiness is good. We all have interests that don’t seem to mesh, so don’t worry about making them mesh. if you’re a good writer and you write intelligently and you write passionately about your subject, people will come,” Jeff says.

Michael points out that just as you have different levels of interest, so do your potential readers. “Some people come and read just the page they came to through Google and then leave and never come back,” he says, so you shouldn’t let pleasing readers hinder you

(As an aside, Jeff mentioned that he periodically posts a listing of weird searches that have brought people to his site. “That’s a conversation in itself,” he said. “Yeah it is,” Michael said.)

Michael says there’s something to be said for staking a claim on your name and your brand online because it’s always going to evolve and technology is always changing, so just dive in. Jeff says (and I disagree to some extent) that if you’re writing well, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on .blogspot.com or whatever. One must, though, is an RSS feed, he says. “Don’t worry too much about making it look nice. Go in and clean up, but as long as it’s good and basic and you link to people and they find you and you have something to say and you’re trying to get in and have a conversation,” you’re good to go.

How frequently you need to update your blog depends on your goals, says Michael. According to a Technorati search he cites, the top blogs post 10 times a day or more. But if you’re trying to promote a book or something, you definitely don’t have to do that much. (NB: Problogger is great for learning about blogging best practices. Also, Copyblogger is excellent.) Says Jeff, the best time to post is whenever you have something to say. “You can always find something topical,” he says.

Methods for blog monetization include ad sales and a number of others. He mentions Google AdSense, BlogAds, DoubleClick, etc. Jeff mentions affiliate programs like Amazon. (NB: I will post about this in more detail in a future Inkthinker article.)

Michael says that the fact that something has been blogged about doesn’t necessarily exclude it from being published in traditional media.

Regarding search engine optimization, Michael describes it as “kind of a dark art.” He uses tools like Word Tracker to find out what people are searching for in his subject area. Other ideas include Google Blog Search and any variety of keyword tools. (NB: I’ll post about this in more details in a future Inkthinker article, too.)

Jeff feels that building an interactive blog community where people comment frequently and regularly is like the big question. He personally never asks readers a question because he doesn’t want to be standing there with no one responding to his question. Michael recommends posting controversial things from time to time to elicit opinions.

Michael draws a line between “journalism” and “blogging” as “reporting” vs. “opinion.” But the bottom line, he says, is that it depends on who you are, and some blogs have better standards than some newspapers. But a lot of people simply don’t hold themselves to a high journalistic standard.

Jeff makes an interesting point, though, that oftentimes bloggers play a role of fact checking newspapers and investigating their mistakes and those roles are slowly kind of disappearing in print. (He didn’t give a qualitative judgment per se, just pointed it out.)

Michael says that blogging is just like anything else, and quality will rise to the top. “It’s a matter of finding what you want to write about it and creating your niche and putting it out there. You can’t guarantee that you’re going to make money off of it, but never before has it been so easy to write something and put it online… The tools are out there.”

Blogging can generate direct income and indirect income. Jeff sees his blogging reflected in his royalty checks. “These things can have long-lasting ripples,” he says. It’s about putting the content out there, meeting people, and networking in ways you never before could have.

These things change frequently, Jeff says, so you need to follow the conversations and see what people are saying about what they’re doing and what they’re using. “It’s all about kind of taking that step and entering this whole big world. It’s kind of like a Wild West.

Jeff recommends the following blogs for beginning writers (with his comments):

The MFA Weblog
This blog has dozens of contributors who study, teach, or write at MFA programs around the country.  The comments are full of questions, conversation, and debate.

Bookends Literary Agency, LLC
Bookends is a literary agency that represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, although I’ve noticed they have a real soft spot for romance novels. Their agents offer direct, practical advice for people who are trying to break into publishing.

The Rejecter
The Rejecter, who blogs anonymously, is an assistant at a literary agency. She updates her site sporadically, but her site offers useful insights into the daily concerns of the folks who do publishing’s grunt work.

Miss Snark
From 2004 to 2007, Miss Snark–who claimed to be an anonymous New York literary agent–drank cocktails and dispensed literary wisdom. Although the site had a snarky, comic tone, Miss Snark herself provided extremely useful feedback, especially when she solicited query letters from writers and responded to them as part of a regular feature called the “Crapometer.” Her site is clumsy to navigate, but if you have some time, her posts from 2006 are well worth back-reading.

Writer Beware! Blogs
Hosted by fantasy novelists A.C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss, “Writer Beware!” is dedicated to exposing fraudulent agents, con artists, fly-by-night publishers, and illegitimate writing contests. The blog is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn how to distinguish legitimate opportunities from scams.

Writer Beware
Established by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, this site is the home page to accompany the Writer Beware blog. The site includes a “thumbs down” list of bad agents, databases of scam writing contests, and more. Read this site thoroughly before you start shopping around your manuscript.

101 Reasons to Stop Writing
This satirical site begs aspiring writers to go to something else with their lives. Expect causticity; writing is not a genteel business.

A Writer’s Life
Lee Goldberg is a television writer who also pens tie-in novels for shows such as Monk and Diagnosis Murder. He holds strong negative opinions about small presses, self-publishing, and people who fall for scams, but his blog is a very useful window into the business.

Galleycat
Updated daily, Galleycat covers the business side of the New York publishing scene: which editors are moving where, which books are causing a stir, and who’s going to whose parties. The parent site, MediaBistro, also offers useful subscription-based job postings for professional writers and editors.

Literary Rejections on Display
Personally, I don’t think writers should whine or wallow in rejection. But if you need to mope about those rejection letters, then here’s a blog is for you.

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