Okay,
It’s raining out, I’m sick, and the wife is working. The cold medicine is making me a little punchy and I’m mulling over an overdue blog entry.
This could get dangerous.
I’m also killing time reading a lot of publishing blogs, as I often do, and I see a lot of the same people in the comments section. That’s okay. We’re like-minded people with the same interest and goals. But in my cold-medicine induced fog I can’t help but wonder something.
Does any of this translate into sales? Do these people ever buy books written by their fellow commenters?
So I start visiting a few of their websites. Some are genre that I might be interested in, others are nowhere close. Some have impressive websites, others have a few blogposts and that’s it. I pick out a few and hop over to Amazon to read a few reviews. They also seem to run the gambit, but when I look I don’t see a lot of the commenters that I was seeing on the blogs. Does that mean they just haven’t bought any books? No, I certainly don’t review every book I buy. Do they send their opinions over to the author via his blog or website? Maybe. I try Goodreads and Smashwords. Same thing there.
So I think I’ll conduct my own experiment. I’m going to pick out a commenter who writes the type of book I normally wouldn’t read and give it a go. For now I’ll keep their name a secret. If they write well and prove to be entertaining, I’ll let them know, maybe even on an open forum. If the book just didn’t do it for me then I won’t say anything as I’ve already mentioned that it’s not the type of book I would normally seek out. Who knows, maybe they’ll convert me. If so, they made a sale just by making comments.
Who invented the Kleenex box? It has no moving parts, yet you pull one out and another automatically pops up to take its place. That’s just awesome. It’s right up there with the straw on my best invention list. I’d like to study this further, but I’ll need some grant money first.
Anyway, my Kindle now holds a new book. I’ll start it tonight and see what happens. Hopefully my Nyquil induced coma won’t erase the memory of what I’ve read.
Gnite.