Will The Viral Blogging Experiment Work?

You know, I’m not usually one for participating in promo’s and competitions etc, cuz usually I can’t be arsed, but Dear Author’s viral blogging experiment seemed like a good idea. Diana Peterfreund however, isn’t so sure.

She writes:

Let me say first that I am dying to read Singh's first single title. I loved her GBVE post, which was set in a similar, futuristic world ruled by psi powers, and I've always enjoyed her category romance novels.

However, being a member of a regular blog touring group, a blogger who regularly blogs about books, a writer who has seen the effects of being blogged about both as part of a group and also spontaneously, and a blog reader, I am skeptical of any canned blog content. In my experience, if it walks like a press release and talks like a press release, then bloggers are going to skim over it to get to original content.


There are several blog touring groups that do this: just spew out a bookshot and a blurb whenever they do the tour, and I never read them. Just skim past the post. I've heard this over and over again from readers, as well. Some of these "bloggers" only ever post this stock content, in exchange for having their books toured on real blogs.


People want original content on blogs. They don't mind if you are taking excerpts from other blog posts and riffing about them yourself, or pointing out blogs to them that they should read and providing your own commentary, or what. Just make it NOT be the exact same wording they see on a dozen other blogs. It's the blogging equivalent of the AP wire, and it gets old pretty quickly.

Now, I understand what she’s saying, but the main difference for me is that the Dear Author girls aren’t authors, they are mere readers conducting an experiment. They have nothing to gain by it, but Nalini Singh’s name will at least become better known. Will the experiment land her on any of the best seller lists? I have my doubts, but at least now, more people will know who she is, and if they come across her books in the future, then it stands to reason that they will probably take a second look.


Today was a perfect example actually. I wasn’t familiar with author, Sabrina Jeffries, until I saw her name mentioned on Sybil’s blog a couple of million times, but whilst I was in Borders this evening, I came across some of her books, and because she is now a familiar name to me, I picked up A Dangerous Love, After The Abduction, The Forbidden Lord, and In The Prince’s Bed. Sybil, if these suck GBHDB, I’ll come looking for you.


As a reader, I hate hype, can’t stand it in fact, but because this seems slightly more scientific, I’m more than willing to participate. Another big plus for me personally, is that the hype isn’t author driven.