Or would that be bloggoversary?
At any rate, today is the one year anniversary of the new corabuhlert.com blog. Well actually, it was yesterday, but I missed the date in all of the travel uproar. If anybody is wondering what happened to the old blog which I kept from 2002 to 2006, there is an explanation here.
In its first year, the blog got 28168 views (which is probably what the likes of John Scalzi get in a day). The busiest day with 2692 visitors was on July 11, 2011. The average daily view count hovers somewhere between 50 and 120.
Here are the ten most popular posts of the last year:
1. I accidentally corner the market for Strunk/White fanfiction from July 11, 2011
2. Strunk, White and Sex from January 31, 2011
3. Women writers, international writers, marginalized writers from July 10, 2011
4. Game of Thrones and genre-unfriendly critics from April 18, 2011
5. More Game of Thrones Reactions from April 23, 2011
6. Good Sex, Bad Sex and HBO Style Sex from April 1, 2011
7. Gender and the shifting definitions of epic and urban fantasy from April 11, 2011
8. Book fair interviews, sex scenes, tragic endings, Tarzan and cultural omnivores – yes, it’s another linkdump from March 23, 2011
9. The Bacon Cat Law of Internet Popularity from July 12, 2011
10. The Strunk and White Aftermath – and a Linkdump from July 13, 2011
So what do we learn from this? A lot of people are really interested in Strunk and White, particularly in connection with fanfiction. Indeed, variations on “Strunk White fanfiction” are also the top search terms for this site. A whole lot of people are also very interested in Game of Thrones and posts with sex in the title always do well due to random porn googlers. Finally, it also helps when your post is picked up by a popular blog, which is what happened in the case of the international writers post and the post on epic and urban fantasy.
Coincidentally, Jim C. Hines and Catherine Shaffer have just weighed in on writer blogging in the past few days as part of a larger discussion on what writers should and should not blog about (summed up over at the Pegasus Pulp blog), which was probably initiated by John Locke and his blogging advice in his How I sold 1 million e-books in five months book. In short, Locke believes that writers shouldn’t blog about writing and that they should find a niche which appeals to their readers, after determining who those readers are.
I obviously don’t subscribe to Mr Locke’s theory, which is why I haven’t sold one million e-books in five months but about 50 in four months. However, I quite like Catherine Shaffer’s idea of writer blogs of buffets. This particular buffet regularly dishes up posts about writing and links to interesting dishes elsewhere, but also discussions of gender, of speculative fiction, of literature in general, of linguistics, of TV shows I enjoy (or not), of German politics, teaching anecdotes, photos and links to the obituaries of people I find interesting, even if no one else does. On the old blog, I posted a lot more reviews of books and sometimes also of films and TV episodes, but it appears that my PhD thesis ate that particular part of my brain.
Finally, here are some of my favourite dishes from this particular buffet, that is a couple of posts from the past year that I really like and that didn’t get quite the attention the Strunk/White posts got:
- A Clockwork Orange forty years on – and its parallels to Misfits
- Chavs, Reality TV and Class Prejudice
- Predictable Urban Fantasy Bashing – the female edition
- Sex, Morality and Epic Fantasy
- Speculative fiction, gender and why “the domestic and mushy stuff” is important
- Doctor Who and its problematic message to girls
- Doctor Who and the married couple
- Supernatural miracle pregnancies and the hatred of pregnant women
- Point of view, the T-V distinction and the Ingeborg Bachmann prize
- TV Retro Sexism
- The Curse of Quality Drama
- The increasing darkness of popular culture
What is more, there are now two sister blogs to this one, and I have started my own e-book imprint with now nine books for sale and counting.
All in all, that’s not bad for the first year.
Happy Anniversary! You’re always interesting to read.
Thanks. I’m glad you enjoy it.
thank you for the list of posts you especially like – as far as I haven’t read them I read one each day and like them a lot! Actually, I was very impressed by the one on the supernatural miracle pregnancy; well done indeed!
Thanks. I’m glad you like them.
The supernatural miracle pregnancy trope is something that has annoyed me for a long time.
Belated congratulations on your anniversary. This is one of my favourite book blogs and I recommend it to other genre fiction readers (especially those of an academic bent) often. I really appreciate your interesting take on genre fiction from both the writing and the reading perspective as well as the wide variety of links you regularly post. Best of luck with blog in future!
Thank you. I’m glad you enjoy the blog. Many thanks for the recommendations as well.