I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to promote WBA, as well as my other blogs. There are a slew of RSS sites and blog directories, which everybody and their grandmother knows about. I keep looking on Amazon.com as well as my local brick and mortar book stores and seeing maybe a half-dozen books on blogging.

The latest book, Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright is very good. The gist I’m getting so far (I’m not finished reading.) is that business need to rethink how they market themselves in the 21st century. The same thing goes for writers, especially the ones who are using blogs as a means to gain readers. Basically, we need to think outside the box if we’re going to stand out from the millions of other blogs out there.

Last week, during my rounds, I saw this comment by Scot in response to Clive Allen’s A Short Blogging Story”:

“Who knows, but a thought occured to me the other day about how grand it would be see an anthology published that contained some of the best writing being done today by bloggers.”

I had been mulling over the idea of creating a physical directory for writers who blog months before I erected the WBA site. But the idea of combing through tens of thousands of blogs to find the gems was too daunting. I did try.

I’m still very interested in publishing a writer’s blog directory because I think we need one to promote ourselves offline. Do you agree?

Originally, I was going to use the Name, URL, and the short blurb format. But Scot’s comment got me thinking. What if we went beyond the usual directory format to include our best posts (the ones that gained the most response from our readers)? We could also include a short paragraph about why we chose to write that particular post, as well as tacking in our bylines.

This directory/anthology will be broken into sections: litblogs, journalists, freelancers, fiction, non-fiction, columnists, etc. This will allow readers to jump to the subjects they’re interested in. The size of this book will be determined by the number of submissions I get. I’m setting the minimum goal at 50 by January 31st and the publication date of February 10th.

At this time, I’m not able to pay you for your submissions. This is a volunteer effort. What you’ll get out of this is free advertising and exposure. I’ve given you my plan. What are your thoughts?

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