I found an interesting blog article and was cruising along, getting informed as I read it, and then stopped full stop at the end of the article. And I mean FULL-STOP. The little bio-author line at the end of the article read (edited):
About the Author:
Fred Something is the author of the popular fredjazzsomethinghere.com blog which focuses on the music styles and history of new and old jazz music.
…is the author of…. Wow!
Okay, so sometimes I’m ahead of the game keeping you informed of what is happening in the “now” of WordPress and blogging, but this is a thought I come late to the game with. You are a published author if you have a blog.
Did you make this “published” and “author” connection?
I’m a writer. I’ve published so many articles in so many mediums, I’ve lost count. I’ve also written books and have been dealing with book publishers on and off for years. But the thought that I’m the author of this blog, and the rest of my websites and blogs, caught me by surprise.
It also made me sit up and think about the responsibilities of being an author.
You Are the Author of Your Blog
The act of hitting the Publish button on your WordPress blog is as close as modern technology gets to the printing press ON button. Without the struggle of ink, paper, binding, marketing, distribution, and advertising, you are a published author at that moment. No longer do you need to face endless meetings with publishers, distributors, and editors who want to thrash your work into little pieces on the ground, step on them, and then bring out the glue and scissors and start piecing your story back together.
I think that’s pretty profound.
It takes the concept of a blog as a diary, a personal journal, and opinionated babble, into the realm of books. Of magazines. Newspapers. Of published works. Wow!
You can tell that I’m still dealing with this new twist on the concept of being a published author with my blogs. So while I deal and inner debate with the issue, what do you think? Did you make this connection immediately or did it take some time? Do you think being known as a “blog author” or “published author” changes the way you write and what you write about on your blog? Or am I just making something out of nothing?
Has your responsibilities and obligations changed as an “author” of a blog? Do you have to do more, pay attention to more things, learn a lot more about things you didn’t know before, or wish you never knew? What are the responsibilities that come with being a “blog author”?
Do you call yourself an “author” or a “blogger”? Do you include a byline on your blog that says “by Fred Something” or “Author: Fred Something”? Or do you even credit yourself as the author of your written word?
What do you think, fellow author, about being an author?
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen
Lorelle on WordPress 
6 Comments
I’ve always considered myself a blogger.
However, I do consider myself an author of any articles written by me.
Somehow calling yourself an author for your personal blog entries seems weird, though ofcourse authors do write biographies and a personal blog is something like it.
I’m an aspiring writer who blogs about writing and shares my work online. I noticed the ‘published by Flood’ byline in my entry titles and still did not make the connection that I might be an author.
One way of looking at this is taking pride in self-publishing and the freedom of being an author with no rules, other than satisfying your readers. Another way, is to be high falutin’ about it and say that unless someone else approves your publishing, you are not an author.
You, Lorelle, are an author, to me. I’ve never considered calling you anything else. I am surprised that you didn’t think of yourself the same way, when it comes to your blog. I didn’t know anything about you before I found Lorelle on WordPress and you were still an author to me. So, I wonder why I have a hard time applying the title to myself, when an author is all I want to be.
Sort of McLuhanish huh? Thinking that 10 years ago (maybe even less) most people didn’t have the resources or time to publish opinions, and now lo! With the click, wham, you reach millions. My blog has very small traffic, but still, 107 people (not counting feeds) have read my blog in it’s first month. Quoting McLuhan: “After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.” Written in – Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, from the year (this is unbelievable…) of 1964. Amazing.
Your blog is amazing, Im struggling with mine. I wonder I was wondering how you set up your sidebar on the side? What I find really frustrating is not being able to to link pages to categories. If you can tell me or point in the right direction I would appreciate it
JC
Thanks, JC. I will have an article about this soon, but in the meantime, explore your Bookmarks tab and play with that. It will get you started. And play with the new WordPress Widgets, the new sidebar accessorizers.
And WordPress Pages are often misunderstood. Even if they are linked with Categories, they will not appear in the Category views as things are set up now. Think of them as things outside the box rather than in. How would you want to categorize “About” or “Contact”? That’s what Pages are for, not as replacements for posts. I spent a lot of time trying to understand that, and in doing so, moved a lot of things I thought were Pages into Posts and I was much happier and people found the information easier, too.
I think the person writing an aticle, should be considered as an auther of that article. For my blogs and websites, if I write the article then i should be considered the auther but if someone else is submitting it to us then he/she must be given his/her due credit.
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