'Seth Godin answers questions about blogging.'
It's just you and your readers.
This is an extract from an interview with TypePad.
When you first saw blogs, you must have said 'Finally! Now I can write something every single day!' What was your initial reaction to blogging?
Of course! The greatest thing about blogs (but also one of the things you need to watch out for) is that there is no filter. It's just you and your readers. No editors, no production cycle. This is a boon for me, because I'm able to take a nascent idea and get it out there without a lot of overhead and without investing a lot of time. The challenge, of course, is that sometimes you press 'save' before you should.
Blogs have become deeply ingrained in many people's media diets. Do you think blogs are fulfilling their potential?
I think blogs are TV in the era of the 'Lone Ranger' or the early 'I Love Lucy' shows. The conventions are still being settled and the greatest practitioners have yet to arrive. I think there's an enormous amount of room for improvement… even at the best blogs.
When did you start writing sethgodin.typepad.com?
2002.
Was that your first blog? Do you have others?
Prior to that, my 'blog' was my periodic email blast, which had grown to more than 10,000 people. The problem was that the emails got too much response… I'd do a mailing and a few hundred people would write back, each needing a response… I ended up not mailing so much. So the blog was a great solution to that.
Your book, 'Small is the New Big', is a collection of short riffs, mostly from your blog, but also from magazine articles and e-books. What did you discover about those forms when collecting them all in one place?
Mostly I discovered that there's a lot of filler involved in day-to-day blogging. Stuff that seems important in the moment but didn't stand the test of time. I was thrilled to discover, though, that my intent—which is to write pieces that are interesting today and important next year—was occasionally achieved. That's what ended up in the book.
The book contains close to 200 short entries, each separately titled. These little chapters are ordered alphabetically. What was the thinking there? To ask the reader to get engaged?
The alphabetical order is a statement first about randomness. I believe that marketing is pervading everything that everyone does, and pigeonholing the riffs didn't make sense. The second reason is that in our molecularized, googlized world, being first in phone book isn't worth so much any more.
Mining a blog for book fodder is definitely coming into its own as a publishing strategy. What do you think that says about blogging? How about publishing?
Well, I could write a million words about this, but here's the short version: non-fiction book publishing is largely about finding an audience that is willing to listen and will benefit from what you have to say. We don't 'need' any more cookbooks (there are a billion recipes online) but cookbooks sell (when they sell) to people who are open to what that chef or this author has to say about the topic.
Blogs are an amazing tool for authors because they allow you, day by day, drip by drip, for a few dollars, to assemble an audience of people who want to hear from you. That's the huge first step of publishing, and now, for the first time, anyone can do it without help from a media company.
You say 'The real power of blogs comes from that they can be as specific as you like,' which is something we definitely love seeing here at Six Apart—that bloggers can be as specific or as broad as they choose—or modulate between the two. What are some of your favorite examples of really specific blogs?
Here are two, chosen at semi-random, both about food:
- The first is about a guy who takes a picture of every interesting place he eats and then writes it up.
- The second is the famous blog in which Julie cooked every single item in the Art of French Cooking and then wrote about it.
I'm sure that if I looked harder, I could find a blog about tofu.
What blogs do you read regularly?
It's a never-ending, always changing parade. I'm more of a surfer than a subscriber.
Filed by g on August 8 2007
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