What I do take issue with, as you have pointed out, is the manner in which companies (and this includes publishers) assuming that blogs are just an extension of an advertising tool and one in which cheap or free publicity for a product can be obtained.

Blogs are created for a variety of reasons and many of us bloggers write online for personal reasons – not as a way of making money. This is why there is such a “community” feel to the blog world; by its very nature we are interconnected and friendly with each other.

I’m not suggesting that blogging is one big love-in, because it most certainly is not, but in the field in which I write – sex blogging – the respect for other bloggers’ privacy and anonymity goes some way to making our “community” a very protective and supportive one.

This is why so many sex bloggers were annoyed by the mass email that was sent out by my publishers: it just grated that they were being approached in such an underhand way and asked to exploit their own personal blogs to assist another blogger in making profit (via sales of their book). And it was extremely underhand because it made use of my friendships with these people to assist the approach: many assumed I had some part in the email being sent.

Six months ago, I resisted this approach to book promotion when asked by my publishers because I knew it would weaken my connections within the blogging and sexblogging community. And this community IS important to me: it was there before a book deal was ever on the cards and it was there supporting me when my anonymity was destroyed by a newspaper last year. So for me to ask other bloggers to promote my book – via a publicist – was like suggesting to them that I was better than them in some way, which of course I do not believe.

I repeatedly voiced these concerns with my US publishers and suggested that alternate means of promoting the book were used. And given I had an interview in The New Yorker in March 2007 when the US edition of my book was published (which was a first for sexblogging), one would think they might have built some credible publicity out of that – but they did nothing. They didn’t manage to set up ONE interview in ANY other publicity avenues post-the New Yorker piece, which I am sure anyone in PR would think shocking.

So this recent PR venture just smacks of desperation to me as well as a total lack of awareness as to how tightly-knit the (sex)blogging community is. Not to mention the fact they went against my explicit wishes of course, which to my mind just underlines the fact that they have no respect for me as an author, let alone a blogger. In one fell swoop, they have almost destroyed my online and blogging credibility and I am now having to pick up the pieces of what reputation I have left.

The lesson to be learned here? Research your promotional outlet; know the market you are approaching. If that is the blog world, it’ll take more than just reading a few posts on some random blogs to figure out what the people behind them are like. Be honest about what you hope to acheive – the blogging lot are a clued up bunch and will sniff your pretence a mile off. And finally, get your author on board. If you don’t contact them for six months and have proven that you are not interested in their wishes at all, then don’t expect them to support you when you attempt to exploit their standing in the blog world.