2006, A Year in Review

Blogging is dead. Fold your laptop and go home. At least that’s what we’re hearing.

But the Book Tarts have been contrary before, and in this case you can picture us with our thumbs in our ears and our tongues poking out going, "Ptttttth!"

Because we think blogging is going strong. In fact, we think it’s more mainstream than ever.

After topping the 300,000 hit mark in 2006, I thought our regular readers might be interested in a glimpse behind the scenes here at The Lipstick Chronicles. And no, I’m not talking about the photos Harley snapped of Margie at the office holiday party.

For one thing, I’m the Tart who keeps tabs on who you are and where you come from. Yes, we paid the big bucks for the software that tracks your comings and goings, and besides noting how many of you drop by, it’s interesting to see who you are. Mind you, I don’t go snooping through your IP address to find out exactly who’s who, but I notice things like IP suffixes. Public libraries, colleges and–what can this mean?–law firms show up often. And the rest estate company in Houston? We hope you’ll give us a discount if one of us moves your way. I’d also like to give a special shout out to a certain enormous New York literary agency, not to mention all those folks at Random House who check in daily. Are you looking for more fireworks?

When the Tarts first started TLC, most of our hits came from links from other writer blogs, reading-related listserves (thank you, DorothyL–you gave us our kickstart!) and listserves from writers’ organizations and some author fan clubs. Now we’re seeing more of you coming from mainstream blogs (those that appeal primarily to young moms especially) and from a wider variety of websites that link to us–surely a sign that amateur web surfers like your grandma and Aunt Doreen are discovering blogs even if the internet geeks are moving on. The big difference is Aunt Doreen buys books.

A growing number of our hits result from Google searches. No surprise, 50% of you who use Google to arrive here at TLC are looking for sex. Or some variation thereof. With apologies to our demure Ms. Kozak, our top Google searches are:

Harley Jane Kozak nude pix

Harleys and sex

Mud wrestling

Blow jobs

Hotel sex

Nevada brothels

Stores that ship to inmates

And even girls showing off their diapers, which is something I don’t think we’ve mentioned–ever–but I could be wrong.

Nearly every day, somebody comes looking for "Kelly Ripa, anorexia," and "How to pronounce krav maga?" (That’s krav ma-GAH, right, Harley?)

Lately, we’ve had a run on people looking for gingerbread houses, tips for writing the annual Christmas letter and whether or not buying your wife an expensive Christmas gift will result in great sex. Thanks for stopping by. We aim to please.

Hardly any of you, by the way, find us by using our official key words which include, "mystery novels," and "women’s fiction."

Looking through your Google habits shows me it’s smart marketing to blog about timely subjects. Current key words draw eyeballs. We’ve got a moratorium on Paris Hilton and Britney Spears at the moment, but that could change.

In case you haven’t noticed, the major alteration we made this year was to steer away from writing about the publishing business and to focus on entertaining you instead. (Not that the publishing business isn’t highly entertaining!) To be honest, we noticed other blogs doing a much better job of teaching writing skills, suggesting ways to get published and how authors should promote themselves. So we decided to go a different route. Sure, we mention writing now and then because that’s what we all do for a living. But not every day.

A number of marketing experts felt we ought to stick to advertising ourselves, but we find that kind of author blog . . . incredibly boring. Do you really need to be hit over the head about our release dates? We think if you’re entertained here, you’ll go buy our books when the time comes.

We still think Content is Queen, so we aim to deliver new and entertaining material every day. We don’t write about our diets, what we had for lunch or cute things our kids do. (Well, not often.) We don’t force you to read dull junk about fictional characters you don’t care about. Daily, we strive to make you laugh or wince or think. We’ve learned that you prefer blogs that are under 800 words instead of those rambing 1500-word doozies (oops–like this one!) we used to write. We know you don’t like us to talk politics. (Hey, we tried to keep our dislike of Rick Santorum a secret, but it was just too damn hard.) You like humor. Topic-wise, we’ve skewed more toward how the sexes get along and female-based popular culture because those subjects have resulted in our most popular blogs. (The exception being Margie’s informational blogs aimed at men, which have proven to be–uh–explosive. And FYI to those of you who contact Margie privately: Please note, guys, she sometimes prints out your e-mails and pins them on the bulletin board over the water cooler.)

Who’s our typical reader? Well, you can figure it out by reading our stuff. The point is, we’re determined to entertain that reader every day with a wide variety of material. And we think that reader buys our books.

We notice that you tend to come back several times a day if the author of the post sticks around to respond to your comments and questions. We like that you feel free to disagree with us. That kind of dialogue keeps everyone honest.

We still get requests from publishers wanting us to review books here at The Lipstick Chronicles. And although it’s hard to turn down free books, we really don’t want to turn our blog into a publicity machine. That’s a totally different animal from the one we set out to create. At the end of the day, we’re still writers who write books and blog a little on the side.

It hasn’t all be good news, of course. Our Sunday Link of the Week series didn’t generate many new regular readers, and it elicited few comments from our regulars, so we’ll probably discontinue that in favor of more guests. (Guests tend to bring along their fans, too. Some of you may accuse us of stealing fans from other writers, but we think of it as sharing the pool. Besides, we love interacting with other writers. It makes us feel like grown-ups.) You didn’t have to tell us links were the lazy way out. We got the message.

And needless to say, we stirred up some controversy this year. Sometimes it felt awful–particularly when the comments became crude attacks. (Do you talk to your mother with that mouth, Mr. P?) At other times, it felt pretty darn good to fan the flames.

Like our television counterpart, The View, we had some personnel changes, too. We said good-bye to Susan McBride and wish her well in her new career as a YA writer. (Her new Debutante Dropout mystery, http://www.mysterywriters.org