Blogs are alive and well as part of book promotion campaigns.

You want people to know about your book Web site, so you need to drive traffic to your book Web site. It's part of your book promotion strategy.

That's why blogging has been part of your book promotion strategy for so long. You blog, and -- assuming your blog lives on the Web site for your book -- visitors (and potential book buyers) come to your site.

But with the rise of social networking venues such as Twitter and Facebook, has blogging become irrelevant to a publicity campaign? No, according to the pundits at Webpronews. In fact, the writer Chris Crum cited the case of Alice.com which sells household goods directly to consumers and bypasses retailers as an example of a site whose traffic comes primarily through the word-of-mouth created by bloggers.

Granted, Alice.com isn't a book Web site, and household goods don't include books. However, the principle still applies: blogging creates buzz, and creating buzz is the goal of every book publicity campaign.

So if you're tempted to switch from blogging to micro-blogging, wait awhile. The time may come when distilling your messages to 140 characters is the only way to go ... but that time isn't here yet.