The Shine is Worn Off

Are blogs dying out? I wonder. I subscribe to many blogs for one reason or another and one trend I’ve noticed is that many of the people who used to blog religiously three times a week or more, only blog every so often now, or hardly at all. And I know of some writers who’ve actually shut their blogs down claiming its stealing away time from their writing.

What’s an author to do? Does a publisher still want an author to have a blog? Is a blog with only a few followers better than no blog at all?

Perhaps people are tired of trying to come up with more amusing anecdotes after working at it for years. Let’s face it. Life has its boring moments. A lot of times it’s ugly or harsh, not cute and funny. Not to mention private, pain-filled or (insert other angsty adjective here) and not the proper fodder for an audience. If you don’t have a platform, like say, marketing, best-selling, self-pubbing, etc. What are you going to talk about? And beyond that, who will care?

The list of promo places just keeps growing and growing. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Goodreads, Pinterest, Amazon and other forums, and let’s not forget the blog tours which actually market your latest release. The list just keeps growing and spreading. Like crabgrass. Now I don’t mind most of these places. In fact I like most of them because I’m insatiably curious and want to know what’s going on pretty much everywhere. You never know when you’ll come across fodder for another story.

No one can deny they are a time sink. And yes, I’ve tried a kitchen timer, monitoring the time spent at each site and charting it, etc. And it doesn’t matter how you slice it, the time spent on marketing just keeps expanding. I think we’re lucky as authors to have all of these options. BUT, that being said, does blogging still play a viable part? Do you feel it’s still a valuable part of your marketing program?