The popularity of blogs has soared in the last few years.  There are now over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, a popular blog search engine.  According to demographics collected by the Pew Internet Study, blogs have become mainstream and represent virtually every audience and topic area.

You can use blogs to develop an audience for your work, promote your book, communicate directly with your readers, help develop your writing skills and provide an opportunity to obtain feedback on book ideas, and offer contests and other incentives to purchase books.

Several services provide free blog space and templates including Blogger and Wordpress.  By following the simple instructions, an author can have a personalized blog set up and running in less than an hour.

So start blogging!