Blogger beings

Blogs have revolutionised the publishing industry like never before. Aspiring authors no longer need to wait for a publisher to see the light in their writing, before their works sees the light of the day. Powerful blogging services – such as Blogger and WordPress – offer that platform to them for free.

With more blogs cropping up by the second, the platform for aspiring writers is very much out there. In fact, the most outstanding feature of blogs is that they allow anyone to publish their work without having to wait for a publisher’s approval. This in turn has led to a trend where aspiring writers set up blogs to amass an audience and to see if they can make it big; if they can, they turn authors as well.

When journalist Amit Varma started his blog India Uncut (www.indiauncut.com) in 2004, he did it with the intention of accumulating a set of followers and honing his fiction writing skills. This, he felt, would help him when he wanted to publish a book. The blog was just a tool but little did he realize that he would go on to become one of the country’s most-read bloggers.

“I’ve always wanted to write. Journalism and blogging just came along. But I have to admit, they improved my writing to a great extent,” he admits.

His book ‘My friend Sancho’, which was released in May this year iin a major marketing blitz by the publishers Hatchette India.

A similar story rests in the life of twenty–something Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, whose blog ‘The compulsive confessor’ (http://thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com) has received international fame. Meenakshi, who wrote under the pseudonym eM, captivated her audiences with stories of the life of an anonymous twenty-something-single-girl-in-a-cosmopolitan-city.

The risque blog writer first disclosed her identity in an interview to the UK newspaper Telegraph. In 2008, she published her first novel ‘You are here,’ leveraging her popularity as an already prominent blogger.

There is yet another story of a blogger whose blog is popular as it tickles one’s funny bone. Jamshed Velayuda Rajan, 33, vice-president of ibibo.com has been blogging for seven years on Ouchmytoe (www.ouchmytoe.com) and has been rated by many blog ranking sites like indiblogger as India’s Funniest Blogger. Though he writes a personal blog, with experiences from his life ‘The 2 ifs W(if)e and L(if)e’, he has an international reader base. He plans to publish his blog as a book soon.

And then, there are authors who have taken to blogging to maintain their fan base. Prominent among them is writer Shobhaa De (http://shobhaade.blogspot.com), who writes her opinions on various issues including politics.

Whether it is bloggers using blogs to become authors or authors reminding people that they are still around, blog as a medium seems to have become not just a way to express oneself as it was originally intended to be but has made celebrities out of ordinary people with other jobs. It has also helped bridge the gap between a celebrity and their fans without intruding on their privacy.