Blogging About Books: How to Blog About Two Books Of the Same Genre

I had an interesting question from Celise Downs about how to blog about two different books but with the same theme.

First, to recap, for the fiction author, there are several roads you can take as far as blogging about your book. One, you can have one of your characters host their own blog such as how Sandy Lender does it for her main character, Abigail (Choices Meant for Gods) and you have seen how well Frances Lynn has pulled it off for both her books, Crushed and Frantic (both from Eiworth Publishing).

Both authors should be commended for the extra time they put into this which rates a 10 on my pumping up your blog scale!

While it's a lot of extra work, both authors will find that as long as they keep their blogs pumped up, they are at least doing their part to make sure their marketing campaign never runs out of steam. Highly commendable.

Now, the question from Celise Downs is this.

She says, "In keeping with Frances' theme of setting up separate blogs for her two books, I was thinking about doing the same for my first two books. You said, 'I discovered what I like about author blogs is when the author talks about his/her life in the same theme of their books. I was wondering, how would I go about doing that for my books? There's only so much I could write about--personally--so maybe you might have some suggestions. Thanks."

I love it when people make my job easy. I went to her links and saw both were YA books, so both had the same general theme. You would think this would be a hard one, don't you? But, it's really not.

Years ago, I was writing for an online publication (that didn't pay no less) that published all kinds of articles with no real main theme. I decided to write about relationships, as that was what I was syndicating out at the time. I felt this was just another place to have my work showcased, so I felt what the heck, it can't hurt to have another place with my link in it, and continued to write for them.

After five or six articles on "soul mates," as this is what I write about, the webmaster emailed me and asked if I could write about something else. Truthfully, I didn't have the time and she caught me at one of those exasperating moments, so instead of searching through my files to find something else, I emailed her back and said, "Why?"

I didn't think it was a strange question. I really wanted to know what prompted her to tell me to write something out of my expertise so to speak. Did she not like what I was sending her?

She wrote back, "Because there's just so many things you can say about soul mates."

I've gone on to write hundreds of articles about soul mates and the website I was writing for? I quit writing for them simply because I thought that was the most stupid question anyone could ever ask me.

The point of my little story is that even though you have a certain "theme," there are so many ways you can write about it without it all sounding like the same old thing.

Let's shoot over to Celise's website to see the two books in question and I'll show you how I think she can handle this, keeping my little story in mind.

The first book is titled Secrets and Kisses (Geminimojo Press) and tells the story of Skylar Knight making her way through the final year of high school.

The second book is titled Dance Jam Productions (Geminimojo Press) and is about a local popular teen dance show looking for dancers.

Both are about teens, so it would seem that Celise would have a time trying to come up with two sets of blog posts with the same theme, wouldn't it?

But, really look good at these two books. There are underlying themes if you look close enough.

The first book is about young love, romance and that first kiss. The second book is centered around more of a dancing theme, although I'm sure it has elements of young romance in it.

What she could do with the first book, Secrets and Kisses, is talk about her first love, her first kiss, and all the things that happened to her during high school that kids would really get a kick out of. If they happened to visit her blog, they'd say, "Wow, she's like one of us!," now wouldn't they? They'd make that bond with her that they couldn't have otherwise. The blog will be excellent for that. She could even have one of the characters do a guest spot and have a little advice column if she ever ran out of ideas. Or, since "secrets" is part of the title, reveal some of her own little secrets when she was a teenager. I would love to have that blog; oh, what fun I could have with it!

The second book, Dance Jam Productions, is centered around a popular dance show. Maybe for this one she could talk about her own dance experiences. Or, how about talk about the lastest music videos, even posting a few on her blog from YouTube? How about--not to get too boring being as we're talking teenagers here--talk about different dances that have cropped up over the years? Or, she could do some interviews with dance choreographers or pop stars. She could even reminince about her pop star crushes over the years. The ideas are endless.

So, this is how you can take one theme and find underlying themes to talk about. So many ways you can do this. Just because you have two books of the same genre, you can surely find a way around it.

Hope this helps, Celise!

Tags: Blogging about Books, How to Pump UP Your Blog to Sell More Books, Celise Downs