Why Publishers Should Blog

Joe Wikert pointed me to Booksquare's Why Publishers Should Blog.

Just as authors need to better market themselves and their books, so do publishers. While the audience for a publisher website is diverse—authors, booksellers, journalists, agents, readers, and more—talking about books on your website the same way you talk about books in your catalog simply isn’t cutting it. In printed material, you have various constraints. On the web, you have the ability to do something special: tell the world what excites you, the publisher, about a particular book.

I was partially joking when I titled this post, but realize that while blogging isn’t a necessity, the type of writing that makes good blogs so enticing is exactly the type of writing publishers can use to convey excitement and information about their books to potential customers. If “blogging” can help you throw off the corporate chains and lead to a more natural, casual, exciting discussion about your books, then call it blogging.

I'd add that what can make a publisher's blog (or any organization's blog) interesting, is to let the folks not in the industry have a peek behind the curtain—see or hear about things that are only usually seen and heard by insiders.