Back in 2006 or so, when blogging was The Next Big Thing That Everyone Was Doing, there was much discussion over whether a blog could kickstart a literary or journalistic career. Writers News even commissioned me to write an article about it, in which I quoted the economist and blogger Tim Worstall:
Tim Worstall, editor of the anthology 2005: Blogged, agrees. “I’m not sure that it is possible to make a living from blogging,” wrote Worstall, in his Second Anniversary blog post. “But”, he continued, “it is entirely possible to make a living out of having blogged.” Worstall sees blogging as an alternative to apprenticeships and unpaid internships, a route to paid writing.
I think we can cite many examples of writerswho gained exposure through blogging and then found paid writing gigs: David Allen Green and Laurie Penny at the New Statesman; book deals for PC David Copperfield and The Girl With A One Track Mind.
Another route is that taken by the creators of the Pornokitsch Blog, which takes the transatlantic Science Fiction & Fantasy culture as its beat. They have used their blog as a springboard into the publishing world, leveraging using the contacts and credibility developed over four years of blogging, to produce a series of short story collections. The blog as route not into journalism, but publishing.
And who should be one of the authors they publish? None other than… yrstrly. My story (0,0) is in the Crossroads anthology, released on the Kindle in August 2012. Its a companion book to Lost Souls, “tales of woe and angst, loneliness, redemption and humour” including stories by Arthur Conan-Doyle, Benjamin Disraeli and Mary Coleridge. If you order the limited edition copy of Lost Souls, you get Crossroads on the Kindle for free. You cannot say fairer than that.
