I've been reading a lot of articles on writing and most experts say you should blog your heart out after (and even before) you are published. However, a lot of times it feels like I'm just a tiny island of a blog attempting to consistently throw bottles into the ocean and hoping someone reads them.

I've read a lot about consistency, and I've been attempting that. Still, I haven't had a lot of hits (though that's partially due to my newness to the world of blogging), but the posts I've had most hits on are ones which are either interviews of other authors or responses to other blogger's posts.

Another thing I've read a lot about is cross promotion among authors (especially independent authors). I've heard that such cross-promotion is popular among bloggers, but I've yet to find much (though I haven't looked very hard). Also, I've listened to podcast which do this (they have a specific time when a group of podcasters do podcasts on the same topic) and it has led me to listen to several different podcasts. I wonder if this same thing would work for blogs.

And that's my idea: get a group of HW bloggers to help each other blog, provide guest posts, interviews, etc. Maybe we could all pick a time and blog on a singular topic and provide links to posts others wrote during that time. I don't really know, I'm just spitballing ideas.

What do you think of this idea? Do you see any rationality behind this idea or is it ridiculous?

Yes! I love the idea. I'm a long time blogger. Linky parties are GREAT! I actually have one of my book reviews on my landing page:
http://foglemanforerunner.com/homeschoo ... hronicles/

Actually it would also be good to add posts about other things in your niche. If your book is Fantasy, then posts about swords, swordmaking, & links to some cool sword sites... affiliate links would even help pay site expenses. Maybe get a hold Of a company & offer to do a review & giveaway to prompt their product in exchange for a free sword or dagger...

Figuring out more ways for bloggers to interact on Holy Worlds is definitely a good idea.

I like this idea!!

Who would be willing to join a HW blogger network?
I still don't know how it would work, exactly. I guess that would be something we'd have to come up with. Maybe one post a month (or whatever is decided) I (for example) would do a book review or interview or guest post from someone else in the network.

Leveraging the HW network for cross-promotion, "sharpening," guest posts, etc., is a good idea. (There's an Index of Member Blogs I compiled from the "Your Blog" thread.) Personally, I don't have time or attention to spare to contribute guest posts (if I did, I'd submit something to the Holy Worlds blog), because I have so many topics I've scheduled myself to write about that my schedule (though it keeps slipping, with everything else going on in my life) is in some categories full up of essays-to-write almost through the end of the year.

One thought I had: Many Internet communities (such as, in particular, the developers and/or users of a Linux distribution or other popular free software package) have what's called a "planet" (after one program that does this), a page that aggregates recent posts on the blogs of the members of the community. It might be nice if HW had such a thing.

This is a good point. Most people don't blog very much because of their own business (which is why I suggested collaboration be only once a month, though that seems too often for you). Would you be able to be able to contribute (or host guest posts) ever? Perhaps once or twice a year? Or, if we were to have a week where we all wrote on one topic, a poem or essay which addressed the 'topic of the week'?
Another thing I've discovered is that some people have difficulty coming up with stuff to blog about even when they do have time. Since one of the most important parts of blogging is consistency, I hoped this would offer a means for bloggers to put posts out more uniformly rather than only one every few months.
If anyone else has either of these two difficulties, feel free to (please) comment on it.

This is an interesting idea. For a moment, I wondered if the HW blog could be this sort of thing, but that would kind of ruin the autonomy of the blog, so probably a separate page would be better (though still on the HW site somewhere). However, since the HW blog is kind of a conglomeration of multiple member's posts, this would be an interesting idea. Though, those who follow individual blogs would be rereading old material.

As long as it is scheduled, I should be able to do a once a month guest post.

Perhaps we could have a thread where authors are allowed to post a link to their latest post a maximum of once per week. (If they write more than one piece in a week, they could put multiple links in a single post, rather than posting multiple times in the same week.) I don't know if that would get the blogs much traffic or not, but it would at least make it easy for anyone who was interested to look over the latest blog posts by HW authors.

Contributing, conceivably on rare occasions---it's just that I want to get caught up (that is, back to a regular schedule and getting posts written and set to appear a few days in advance rather than writing and posting them on the scheduled day late in the day or letting the topic slip) on my own blog before committing to writing for some other blog. Unless the topic was something for which I could reuse material I've already posted.
Hosting, on the other hand, certainly; if I were caught up or ahead on my own blog, I could just make space in the schedule for a guest post, and as I'm not caught up there's space.

Nod. That was once my problem ... no longer!

If HW had such a "planet," I presume it would include the HW blog among the blogs it aggregated.

Most blog readers have the ability to filter out duplicate posts, and for reading on the site itself it's possible to just scroll past any posts one has already read.


The trouble with that is that the author has to remember to update the thread.