Self-published author. Should I have a blog?

[DonkeysYears]

I'm self-published and doing ok but I would like to promote myself a bit more.

Should I have a blog? Is it worth the time and effort it will take to keep it going? Can I pls ask for people's opinions and experiences?

I'm self published. I have a blog. I don't post on it as often as I should. It is time consuming, thinking of things to blog about, and especially if you want to include illustrations, links and so on. I'm not sure it is worth the time I spend on it. I started it back when I was still hoping to be traditionally published and all the advice then was that agents and publishers would expect you to have a web presence.

Now there's Twitter and fb which weren't really around back then. They don't take up so much time. Whether they're any better for publicity purposes I don't know, I don't spend too much time on them either.

A lot of self published authors say that the best way to promote yourself is to get on with writing the next book, and I think I agree with that.

Thank you harriet, that's what I have thought: time spent writing more books is the best use of my time. I just recently started wondering about a blog as it would give me something to link to when I tweet. At the moment I just tweet random rubbish. Then again Twitter depresses me. I don't even have 100 followers yet and feel pretty much invisible.
I think I'm best to just plod on with the writing. The proof is in the pudding and all that... Thank you.

I'm self published, too. What are your sales like? PM me if necessary!

I think it's useful to have somewhere on the Web that you are in control of, to put extracts from forthcoming work, or news.

Yes, I agree on that, Countess. I do announce new books and talk about work in progress on my blog. It just doesn't get enough hits to make the effort of keeping it going seem worthwhile.

Thank you countess, that's a good point.

It is an awful lot of work, I agree. With mine, although I don't do as much of this as I would like, because I write historical I can write historical blog posts about my research which mean I have something different to share on Twitter/Facebook rather than just writing about myself or about writing all the time.

The other thing I like to do is blog about favourite writers that I wish were more widely known. This is actually quite a good way of getting the attention of people who might like my writing too, again, without banging on about myself too much, and of bonding with other writers.
I've also heard of people doing this for a quid pro quo (you blog about me and I'll blog about you) though I haven't done it that way personally - I prefer to do it for the sake of it.

I think if you don't have a clear idea of what your blog is going to be about, it's trickier. If you were only going to do one of Facebook/Twitter/Goodreads/blog, Facebook or Goodreads might be a more time-efficient option. However, at least with a blog it feels open to everyone, whereas not everyone is on some of the other platforms.