Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A blog's no one home

As authors are increasingly encouraged to use blogs for book reviews, interviews and other coverage on their book tours, there is the question of what to do when no one is home on the blog.

The more popular the blog, the less likely there is an e-mail address for an author to send a pitch. Even more challenging are the blogs that only allow episodic, if at all, comments (i.e., www.dooce.com).

There are ways to send a message. First, for the blogs with no e-mail address, send comments. Get known by the community of this blog. Often, the comments can have the same resonance and readership as an essay or review, so make your comment well done.

But for the blog with closed comments, google the name of the blog and author for other places where his or her address can be discerned.

2 comments:

Dawn said...

I'll point out the obvious -- when there's no obvious way to contact a blogger, perhaps they don't want to be contacted and may resent being stalked. Also the more popular the blogger, the more they're getting hit up so your pitch must be spot on -- appropriate to the blogger, and to her audience (I write a lot about adoption and previous to that infertility so when I get hit up to review a pregnancy book I gotta wonder why no one's doing their homework -- my audience isn't the one they want to reach). Finally, given how often bloggers are being hit by these requests, it really needs to be a sterling pitch. I'm tired of PR folks whose pitches sound like they're doing ME a favor with their exciting offer to give them free ad space on my blog instead of acknowledging that I've got something to offer THEM.

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