WICKED WEDNESDAYS

What is this thing called blog?

So, it's almost a year since I started the Mystery Maven Canada blog. July 21st will be the first anniversary. And after Bloody Words (there's that conference again), I started wondering, why do I do it?

There was an excellent series of workshops on Sunday morning, dealing with this electronic, web-based, social networking world we now live in. I'll devote Friday's blog to some of the great tips I busily wrote down.

But I started wondering, why blog? I guess my main reason was to stay connected to many of my former customers who had asked for continuing advice. This may not have turned out to be what they had in mind, though. I've found it much more difficult to stay on top of new Canadian releases, now that I'm out of the mainstream bookselling world. And so, to those customers, an apology. But I hope you're finding enough information about Cool Canadian Crime at this URL to stick with it.

I've asked a variety of crime writers, especially my gang of The Ladies' Killing Circle, to do blogs. And I've also had readers, publishers, sales reps and others who love mysteries contribute guest blogs. I haven't yet snagged a librarian but I live in hopes! My intent was to offer a variety of approaches to writing, and reading, mysteries plus a peak at what's happening in this fast-changing world of publishing.

The usual way to gauge the success of a blog is by the number of comments. If so, I would be totally discouraged. However, I've been cheered by the comments I've gotten when talking one on one with those who read the blog. So, maybe that's not the way to judge it. The readers stats are also an indicator and if that's so, I have to beat the bushes for new readers because it seems there's a loyal number who drop by on a regular basis, but not a whole lot of growth.

But blogs are supposed to be a good publicity tool, along with being informative. But how do you publicize the publicity? More on that on Friday.

I've concluded that I enjoy doing this blog -- the contact with other authors and their guest blogs and the writing (I always wanted to be a columnist!)so I will continue and hopefully, you will continue to read it.

Dare I ask, what would you like to read about in Mystery Maven Canada?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime