Not so long ago, before I got a publishing contract for my literary fiction and had to learn about promotion, I’d heard and read about blogs. Not knowing what a blog is, I thought it was a river in Russia. Don’t ask me why in Russia of all places. Maybe it has something to do with the first two letters b and l. Pronounced together they cause my lips to trumpet and my cheeks to inflate somewhat, like in some Russian words. That was then. Now I know “blog” is something a writer writes.

I try to keep up with the blogs that drop into my various writers’ group loops, social groups and e-mails. My firm belief is that if somebody went through the effort and took the time to write it and made it available to me, I should show some courtesy by reading and commenting. However, because I’m visually challenged, there are blogs I haven’t been able to read because of the font size and color against the background, which I regret because I don’t know what I may be missing.

Nobody has been able to tell me if blogs sell books. As far as I know, and my publisher confirms this, there are no comparative figures of blog versus number of copies sold. One of the reasons writers blog is to create a buzz around them and their books. I like reading blogs because they tell me something about the writer’s ability to spin a story, express her/himself in a way that makes me want to acquire that writer’s book with some advance knowledge of the quality writing I get if spend my money on that writer’s book.

Now to the main reason why writers blog—in an elegant way they say BUY MY BOOK! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just send out messages and hang posts that say just that: BUY MY BOOK? How cheap, how inelegant. So I blog to attract you to buy my book.