The R’lyeh
Tribune
continues to have a fairly stable, albeit small readership with a steady output of
nearly daily posts. September and most
of October saw average daily page views of about 40 per day, but this has since
dropped off a bit. I am not sure whether this is normal
performance for a blog of this type, especially given that The R'lyeh Tribune is only about 5
months old. But
there is no lack of material or topics to write about—in my view at least, the
horror, science fiction and fantasy literature produced between the world wars
is a very deep well. I am also consoled
by the increasing number of folk from overseas who make repeated visits. The other day I had a reader in the United
Arab Emirates—marhaban!
Though
obsessive and compulsive, my
preoccupation with the statistics offered by Blogger has been helpful in
understanding the natural history of an average blog. It seems likely that my audience is not
large, nor is it committed to reading my articles with the same regularity that
I produce them. And that is understandable--we are all so busy! Admittedly, the niche is a
limited one: early 20th century weird fiction. Were I a more dedicated and professional writer it seems I
would still have a relatively small readership.
I still cannot determine clearly from the numbers which topics readers most
enjoy hearing about. The posts that have discussed Hodgson’s work, dream psychology, and
aspects of writing seem to have been popular.
However, the patterns are often idiosyncratic. A post about a story fragment written by
Lovecraft got a lot of attention, as did a summary of George Allan England’s
advice to pulp fiction writers, and a review of one of Hodgson’s Sargasso Sea
stories. I am always open to suggestions.
Since
one of the referral sites that links occasionally with my blog,
(“Ourmeets.com”) is a pornography and hook-up site, I have the awful suspicion
my frequent use of the name ‘Lovecraft’ is misperceived. At least I am guaranteed return visits…
Maybe
some of you read the recent commentary in The
New York Times a couple weekends ago—“Slaves of the Internet Unite!”—which offered
one writer’s lament about the very unlucrative
nature of internet writing. The author
was especially vexed that frequent requests to write pieces for “exposure” rather than pay were impoverishing him and his
colleagues. It seems that the vast
quantity of writing on blogs and other websites goes unremunerated or at best
generates income only indirectly. With
few exceptions, monetizing a blog would seem to provide only a paltry
recompense unless one were exceedingly diligent with marketing the site.
In
my limited internet forays I have found numerous blogs in my niche that are
well established, with professional quality writing and impressive graphics, and stone cold dead. The date of their last post is effectively the
‘R.I.P.’ All that work! I feel I should
whistle as I glance over them, just as I would if I were strolling by a graveyard. ‘That could be me!’ That will
be me eventually.
It’s
a lot of work keep a blog alive, even for an amateur like me. I am not whining—except about the increasing
tendonitis in my left elbow. I can now
better appreciate what goes into creating a truly successful and professional blog. It is my fortune that I do not need to make a
living with my writing—I would have starved to death by now--it’s my love of the subject matter and writing about it
that keeps me engaged in this project.
(It
would be a fascinating sociological study to look at bloggers in general. Who are they?
What are their favorite topics? What
is the impact of their unremunerated work on society?)
A
side effect of maintaining The R’lyeh
Tribune is my growing familiarity—way
too early to call it expertise—with early 20th century weird
fiction. This is becoming the
dissertation in English Literature that I never got to write. (Happily, it is my son who now gets to be the English major I always wanted to be.) There is so much to learn about this material
and the social and historical context in which it was created. Even the history of the publishers and the
evolution of pulp magazines are interesting and worth a closer look.
Lovecraft
is one of the planets I will be orbiting for some time to come, but I have
since discovered quite a number of other authors from his time period well
worth exploring: Francis Stevens, A. Merritt,
Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Walter De La Mare, among others. For now, these explorations will continue,
but I would also like to know more about what it was like to write and publish
horror, science fiction and fantasy in the 1920s and 1930s. I would appreciate suggestions for additional resources to consult.
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Thank you for your interest in The R'lyeh Tribune! Comments and suggestions are always welcome.