You know how you sometimes have this great story idea and write it out and everything, then sit back and think, "well... it could do with some polishing..." and then take months over the polishing and the next thing you know someone else has written the same story? Well that just happened to a blog story I wrote which was quietly aestivating in my computer while Kiran Jonnalagadda went out and wrote much the same story on blogs and how they affect the publishing industry. Here's mine anyway (long live free publishing!) and... excuse me while I go hit my head against the nearest wall.
A commentary in a previous issue of this review observed a trend in publishing that leant toward graphics and pictorial representations over conventional books which use as mundane a form as words. But while traditional writers may increasingly share some of their readership with other genres of writers, such as graphic novelists, significantly they are also sharing their canvas with a whole new prolific and ever growing breed: the blogger.
A blog, essentially a 'web log', allows anyone who has access to the Internet and knows how to make some basic navigations around it, to set up a site and record their thoughts on it. It's a completely free service, and has been used variously to vent deep inner angst, offer social and political commentary, form a network of people with common concerns, be a tool for political mobilisation, list writers' articles and provide links to their stories and even to mobilise relief efforts for tragedies such as, most recently, the December 26 tsunami.
A blog can serve whatever purpose its owner wants it to, besides being entirely democratic in its establishment: anyone can start one and use it for any purpose. Thus sex blogs share Internet space with journalist George Monbiot's blog, nature lovers' blogs are a click away from media watchdog blogs.
It might be premature to assume at the outset that allowing people to write freely on anything that catches their fancy and providing them space to publish this work online is already posing a huge threat to the publishing industry, but it's hard to deny that blogs don't offer a pretty solid way to circumvent the traditional role of a publisher.
Blogs are not merely personal diaries after all. Firstly being on the Internet ensures that just about anyone might chance upon your blog, thus opening up the writing of newcomers and even popular authors to a wider audience than they might ever had had access to otherwise. Also, the thrill of keying in text and then watching as your words get uploaded on a slick-looking web page that is immediately available to the world is a huge encouragement to write at all. Writers often argue that they write because they have to, but in an age where technology is second nature, being able to use your computer to communicate and reach out to people on a professional looking website (all for free) is surely a sizeable incentive for people to write.
Thus while earlier your only hope of being published might have been in print and subject to the taste of publishers, writers can sidestep this layer and reach out directly to their readers. People who never really aspired to be academics or authors are writing very frequently, both fiction as well as commentary, and often doing this more than once a day. And absorbing this new-found habit are people who might never have longed for the distinctive smell of a new book or the crowded comfort of a bookstore, but do however constantly trawl the Net dipping in and out of strangers' blogs and reading avidly.
In addition to providing a free platform for literary work (amongst other kinds), blogs also provide the bloggers opportunities to gauge their readership instantly. Tracking software such as Sitemeter placed on a blog allow the blogger not just to see how many people view their blog everyday but also get a fair idea of who these people are; where they came from, how long they spent on the site and what referral they had i.e. how they chanced upon the site.
Feedback is instant of course; comments sections below each post when enabled allow anyone to tell you what they think of what you've said, sometimes altering the course of a blog or impacting its style. Most importantly they allow authors a direct connect with their audience.
Publishers are not yet be biting their fingernails nervously at the impact blogs could have on what was once their stranglehold on a reading audience, but blogs are certainly beginning to break out of self indulgent private writing into a mainstream commercial market. Thus far this final break has still been mostly dependent on a publisher. When Belle de Jour the now-famous London call-girl, or so we are told, broke into literary circles she was facilitated by a regular publisher (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). They dipped into the blog she had written over years (www.belledejour-uk.blogspot.com) and had it published. Similarly – and about the same time - The Washingtonienne : A Novel by the Washingtonian equivalent of Belle de Jour was published by Hyperion. There's Salam Pax the famous Iraqi blogger who got published (The Baghdad Blog, UK publishers Atlantic Books) besides some others.
But now we are looking at writers who are beginning to leapfrog over the traditional publisher and reach out to audiences straight, via their blogs. What's to stop an author from publishing their work on the Net and allowing people to download it, for a certain price bound to be less than what the paperback might cost? Stephen King for instance, allows people to read his stuff online, upon paying a price which is less than what his books might sell for at bookstores.
It's tempting to liken the effect that a free service like a blog has on the publishing industry, to the effect Napster has had on the music industry. Make something free and watch as a revolution is triggered off. But some realities make the comparison uneven. For instance, reading is far more exhausting on the computer than it is from a book; a huge disincentive for people to finish any significant portion of text via the Internet. Songs, averaging a couple of minutes, can be burned on to a CD and played on a more sophisticated system than your computer might have provided, giving the Napster model a huge fillip.
Authors and journalists have only discovered the blog in the last decade or so and are just beginning to recognise its power in reaching out to audiences straight without the middleman. Bloggers acting as journalists have already set off a contentious debate questioning their credentials and their motives. But authors, especially those writing fiction and sci-fi, are unlikely to face similar scepticism about their authenticity.
The real impact of the blogging culture can already be felt in the hundreds of people who have begun to explore writing and auto-publishing in ways impossible to even imagine earlier. It seems natural that these new writers, spurred on by feedback on their sites and ticking Statmeters will first be discovered via their sites and approached by hawk-eyed publishers to make books, but the next step could perhaps be directly reaching out to their audiences.
HEMANGINI GUPTA
*sigh*
