Will Your Blog Sell Your Books?

There is a great discussion going over at Nathan Bransford’s blog. Do author blogs sell books? The comments seem to be divided – some folks discover new authors and their books through the author’s blog. Some folks aren’t swayed at all by an author’s blog or are even turned off of an author’s book by the author’s writing style or content on their blog.

So should you start a blog? I say Yes. Just don’t expect it to sell your books (or future books, if you aren’t published yet). Any sales you make as a result of a reader visiting your blog are icing on the cake. Be happy when it happens, but don’t count on those sales to make you a best-selling author.

So for a writer, what is a blog good for, if not selling books? A blog is a traffic and marketing tool, not a sales tool. A blog can introduce potential new readers to you and your writing style. It can let them see who you are as a person, as a writer. If you blog about your writing process, they get a glimpse into what it’s like to be a writer–how a story is born and how it grows into a finished book. A blog is a casual conversation between you and others on the internet.

It’s a way to make new friends, not to sell books to strangers. If you’re a writer, you should have a blog (or a website). How do you get started blogging? One of the easiest ways is to use one of the free blogging sites like

• WordPress
• Blogger
• LiveJournal

I like WordPress myself. I use their blogging software here at Learn to Write Fiction. (You can download it for use on your own website.)

To start your conversation on the Internet:

1. Setup a free blogging account.
2. Customize your blog with some of the options available (themes, fonts, colors, etc.).
3. Decide what you’re going to blog about (your current work in progress, writing in general, the writing industry, other writers that readers should be reading, etc.).
4. Decide how often you’re going to blog (daily, every other day, once a week) and stick to your schedule.

Setup a blog today and start making new friends.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!