Reported by Mary Bonina
The popular WRITER'S LIFE series, sponsored by the Boston Local of the National Writers Union in cooperation with the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, is as much a rite of spring in the city as is the Morris Dancers' appearance on May Day. On April 25, Charles Coe moderated the third in the series, a lively panel discussion, "Blogs, Websites, and E-Zines."
"To blog or not to blog," Coe said, welcoming the crowd that had come together "for the purpose of figuring out how it might fit with our own work or possibly generate income." He promised that the evening would offer "practical, hands-on advice to sort out for yourself" and the three panelists, Meaghan Sullivan, Robert Birnbaum, and Robert Gray delivered.
Sullivan, an employee of the Harvard Book Store, has made a name for herself writing book reviews for bookdwarf.com, her own website which evolved out of her experience as a book buyer. The site has received mention in the NEW YORK TIMES and has nine hundred (900) visitors each day, something she says, "proves that people want to learn about and talk about books." Sullivan is also a contributor to Lit Blog Co-Op, doing her part for what she and others consider to be the best of contemporary fiction, reviewing books that don't generally get the attention they deserve in the marketplace.
Robert Gray worked for years as a bookseller in Vermont. Online writers like him and like Sullivan are particularly knowledgeable because they bring to their work a bookseller's perspective. Gray now earns about one third of his income, he said, as a direct result of the blog he created, fresheyesnow.com. "As you gather readers, you get visibility," he explained. An agent who'd been reading his blog for a year and a half contacted him, impressed with his online conversations about the publishing industry, and that led to work writing a column for shelfawareness.com, a newsletter that goes out to 9,000 industry email accounts every day. Sullivan says that the work she does promoting the reading of good books is the only writing she does, however Gray does not see it "as a substitute for a writing life, but part of the decoration."
Robert Birnbaum, whose compelling interviews with contemporary writers on identitytheory.com are well-known in the literary community, took issue with the word "blogger," which he deemed "an unattractive word" and he said he thinks someone ought to come up with a better name for what people are doing. He praised the medium as "wonderfully democratic, a raucous conversation existing outside the degradation of the marketplace." "For writers not getting published," he said, "you can publish yourself." Birnbaum has a philosopher's perspective on the issue as well. "People keep talking about transformational moments. We all have to look forward to something wonderful coalescing out of this 'Tower of Babel,' the Internet."
It was the general consensus among panelists that sites like the ones they are involved in, have become popular because they are meeting a need for the reading public. "People are looking online for book information, as book review space in newspapers shrinks," Meaghan Sullivan said.
All of the panelists cited motivating factors that led them to blogging or other internet work: the fact of the changing markeplace, reports that people weren't reading anymore, and that the future of books was somehow in jeopardy, and they now advocate using the internet as a forum for the discussion of books and literature. However, Sullivan, Gray, and Birnbaum don't see books being replaced by writing published on the internet. "It's a part of the landscape. Books don't go away," Birnbaum believes.
Writer Elaine Gottlieb, a veteran member of the Boston Local, voiced what many journalists who attended may have been feeling. "It's confusing, especially to writers who started their career at a time when newspapers and magazines were the traditional means (of doing business) and now that they are losing influence and authority, we're in a time when we aren't quite sure how to get the work out there."
Other questions from participants of the session focused on generating income, which seemed to be a mystery to many in attendance. Although the consensus of the panelists was that most people don't think about things like how many "hits" they'll get on their blog or if they're going to make money from it, the experience, for Birnbaum was that because of what he was publishing, money trickled in; for Gray, because of the numbers and industry connections of the people reading his blog, those within the publishing industry, he was able to get attention and be paid for his writing. "It started with Publisher's Marketplace," Gray explained. "It (his blog, fresheyesnow.com) got attention because they worked up the top ten blogs, so I got lucky."
Some bloggers, like susiebright.com, make money because they sell a membership and get "tips" too. Selling advertising on your website was considered next to impossible unless you are able to prove that you have a huge number of people who are visiting your site. At least one member of the audience advocated starting a blog "to show appeal to publishers" and she was doing so "on the recommendation of an agent." Money aside, "one of the truly wonderful things about being online," as Robert Birnbaum believes, "is that you get comments from all over the world. It's amazing to see the diversity."
All three of the panelists at the third session of the Writers' Life series seemed grateful for the response to their work promoting books and literary writers. Sullivan said, "I was surprised at the level of readers who come to the bookstore and ask ,'Is bookdwarf working today?' Meaghan Sullivan said, pointing up the fact that the industry needs to know that people do want to read good books. She believes that her site clearly points out the difference between "what the industry thinks the readership wants and what readers are actually interested in reading."
The only mention of E-zines was to note that they were different from online journals.For anyone not convinced of the influence of bloggers and websites, one need only to consider the fact that Technocrati.com now tracks tens of millions of them all over the world every day.
Several websites and bloggers were mentioned in the course of the evening presentations and discussions. Some of them were: wordswithoutborders.com, Miss Snark, Buzz. Balls, and Hype, susiebright.com, Galleycat.com, identititytheory.com, fresheyesnow.com,bookdwarf.com, Lit Blog Co Op, and shelfswareness.com.