Tell us when the article comes out! I am the queen of poor numbers (except when I do giveaways or, oddly, write about Olympic skating). But I do have quality friends.

Oh - the Olympic skating crowd! They follow everyone, don't they? HA! Some stuff about the blogosphere just never makes sense, does it?

viz the oddness of technorati--this time last year there were over 3000 book blogs, now its well under 2000...what happened to all the others????

I've wondered about that too - plus it lists Bookslut only as a site and doesn't list the blog at all so I wonder how many others don't have blog status that should. Technorati is crazy, plain and simple.

I think this late-to-the-table interest in book blogs is fascinating because I've been wondering for some time now if the literary blogosphere isn't collapsing under its own weight. There are so many literary blogs that I have to wonder if there aren't more blogs than there are blog readers. Maybe five or six years ago blogging had a frontier aspect to it. It was edgy and exciting. Then it started getting organized and publishers ("the man") and, I will admit, writers started working out how they could make blogs part of the marketing system. I think an argument could be made that the magic is on its way out.

Remember when the main stream press blamed bloggers for the demise of traditional paper reviews? That was the kind of attention literary blogs used to get. Now, when they have become part of the literary establishment, they are gaining some acceptance.

Hmmm.

Technorati's system is totally messed up. When they changed their algorithm, they changed it something like Twitter trending topics, but I can't work out how it actually works. I've written it off as useless.

Has Bookslut claimed their blog? I think blogs need to be claimed to work in the new system.

Technorati's system hasn't been a reliable metric in quite some time. But Gail is quite right. There isn't a single books blog today that can be considered even remotely edgy -- in large part because blogs (esp. group blogs) are now about seizing an extremely small patch of territory for while not including peers.

I've never had a single publisher ask me for metrics, but it seems a ridiculous request given that there really isn't a drastic audience difference between a long-standing "high traffic" blog and a blog that maybe started out in the past year or so.

With books, there's a maximum audience ceiling. And it has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with the current marginalized position of books in our culture. So if you're a publisher asking for metrics, you're missing the point -- even if I can understand the reason for doing so. And if you're running your blog with quids pro quo in mind (as opposed to passion), you're no different from a dull newspaper.

I'm a bit puzzled by such the emphasis on numbers. I only recently had one publisher ask, and I can't help but wonder why when for years they didn't. Does some of the talktalktalk on blogs etc about stats and followers and comments make them think it's a factor?

The thing with blogs about books is, to paraphrase, it's about the content, stupid. Now, to figure out how to get people reading you and your content? Makes sense; we blog both to write and to be read, otherwise we wouldn't do it in a public forum.

As Beth mentions, also, it's "quality" friends, or, not how many follow etc but who.

Giveaway blogs & posts have their own place and meet a need for readers; it's not something I am interested in so don't do it. Stats inflation is not the reason people do giveaways (or not all, at least). However, the response to giveaways can not be used as a benchmark for blog readership. If a publisher is looking for a blog to do a giveaway, then actually it does make sense to look at their previous stats to see if they are placing it in the right blog.

Hey guys - thanks for all these excellent comments, thoughts, etc which pretty much are telling me that what I thought of technorati already is exactly right. (I've been driving up the ALCAN so to say I've been offline in the past few days would be a massive understatement.) I would think though that McSweeney's of all places would already know all this - unless they are writing a piece about how bizarro technorati is and how it doesn't matter. (In which case it will be really funny if they slam me for having been in the top ten as in "Chasing Ray is a dinky blog and it made it into the top ten! How stupid are these rankings?!) ha!

Ah well, we'll see if anything comes of it. I gave a very minimal reply in which I said many of the things you all are saying here. I wonder if they will try to contact Jessa, Maud, Ed, etc though. If they know about the lit blogosphere, it seems that would be the logical place to start.