Guest Blogger Pat Schulte
By Pat Schulte
When I stumble across a good book these days I often google the author just to get a better feel for what he or she is about. Yet more often than not I'm led to some generic homepage, often produced by the author's publisher, that gives me very little insight into who this person is, but plenty of information on how to buy their books. I just don't get it. What author doesn't want to interact with the people who are reading his books? A personal connection almost certainly leads to sales.
My blog is the sole reason I can loosely call myself a writer today. Eight years ago I started Bumfuzzle as a way of sharing my sailing life with friends and family back home. Believe it or not there weren't any cruising blogs back then. I had to buy a program and teach myself HTML. It is hard to fathom now as it seems that every boat on the water could simply add a .blogspot.com to the end of the name on their stern.
For me Bumfuzzle was the very first step in my becoming a writer. Over the years I found my voice, my tone, my pace, and discovered how to translate my humor, or lack thereof, onto the screen. And my readers, 130,000 page views per month strong, have stuck with me for the long ride.
My blog is the reason that Bumfuzzle the book is still selling well today, three years after it came out. Which is the exact opposite of writing a book first, waiting for readers to somehow stumble across it, and then pointing those people to a generic blog. I gathered the readers and then gave them a book to read. I didn't set out to do that, but there's no reason one couldn't.
Let me just say that creating a blog following is far easier than creating a book following. Books don't link to you. Books don't go viral. Books are just books. And they're great. But if you want your book to sell well there is no better way than to gather a blog following.
Blog readers are loyal. They bookmark you if they like you and they come back again and again as long as you write something. Which you, of course, will do every day. And when you release your long anticipated book they will be the first to go out and buy it. And when you ask them to be sure and leave a review on Amazon they will do exactly that. Why? Because they are your friends. You may not know them and you may never meet them, but that's what they are. And your friends are always going to buy your books and tell their other friends to do so as well.
You get the idea. This isn't physics.
For me, over time, the blog became nothing more than a diary of daily life. I've found that, one, I love being able to look back and both see and read about what I did on a particular day in a particular place. And two, I enjoy bringing my readers along for the ride. They've traveled along as my wife Ali and I sailed around the world. They joined us as we drove around most of it in our old VW bus. They shared in our joy as we made the transition to parents. They cheered when we bought another boat. And they repaid us for all those hours posting about our lives by buying our book, reviewing it, and sharing it with others.
For the independent authors, and those striving to become one, among us I can't think of a better, more satisfying way to reach readers and to interact with them. I wouldn't be able to fill out my puny tax form with Author listed as my employment if it weren't for the humble blog.
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