Bloggers Who Quit Blogging
Posted on 08. Jun, 2009 by Chris Matney in Book Publishing, Front Page Posts
As many of you have figured out, I like John Scalzi’s blog – Whatever. I even love the tagline – “taunting the tauntable since 1998.” On Sunday, Mr. Scalzi discussed a story in the New York Times about bloggers who quit blogging, aptly titled Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest. Several thoughts struck me as I read both the original article and Mr. Scalzi’s witty reply.
First, writing is hard work. I know a number of very smart, very talented folks who have started blogs – only to have them die out after a few well constructed posts. This actually supports a general observation of writers. When I ask successful authors why they write, their answers are 100% correlated – “I write because I have to. It’s a compulsion.” Writing as an IT industry analyst I wrote “because I was paid by the page” – not the same thing, by any stretch of the imagination, and one of the reasons that I am publishing books, not writing them. I do find a certain catharsis writing this blog daily, however, so don’t expect me to give up anytime soon.
Second, I think that the success of a few bloggers has been hyped to make all of us think that anyone who pumps out a few hundred words into a blog will become an internet rock star. With 10,000,000 blogs on the internet, most of the traffic is driven by 50,000 sites. The odds are against you. Again, a strong parallel for those authors considering self-publishing books vs. traditional publishers – but that is a different discussion. Building the community – as I have said before – is the key. In fact, the role of Community Manager seems to be quickly becoming a standard job title within the internet-focused business world. It is certainly a major focus for our energies at Trapdoor Books.
In putting this site together, I have connected my LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter accounts into this website using a number of dead simple technologies – Twitterfeed, OpenID, and Gravitars to name a few. It is interesting to see how the four sites are feeding off each other – as I seem to be getting equal attention all around. The technology to implement the hooks only took about two hours to implement, and I must admit that it is pretty cool to post once, read many. Now, I just need about 100,000 readers – psst, tell your friends.
4 Responses to “Bloggers Who Quit Blogging”
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… and builders who quit building? That is another story.
While I am drawn to start my own blog – (no, not about publishing). I question what my motivations are for doing it and how quickly I will lose interest in maintaining it. So this is a timely topic for me. To answer my own question, I don’t expect it to become much more than a journal, but given there may be others out there with similar, or opposing, thoughts, it may be interesting to see where it goes. Chris, if you elect to follow mine, I will try not to leave you feeling betrayed too quickly
As a professional lurker to many blogs – I believe the key will be in continuing to post items, such as this, that provoke thought and discussion. I will be surprised if this blog doesn’t gain rapidly in readership and popularity.
I look forward to this entire endeavor and eagerly anticipate hearing and seeing the fruits of your writer’s imaginations and writings.
I agree with Todd that it is important to keep the content of a blog focused. I have brilliant children, but I have no desire to pass on most of their musings to the wider world. I read and post almost no blogs; I simply do not have time to do so. As a writer (alas, not of fiction, I hope), I barely have time to keep up with reading professional literature and preparing my own manuscripts. However, the idea of a long-term focused discussion on writing is appealing.
I’m not sure that the goal should be having thousands involved in the discussion, but a community of a few dozen regulars posting comments and visitors checking out the latest Trapdoor books would, to my mind, count as a victory.
I completely agree with you, Todd. While there are 10 million blogs – how many are really interesting outside of a family and friends circle? Even 50,000 might be too high an estimate.
The technology is so immature, at this point, starting a blog is very much like screaming into the wind. If this technology follows other evolutionary patterns, however, eventually the entire blog-iverse will organize itself so that good content can be distiguished from the noise.
I guess this article struck a chord for me because I have started following so many blogs that go along like gangbusters for, say, a month. And then nothing. It always leaves me feeling betrayed – like I have been watching a movie for 2 hours and gotten the evil, “to be continued…” ending.
It’s very easy as a blogger to get discouraged if you’re not getting readers and/or comments. Writing IS cathartic, but writing for public consumption is only worthwhile if some one is truly consuming it, otherwise we are screaming into the wind. Might as well be journaling. Hence why I try to stay topical, even though there are any number of blogs about writing. Also why I can’t stand to read any more blogs where people just post the odd things their children say — both the author and the reader have to care about the content.