My erstwhile agent once mentioned my "platform", by which she meant "stuff that sounds good about me." Narcissist that I am, I liked that concept, but slacker that I am, I never had much to contribute to it.
Until now.
Richard Curtis, agent extra-ordinaire, has some encouraging news for us bloggists:
Blogs exploded into our consciousness during the 2004 national elections when the web sites of strongly opinionated writers attracted large numbers of visitors. The bloggers’ popularity came to the attention of magazine and book publishers, who offered contracts to some of them for articles, columns and books. This wasn’t just a trendy tie-in to the transient event of an election: publishers found the writers’ voices fresh and entertaining, their looks appealing and their web sites stimulating. Best of all, these bloggers come with two guarantees that publishers crave: built-in sales numbers and built-in platforms. Their popularity is not a matter of speculation. It is a function of virally infectious appreciation, an audience voting with clicks of its mouse. It can be measured precisely and analyzed by the number, concentration, and demographics of “hits” on their sites.
Needless to say, I didn't start a blog because I thought it might be a nice addition to my platform; in fact, since starting this blog, writing—REAL writing—has occurred about as often as a shuttle lift-off.
But I'm glad to see he's endorsed my off-the-cuff venture. Now I can blog without guilt. He's also got some interesting things to say about just who bloggers are, and the future of readin', writin', and bloggin'. Turns out we are all stars in the making, he metaphorically maintains:
The appeal of blogs from a literary viewpoint, however, is that many of them feature interesting thinking, entertaining writing and other literary values intrinsic to authorship. Theoretically, at least, in a blog universe interesting writers will be better rewarded than uninteresting ones because more readers will click on their web sites. For this reason, it’s not fanciful to predict that the next generation of bestselling authors will come not from Big Publishing but rather out of the turbulent processes in the blogosphere, which, like superheated gases in distant galaxies, produce young stars.
Nice thoughts, Dick. Too bad you're one of those agents no longer taking on new clients—er, stars.
And for the definitive answer to "who are the blog people?" we get Revenge of the Blog People, from the new head of the American Library Association:
A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. (Though it sounds like something you would find stuck in a drain, the ugly neologism blog is a contraction of "web log.")
Thank you for that clarification. We were starting to think we might be special.
Now I need to take the advice of the Ancients, sit my astral-self in the chair, and write (untrammeled, as always, by grammar). Or, I could try something more fun, like cleaning the kitchen floor—I DO need to pay attention to my platform, after all.
(Many thanks, again, to Booksquare for the links.)
