I published my first novel a little over three years ago. As part of my promotion for that title and the three that followed, I was featured on a number of other blogs, either as a guest blogger, in an interview or as a spotlight feature. In total, it was over 53 posts. This past weekend I reviewed all of them as I consolidated them into one place. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 20 of them no longer existed, whether because the post had been deleted or the blog itself no longer existed.

I want people to understand this: when I published my first book three years ago, blogs were considered an important promotional strategy. Some of it was to improve our SEO, and some of it was to help expand our audience to readers of different blogs. Some authors—myself included—paid companies to arrange blog tours and get us space on other people’s blogs, because 1) there were so many blogs that most people couldn’t keep track of them, and 2) many blogs had a backlog of requests but were more likely to respond to someone they’d already dealt with. In other words, blog tour promoters earned their money.

But now many of those posts are gone, and so are a number of blogs that I posted on.

I’m not bitter about it—a few months ago, I cleaned house on my own blog, mostly to get rid of posts with missing images after I changed email accounts—but it served as an important reminder that indie authors need to constantly reconsider what our options are and where our time is best spent. Here are my recommendations based on what I’ve seen in the last year. Continue Reading