I attended the Harriette Austin Writers Conference last weekend–had a blast visiting with friends–and I picked up some bits of news of interest to book bloggers.

The workshop was on what authors need to do to survive, and hopefully thrive, in this tough marketplace. And one of the things the presenter thought they needed to do was to have a strong web presence.

To support her theory, she threw out some stats that, frankly, shocked me.

If you click on this link and go to slides four-seven, you will see some interesting figures. In slide four, check out the online advertising figures for seven major publishers.

If you go to the bottom of that chart you will see that buyers of adult books are made aware of the books they buy, most often through bookstore real estate. Those front tables and end caps are purchased by publishers at a pretty hefty price. And it seems to be a good plan for those publishers to keep paying for those displays. They sell books.

But now go up and look at the advertising section. Note that online advertising is worth more than TV, radio, and newspaper advertising combined.

Now compare the lines that say Book review (not online) and Online: book review. Does anyone else find this interesting?

Now look at one more line. Recommendation from a friend.

We book bloggers are in a position to sell books. Our blog visitors are our friends. Publishers want us to review and recommend their books.

Lately there has been a lot of rumbling in the kidlitosphere about bloggers getting paid to review books and about blog tours and blog promotions hurting sales rather than helping them. I’m going to post some more thoughts on some of this over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, look at the next three slides on that slide show I linked to above and then answer me one question–if you were a publisher and Natasha Maw offered you a targeted banner ad to run on her blog, would you buy it? Go look at Natasha’s website grade and consider her traffic. Look at her content and read her comments.

Publishers have shrinking marketing budgets. They are going to start looking at stats and comments and targeting their online dollars more carefully. No blogger needs to worry about that. If you don’t want to spend the time on your blog that Natasha spends on hers, no one is going to make you. If the publishers stop sending you books to review, you can still buy books to blog about or get them from the library. There is nothing wrong with just having fun and fellowship discussing books with other book lovers.

But if you build a following like Natasha’s, and if you want to sell advertising, who should complain about that?

Why should PW be allowed to sell advertising space to publishers while bloggers are looked down upon for doing the same thing? Why should bloggers be accused of lying in their reviews if they sell advertising to publishers?