Why do we blog?
Let me tell you why that question has been rolling around the inside of my skull. Thanks to some instigation from my godson, defamer.com and deadlinehollywooddaily.com linked to the posting I did just two days ago on Mel Gibson and Hebrew National. Holy mackerel! I had more hits on my blog yesterday than I typically get in a month. Thousands.
But so what? Did it mean I was selling more books? I don’t think so, at least there was no effect on my Amazon ranking. So I started to wonder whether my more typical postings did anything for sales. Do I myself buy the books of the bloggers I read every day? Yes, but largely because they are friends whose books I’d buy anyway, not because they blog.
If blogging doesn’t lead to more sales, then why blog? As Dr. Johnson once famously said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Maybe we blog because it’s a way to keep in touch. When I lived in England years ago, I corresponded with friends via airmail. Blogging gives me the same kind of feeling of keeping in touch, but it’s more efficient since one posting goes to everyone I’d write to.
Or maybe we blog because writing is a solitary vocation (except for Joe and Lynn) and this is 
our way of crying out, “Hey out there. We're alive.” Descartes wrote, “Cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.” Maybe we’re saying “Blogito, ergo sum” or “I blog, therefore I am.”
P.S. A version of this posting is also on InkSpot with trenchant comments from some of my fellow Midnight Ink authors.
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