My aunt recently started a blog: Great Books for Children. In her ambition to become a published children’s author, she felt compelled to start a blog but was hesitant. She considered blogs to be the “junk mail of the Internet” and didn’t want to “stoop” to blogging. I think she’s off to a fine start.

The following email was meant to persuade her to think more highly of blogging, at least considering it a neutral publishing medium with the potential to garner an audience:

1. People should consider your blog a great resource, a bookmark worth keeping, something worth talking about, not a glossy brochure for you as an author.

2. The Internet allows you to connect with an audience despite not having a publisher. If you produce great work, you’ll attract an audience. This is called micro-celebrity:

• 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
• Clive Thompson on the Age of Microcelebrity: Why Everyone’s a Little Brad Pitt

3. Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi writer who released his entire book online, got an audience, then got a publishing contract. How could a publisher turn away a writer with an existing audience?

• Giving It Away

4. Do you know the Nie Nie story? It’s the blog of a young Mormon woman who was in a plane crash earlier this year. Her blog has a huge audience. This is an awesome article in the NY Times:

• After Blogger’s Plane Crash, Virtual Becomes Personal

5. Blogging can be grand. Play the medium to your advantage by including pictures and video. Don’t think it’s a lesser medium.

6. Some of my favorite posts on blogging:

• What Makes for a Good Blog? by Merlin Mann
• Write Like a Blogger by Seth Godin
• How to Get Traffic for Your Blog by Seth Godin
• Why You Should Blog by randfish

7. Bookmarks on publishing:

• Advice for Authors by Seth Godin
• How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon by Kevin Kelly
• 10 Questions with Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and The Dip
• Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known by Mark Hurst