Linda J. Spielman’s A Field Guide to Tracking Mammals in the Northeast is a wonderful reference tool for the backyard enthusiast or the back-to-the-woods survivalist. Countryman Press published her book on July 4 and her distributor W.W. Norton sent a copy I donated to a Little Free Library here in Appleton, Wisconsin. Little Free Libraries began in Wisconsin and grew into a global movement based on a simple premise: take a book, leave a book. Now a nonprofit organization, Little Free Libraries, inspires a love of reading, build community, and spark creativity by fostering neighborhood book exchanges. Here in Appleton there are hundreds of Little Free Libraries scattered across many neighborhoods. There is a new one on Winona Way where I used to live. Across from City Park, there’s one that looks exactly like the house it sits in front of in the historic district. Most elementary schools have one on the playground or near the main entrance. They’re everywhere. Recently I stopped at the Little Free Library on Pacific Street to leave a new copy of Linda Spielman’s new field guide and took an old paperback edition of Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women. First published in 1952, this comedy of manners is a favorite of mine. The book details the everyday life of a “spinster” in her thirties in 1950s England and her witty spoof on gender relations in a self-deprecating voice with the sharpest wit is something to reread. There is a certain irony in that Linda Spielman reminds me…

Today I welcome Linda J. Spielman as a guest-blogger. Linda is the author of A Field Guide to Tracking Mammals in the Northeast (Countryman Press/W.W. Norton). Now that snow is in the forecast, it’s a fabulous time to get outside and start tracking wildlife. Linda Spielman shares her experience of finding bobcat tracks with us. You can enter to win a free copy of her new book at Goodreads. The thought of snow gets us trackers very excited. As the season advances from fall to winter, snow becomes more and more likely. Early snow usually doesn’t last very long but while it does, it can be a beautiful medium for recording animal tracks. Such was the case several years ago at my camp in the western foothills of the Adirondacks. When I went to bed it was raining but the temperature fell overnight. When I awoke I found several inches of snow overlying an icy layer of frozen rain.  I eagerly headed out to see what I could find. The walking was easy, and the new snow formed a beautiful–but mostly unmarred–white carpet over everything. I climbed a rocky slope and approached an old log landing. Suddenly there in front of me were the most beautiful bobcat tracks I had ever seen. The snow was just cold enough and shallow enough to make perfect molds of the animal’s feet as it explored a jumble of discarded log sections. The bobcat had walked carefully along the logs, occasionally stepping from one…

Does an author really need to blog? Not necessarily. If you are writing fiction or a children’s storybook, probably not. If you’re writing nonfiction or memoir, probably so. To answer the question, you must ask yourself whether you can reach the audience who will buy your book with a blog. Children rarely make consumer choices about books, but their parents do. Tina L. Peterson wrote a middle-grade novel, Oscar and the Amazing Gravity Repellent. She has a Ph.D. in mass media and communications and is an activist for media literacy. In Media Parentis is where she blogs about smartphones and sleep deprivation, Superbowl Advertising Bingo, and why we need diverse children’s literature. If you have a way to speak to those who buy books like yours, then a blog may be a tool to pull customers to your writing. If you are writing for wildlife naturalists who spend the majority of their time in the field in remote locations like Linda J. Spielman, then you likely don’t need to blog because your customers aren’t likely to be searching online for A Field Guide to Tracking Mammals in the Northeast. But if your book is about a nonfiction subject on which people use search engines to seek out new information, then blogging can be an important instrument in your author’s bag toolkit. Blogging serves two purposes. One, it helps search engines keep your site at the top of the list of hits when someone types in your keywords. Every time you post…