In their February 2007 issue, The Writer ran an article titled "Sometimes it pays to BLOG" that explained the recent trend of publishers offering book contracts to folks being discovered in the blogosphere. It's amazing to me how a few years ago I had no idea what a blog was, and was focusing on publication in magazines in an effort to build up my clips file and work toward publication of a book; fast forward to today and you'll find my work on multiple blogs and in various e-newsletters, and I'm trying to decide where to refocus in traditional print!
If you're an aspiring woman writer wondering where to start, the blogosphere may well be a valid option. You have to be willing to seek out your "perfect" niche market(s) and build an audience, and traffic, for your blog and your writing. On the flip side, you will probably find yourself gaining instant feedback thanks to the "comment" option on most bloghosts, and you can even earn income via Google ads, running ad banners for companies of interest to your market reader, and even through goodies like tip jars. (Think latte stand cup o' change, via PayPal!)
While the bulk of the bloggers mentioned in the press these days seem to focus on political forays (and the political fray!), an interesting twist mentioned in the Writer article is the publication of Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Powell's blog documented her efforts to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book (or blook, as it were) was the winner of the very first literary prize for blogs-turned-books: the Lulu Blooker Prize.
In my mind, this really opens things up for the amazing crafties and foodies out there in the blogosphere, as well as those who could market to the education and parenting niches. When you've got magazines creating blogs for authors, and authors creating blogs in the hopes of being picked up by publishers, you may well have opened up thousands of options for would-be WAHMs who have a story to share and a way with words. Hmmmm...
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