My blogs have been wildly successful for selling my novels and poetry books.  My Magickal Novels & Empowering Thoughts for Women blog at http://www.OccultFiction.blogspot.com is only 3 months old as a blogging blog and gets over 1000 visitors each month.  These are quality book buyers, some who have bought books from me multiple times.  I see book sales with almost every post on that blog.

My other blog (http://www.LauraStamps.blogspot.com) sold books well for several years.  After I created the new blog I redesigned this one with a new url and use it as a source for more info about my books if people need it.

Yes, blogging is a lot of hard work in the beginning.  It is important to know your market, and to target your posts to contain something of interest to your market.  That keeps them coming back every day.  It also encourages them to buy your books.  I would suggest if you plan to publish a book in the next year or two to start blogging now and build a market of bookbuyers. 

The best way to do this is to find other blogs owned and visited by people who are most likely to buy your books.  Make comments on those blogs.  Informative comments cause people to click on your name and go to your blog.  And that is how you build traffic.  I worked very hard the first two months bringing in a lot of traffic to my blogs.  Now I just spend a few minutes every day, making comments on blogs that work well for me traffic-wise and doing my twice a week posts, and that continues to bring in a steady stream of traffic.

In the beginning my traffic came from other Blogger blogs, and they bought books.  Now my traffic comes from a few of those blogs but also from the social networking sites I belong to for booklovers.  Many of these people don't have Blogger blogs, so they don't leave comments.  But they come regularly and read the posts and buy my books.  Based on my experience, blogs rate near the top of the list for great ways to sell books.  No kidding! 

dito, dudebot!

That's the frustrating part for me as well. The comments interface with some of the blog engines opens superfluous windows for me both from home (and on 3 different stations, 2 w/ XP and my Lagtop with its abomination called Vista).

Very Cool. Something on which we can agree sans equivocation.

BTW. Had some great picks on EDF this week. I'm still very confused about my suscriptions lately - numerous were coming in double to my email, and then . . . I unsubbed to three, but four others just stopped. I'm thinking it's aNOTHER freakout thing among Vista, Norton, and Outlook.

Wish to . . . would dearly love to find my CD for SP. I'd format in a heartbeat!

But, yeah, back on subject, I'm having a really great experience so far with Wordpress.

Thanks for all the advice, folks.

I'm just kind of letting it roll at this point. If you're not on my blogroll and want on, shoot me an email or comment on my blog.

Constance: I absolutely love that avatar! Who did it?

Anyone have thoughts on blog engines? Right now, I really prefer the layout and cleanliness of Wordpress, but a great deal of exceptional concept seems to reside on blogspot blogs. Yahoo is kind of chaotic . . . Or should one who blogs diversify and blog on numerous blogs? Did I mention that I really like wordpress at this point?

Thanks again for the input! Greatly appreciate it.

That's the problem with being Apollonian: there's always the question of whether you're deceiving yourself. And if everyone is telling you your writing is shoddy . . .

Nothing to discuss

Thanks for all the feedback, folks.

Jordan, I think you can tell at this point that I am not a short author. I'm a poet and novelist. Pretty much unpublished as either, though I've had a tease of publication in the poetry markets.

Crystalwizard: I am still a bit confused as to your thinking I said anything about having problems writing. SUBMITTING, oh gods help me, yes! But no problem writing. Some trouble focusing on one particular project, but none overall in writing.

As far as creating a fanbase . . . That's a bit down the road. Right now what I need is perceptive readers. Preferably those who can get past the whole blindered genre myopia thing and see my fiction from multiple distances. I use a fair amount of flat characters as forces of nature, and that seems to really jam some folks up. I also tend, as I write primarily epic fantasy with crossover into ........something akin to urban fantasy. I need readers - not writers who like to regurge workshop BS. To some degree, this is because I'm much more literary than pulp. But I also write with a great deal more action than most literary sleepers. I'm marginal. I know that. Is there a market for my fiction? I think so. I think it's damn good story telling. But writers get caught up in the details and BS and forget to look at the story because I'm so far ahead of them on technical aspects of writing. I'm daring. I'm dangerous. But I am damn good. I need readers who can appreciate that, and still tell me, "David, that is brilliant. But this part of it doesn't work. What about doing this instead?"

I'm also using my blogs to put stuff out there that's pretty unlikely to find a market, but that I think some folks will appreciate. And things from my past that others have commented on.

Again: Thanks so much for the feedback. I really appreciate it everyone.