I've decided I want to get a blog going, anonymously at first, until I find my feet and see how I find it and whether I can keep it up.

I won't be selling anything or aiming to attract paid advertising - it will be essentially a non-commercial(non-commercial for me - I understand the blog providers may run ads)personal thoughts type of blog.

A 'speak your brains' type of thing which is really just to keep the writing momentum going, to give me a structure and a disciplined arena.

Have you got a blog? Do you use Blogger or WordPress or some other platform?

I don't want to spend any money except on perhaps, a domain name if required.

Which platform would you recommend and why?

Which is easiest for a beginner?

Do you link it to your own website? Do you need a website or can you just do everything on your blog?

Any tips, moans or just general pieces of wisdom and experience appreciated!

Can't help in an obvious way, as I use TypePad, which is paid for, although it's peanuts - £3-4 a month. For me it's the perfect balance between easy to use, and flexible enough to expand, but everyone does their own equation.

In my experiece, Blogger is drop-dead easy to do, but very limited in what you can do, and WordPress is a lot more awkward but much more powerful and flexible once you get the hang of it.

I don't think you do need a website - a blog these days can act perfectly well as a simple website.

In your place I would buy your domain name, though. Nothing more maddening than having to do something complicated with underscores and "UK" and stuff, because some tiresome stranger has bought johnsmith.com and johnsmith.co.uk before you.

(I have both, but the website is the published awfur - publicity, marketing - and the blog is me and what I'm thinking about today.)

If you ever do get a website you can migrate the blog content, though it's not entirely straightforward, and the risk is that if your blog is linked to from lots of places, and the old Blogger address or whatever goes dead, then lots of people may never find you again, or correct the links.

<Added>

I don't think either Blogger or Wordpress run ads, BTW - TypePad certainly don't.

Thanks Emma. I'd heard Blogger was the easier than Wordpress and I've found that most of the blogs I read are Blogger.

One major blogger I'm familiar with decided to move to Wordpress when she needed a platform that could cope with huge volumes of traffic (not a problem I anticipate for me!) and she wanted a more sophisticated appearance.

I suppose I was also trying to bypass Google and the whole corporate global thing so I may end up going the Wordpress route even if it is more difficult.

I haven't investigated Typepad but will have a look - it seems to work really well with your blog.

I don't know where I got the 'ads' confusion from... always had a vague idea that in exchange for a 'free' blog ... you had to have random ads scrolling down the sides but I can't see it on any of the blogs I follow.

Thanks for the domain tip too ;-)

(not a problem I anticipate for me!)

I know what you mean - on the other hand, I didn't anticipate five and a half years and 500+ posts, and lots of pages and sidebars stuffed with stuff and... And look at it! I'm not a power user by the normal definition but I think I'd be struggling a bit to accommodate even what I do on Blogger.

One thing I do like with TypePad and WordPress is that you get some straightforward stats built in, and I don't think you do with Blogger. I have Google Analytics as well, but never bother to look at it, as I'm mostly just interested in seeing where I've been linked to from.

Hey!
I've been using Scribe (http://wescribe.co), a social network for writers and readers. It's very good because you can easily and freely create a following for yourself and it's also a snap for readers to discover works from new writers.
=)

Just wanted to add that I use Wordpress for my personal blog - take a look around if you so want (writing, family stuff, art etc.).
https://marijasmits.wordpress.com

I do believe that Wordpress has begun to introduce adverts into posts now which is a bit cheeky (they didn't a while ago, but I think they do now - to cover their costs) but you can upgrade with them quite easily, going ad-free I think and getting your own domain (they do the hosting) for a relatively small fee ($18 per year).

For my publishing blog (part of my publishing website) again I use Wordpress but I am thinking of changing the entire website and moving away from Wordpress as it isn't powerful enough (it's not great with ecommerce etc. but that's a whole other story!).
www.mothersmilkbooks.com

It really is worth considering the long-term... i.e. whether your blog will be *just* a blog or actually become a lot more. I like the templates/themes that Wordpress can offer - they look stylish in my opinion and I find it straightforward to use too (and I'm really not that technically minded!).

Good luck with it all, hope you find something you're happy with. 

For what it's worth, I found Wordpress extremely easy to use, as far as I went which was to download short stories, extracts from novels and add the odd media jpg for enhancement. I achieved 140 plus views and four followers in under a month.

At firstI though how impressive, but I do wonder at the value that can be placed on viewing numbers and comments such as 'You are so cool'..

Then was informed, at a recent meeting with someone who has a 'platform' and also two books out on Kindle and Amazon, that anything you publish ie author's work on Wordpress immediately becomes public domain, which might cause problems if a publisher ever became interested in it.

That is the reason that I, following his reccomendation,   (reluctantly) pulled all my stuff off Wordpress and came over to Writewords. He said Writewords is not public domain so subsequent copyright issues should not arise. He also went on to say that anyone wishing to make it as an author should use \writewords or something similar as it has extensive exposure with agents, established authors and publishers.

I would sincerely welcome some confirmation/comment re that last paragraph from anyone in the know.
Edited by BILLINGTON at 09:29:00 on 25 August 2014

Hi Bill, 

Good to see someone else using Wordpress and thinking it relatively easy to use :-)

I'm particularly interested in this:

anything you publish ie author's work on Wordpress immediately becomes public domain,

Can you explain some more about what the author meant when they said that? I know that 'public domain' means different things to different people, but if the implication is that the author no longer holds intellectual property rights to their writing when published in Wordpress I would think that quite worrying. 

I can't really say much about your last paragraph. As a publisher (and writer) I like to be in contact with writers, discussing writing and publishing matters etc. I particularly enjoy reading writers' blogs (when I have a free moment from dealing with an inbox full of submissions that is!) because, in my opinion, a lot of a writer's personality shines through their blog. So if a writer emails me with work I like to see if they have an online presence, and what it's like.

I think WriteWords is a great place, absolutely full of useful information, and great support; if anyone can provide an answer/s to the question of whether it can turn an unpublished author into a published one I'd love to know too! I should imagine the answer is going to be rather complex. 

I think the first thing is to clarify for yourself why you're blogging, beyond the urge we all have to have a reason to work on a piece until it says what we're trying to say, and then get it out there and feel that it's heard.

If it's to build up platform for a selling a non-fiction project (relatively straightforward) then clearly you need content which will attract the kind of readers who might buy the book when you write it and try to sell it either to a publisher, or self-pubbily direct to readers. That content can't help but count as published. But then, blog posts and books are very different creatures, so chances are whatever you put on your blog would need to be substantially re-worked before it got between covers anyway, so that isn't a problem.

If it's to actually get your fiction or poetry out there to be heard, and to establish a readership for that, then it gets more problematic because that writing will count as published. It's still your copyright - up to you what kind of copyright you want to put on it - but it probably does make it ineligible for competitions, magazines, etc. etc. It may not matter if you've got plenty else to use, of course. But it's worth thinking about. And if you're holding back your best stuff, then by definition it'll be second-best stuff on your blog, which isn't ideal.

If it's to network and generally find a toe-hold in the writerly world and/or the book industry, then blogs, these days, aren't the best way to do it. Twitter and FB work and perhaps Tumblr work much better, because that's where the conversations go on. On the other hand, it's a good thing for anyone you get in touch with by those means have somewhere to go when they get interested in you, as it were, and vice versa.

If what you want is feedback on your work, support for your writing life, and the sharing of information and advice and so on, then places like WriteWords are ideal. You get the sense of your writing being heard, but because work you post can be restricted to Members Only, it doesn't count as published. And the forums are designed for conversation and interaction in the way that blog-comment-trails aren't, really.
Edited by EmmaD at 19:59:00 on 25 August 2014

Dear Emma D,

That last bit you wrote about material published in Writewords .....'because your work can be restricted to members only it doesn't count as published'.

My concern and question  has been, where Wordpress is concerned, is your (my) work in the public domain?

It seems to me as though it is.

And that being so, it's public property beyond protection of anyone copying and paqssing it off as theirs.

Brgds

Billington.

I took the guy to mean if somebody copies what you write on Wordpress and passes it off as their own there's nothing you can do about it, because it's 'Public Domain', whereas if you write on a site such as Writewords, where you have to pay for it, then it's behind a 'Paywall' and not 'In the public domain.'
So your future rights can be safeguarded.

Emma D appears to confirm this, but I would like to be sure

Put it this way;

I, you or anyone posts on Writewords and some agent likes it, goes for it.

Can you legally enjoy copyright protection as it has already appeared on Writewords?

Ask the same question anbout Wordpress. What's the answer? It seems to me that there must be somebody around the Writewords site who can give a correct answer, without going and spending money on some publishing law expert.

See my reply to you two posts below, I hit the wrong button.

many thanks for the interest and the reply.

You describe yourself as an author and publisher. 

May I ask whether you have ever heard og 'greenshore publishing'?

The reason I ask is they have just accepted , by e mail, a novel I submitted for publishing, but their 'publishing contract' PDF will not dpwnload. I am, accordingly, a touch skeptical about their bonafides.


Kind regards,

Billington.

Hi Billington, 

From a quick look at Greenshore Publishing's website I can see that they have 'publishing packages' on offer for a fee. Ranging from £300 to £1500. A traditional (or indy) publisher does not charge to publish an author's books. 

I will try to write more about the public domain thing later, but I have sandwiches to make and a YouTube video promoting one of my author's books to finish (as well as making sure my daughter gets some sleep tonight!). It's all go around here ;-)

Dear Teika,

Thanks for that. Greenshore Publishing appears to be a 'Vanity Publishing' organisation whose wording to prospective authors  leads them to suppose that Greenshore will publish at their own expense. That is not so.

Enough said about Greenshore, apart from the fact that anybody contacted by them should google them up and read the various posts.
Read below my reply to their e mail. My reply comes first, as that is how I've copied it from my hotmail page.

I couldn't download their 'Publishing Agreement' PDF, which reinforced my earlier suspicions, about them QUOTE:
'Accepting my work for publication with their company'.

Billington, you own copyright in your work the minute you put the words down, and whether it's readable by the whole world on the net, or only by your mum in your house, doesn't make any difference. It's still your intellectual property, and anyone who uses it (subject to some quite small exceptions) is guilty of theft. This is a good summary of your basic rights:

http://www.societyofauthors.org/sites/default/files/Guide%20to%20Copyright%20and%20Moral%20Rights_0.pdf

The only difference between freely visible or behind a paywall is that something visible to the world at large could be defined as "being published" for the purposes of a competition or a magazine which wants to be sure that it only publishes work which has never been published before.

It's not necessary to garland your work with copyright symbols and stuff - it's copyright anyway - but you can, to remind the ignorant or light-fingered that this is your property. One possibility, if you're happy for your work to be used within certain guidelines, is to use a Creative Commons licence: http://creativecommons.org/

If you published your whole novel (in instalments, presumably) on a blog or website, then most publishers wouldn't then be interested. But otherwise - some tasters, some teasers ... why not? On the other hand, as you can't copyright an idea, but only the words it's expressed in, it might be a good idea not to publish enough of a novel that your killer idea of making a failed vice-presidential candidate from Alaska become a barking lunatic and succeed in taking over the Republican party ... Oh, well, that one's been overtaken by real life ;) anyway.

As well as that Quick Guide, the Society of Authors has various more detailed guides you can download or buy:

http://www.societyofauthors.org/guides-and-articles
Edited by EmmaD at 08:59:00 on 26 August 2014
Edited by EmmaD at 09:41:00 on 26 August 2014