Those of you who know me personally know that the last two to three months of my life have been dedicated to writing my master's thesis, and most of my time over the last two years have gone to keeping up with graduate school work. Thus, fiction writing has taken a back seat. While I have managed to dip my toes into the world of online self-publishing and blogging, I actually haven't really written anything new in quite a long time. I'm excited that in the coming weeks I can resume writing fiction with both feet running!!
But that's not what I want to talk about in this post. As things have been winding down with the thesis process, I've been looking into new ways to promote my work. Love you all as I do, I need to build a broader audience. I've gathered from my online research that getting blogger reviews for your work is one of the most productive and cost effective forms of self-promotion you can do. My more Internet savvy and bibliophilic friends are probably well aware of all the reader blogs out there, but I for one was surprised. There is this whole sub-culture online of people who have turned their need to read endless stacks of books into a part-time job that grants them both publicity and a nice side income. Here is a
list of over a hundred such blogs. As I spent the better part of a day sifting through it looking at those bloggers whose interests match my new ebook,
Seven Out, for a possible review, I was amazed to find that a few of these people have developed large enough fan bases to quit their day jobs!
I'm not advocating that anyone reading this quit their day job to start a review blog, but I thought it was one of the interesting discoveries I've made on my writing journey that was worth sharing. Perhaps, if you're a writer, this will help you as you work through your own efforts to promote your books, and if you're one of those avid readers maybe some of the blogs on that list will point you in the direction of some hidden gems.