Questions of Quantity vs Quality

According to the Blogger Dashboard, this is my 300th post to the Self Publishing blog. In terms of quantity, I'll guess it's up around 200,000 words, equivalent to about four books I should have written. The quality has been evolving over the years, though I couldn't say in which direction. I hope I'm doing a better job at proofreading myself, at least I now make an effort. My main complaint is that the blog is increasingly about me, rather than about the nitty-gritty of publishing, as the first hundred or so posts were. It's just difficult to go over the same ground over and over again without either repeating or contradicting oneself. In the mean time, my total lack of book production has left my editor so bored that she's taken to cleaning her roof every week.



But back on the question of blog quality, I think the most useful posts I've made in the last year have been in response to questions that people send me. I don't always point that out in the post, in part because I'm usually more interested in answering a question that doesn't exactly match what I've been asked. Also, several of the posts about subsidy presses and fee based services have been inspired by stories of rip-offs authors send.

The quantity vs quality question is also an important one in terms of writing for your website. If you try to make every page on your website "book quality", you run into an economic problem, namely, paying an editor and proofreaders to go over content you are giving away for free. Clearly, I don't, but I know some authors who put as much effort into their web postings as they do into their books. I'd say it's a mistake, but somehow they find the energy to write more books than I do, so maybe it's a form of brain exercise.

I've been inspired by my editor's tireless housekeeping to try to freshen up the self publishing blog, so I ordered up a flip-cam from Amazon, which will hopefully make web-ready video without a big learning curve. If I find I can talk into the camera for more than 30 seconds without biting my tongue, I'll try answering some questions on video, maybe with a few graphics thrown in. I'll also revisit some of my earlier posts, pretending that it's all new. So by next week, I'm hoping the blog will be an audio/visual experience worth every penny of free. If you have any questions that you think would make quality fodder, feel free to send them to me direct or to just comment on this post.