Sunday, June 08, 2008

More on Writers and Blogs

So tonight I'll be signing off until Tuesday night for the holiday of Shavout, where we study all night long and eat cheesecake and I try to go through Mishnah in its entirety. Don't expect your comments to be approved between tonight and Tuesday night.

Looking for clarification...

I understand that an author's website should never be provided in lieu of a good query--but would it necessarily hurt the author to include it?

I am building a site for my unpub. novel, because I am a designer and it is fun/easy for me. My hope is--if an agent likes my query and wants to see more, they can do so instantly.

But, is it insulting to even mention it when youre using it as a tool totally independent from your already fantastic query? I don't want it to seem like I'm giving the agent a job to do, but I want to give them instant access if they're interested.

You can include your website address under your name and other information. Directing us to the website, however relevant it is to the book, is irritating. In publishing, time = money and because it's in NY, time = not enough money to pay the rent, so the fact that we're taking some to read the letter and whatever else you sent in the envelope means we're spending money that we're not likely to get back (there's about a .05% chance). So cruising author's websites is not something we do and we don't like being asked to do it.

Aren't we seeing more and more fiction writers who do have platforms, and Mark Sarvas now being another? Aren't publishers operating out of fear and greed desperate for any promotional leg up?

Publishers realize that blog does not equal immediate and/or substantial leg up, unless your blog was already insanely popular for other things. People like to cite the very, very rare examples of people who got a book deal because they had a blog, like Diablo Cody, whose screenplay was largely unrelated to her hooker blog and whose column in EW I don't care for on a writing level, but these people are exceptions to the rule. Do not expect to be an exception to the rule.