Jock Murphy Words and PicturesThe writing and photography of Jock Murphy

So Sam Sugar over at SugarBank (SFWish though it does deal with the adult industry) decided to do his friend Craig Clevenger two amazing favors. The first is that he gave a damn fine plug for it on his blog. The second is that he deiced to try and build some buzz and provide a free copy of Craig's first book to bloggers with no expectation on them, other than that they are encouraged to read the book and blog what they think.

Needless to say, I jumped on this. I am always up for a good book. But I asked if I could do the same deal, and send him a copy of Redemption Song. It seemed only fair, if he was going to go out of pocket and buy a book, I should at least do the same. And if I get a little reciprocal buzz out of it, then I won't complain.

Sam and I have corresponded a bit since. We are both fairly excited that we may be on to something. Being a small/independant author is hard. Getting people to know you exist is one of the hardest things, followed by the even larger hurdle of getting people to read your book.

There are some book specific blogs and sites out there, but they mostly seem to appeal to the book wonks out there. Getting noticed by the A and B list bloggers isn't easy, and it shouldn't be. I like the idea that bloggers follow their own nose and not be so susceptible to outside PR.

So I will make the same offer as Sam. If you run a blog on any topic, and it’s been going a couple of months, email me your URL, name, and address, and I’ll send you a free copy of Redemption Song, and then feel free to post anything you like about it.

For want of a better term, we could call this the Blogger's Book Club. Authors can provide some number of books to bloggers for free. Then the bloggers can read the book and are free to post whatever they like. Perhaps we could set up a website to act as a kind of clearinghouse for Authors offering their books and bloggers posting about them. Maybe nothing will come of this. But who knows? Maybe -- just maybe -- this could be something new and interesting.