On the Facebook group English Historical Fiction Writers, one of the members said that she’d been told she needed a blog, and asked for recommendations for a good blogging tool. The discussion segued, in the wonderful way that conversations do, into questions about whether ‘need’ was the right word.
Should writers blog? And if so, why?
As you will quickly realise if you look through my posts so far, I’ve been blogging for less than four weeks. At least as Jude Knight. But I’ve been blogging for a lot longer under my commercial writing identity, and I didn’t even think about whether or not to blog until Lynn’s respondents raised the question.
Key point number one: write a great book
Another discussion on Facebook a few days ago asked whether we write because we enjoy it, or whether we write to make money. Now, not being a fool, I don’t expect to make a fortune as a novelist. Would I like to? Too right! I’d love to write fiction full-time, and for that to happen, it needs to generate enough income to pay the bills.
To sell, though, I need a few things.
- First, I need to write a book that is worth reading. Nothing else I need to do even comes close to this in importance.
- Second, I need to let people know that the book exists. The kinds of people who read my kind of book. Lots and lots of people. They can’t buy it if they don’t know about it.
- And then there are a heap of other practical things that I’m not going to talk about in this post.