Using my amazing telepathic powers, I recently intercepted another covert transmission, on a sub-aetheric frequency hitherto unknown to mankind, from the Secret Masters of the Blogosphere to their armies of Blog Zombies! Of course, I set to decrypting the transmission immediately.

So here it is, exclusive to this website! Leaked extracts from 'OUR ENEMIES MUST DIE SO THAT WE MIGHT LIVE!' the manual of the Secret Masters of the Blogosphere.

"Top Tips for Self Promotion

When it comes to your blog, quality doesn't count. Write, write and write again, then write some more. Then add some more on top of that. Your readers want to know what you're doing every hour of every day. Marital problems? Let them know. Pissing blood? Even better. Been to a convention in Japan? Fantastic, especially if you get in some mention of those funny Japanese customs and how polite everyone is. (Bullet train anecdote obligatory.)
What's that? You're worried that all this blogging will affect your 'real' writing? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
That's right. When it comes to your fiction, quality doesn't count. Marketing does. Volume is all. Fill that market place with your voice and drown out everybody else's.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of foolish minds, especially when this would prevent you from doing something you find delightful. Scream like a spoilt brat in the supermarket when someone violates your rights by accidentally taking your work offline, then blub like Gwyneth Paltrow when you're caught pirating Ursula Le Guin's work.
The blog is there to add value to the reader's experience. Fortunately, 'value' varies greatly from individual to individual. There are 19 billion people (give or take) on the internet. We're talking mass market here, so aim for the lowest common denominator. Once again, keep up those postings about your toilet habits etc. Remember, the stupidest people in the world are also the most gullible, and they're your target market.
Information is power, so never ever give out any real sales figures for your work. When people ask you how your sales are going, refer instead to 'printings', 'Amazon ranking', or 'downloads', all of which could mean anything, from a million paying sales to none. Perception is everything. Facts are nothing.
Every religion, cult of personality or ideology needs its own scapegoat for anything bad that happens, so pick yours carefully. We recommend Dr Andrew Berk of the SFWG [Speculative Fantabulation Workers' Guild]. He spends so much time helping hundreds of people to be creative through his Critiquers' site, that he doesn't have time to defend himself adequately. We don't have that problem, thankfully. Ha ha ha ha ha!
You must find some way to distinguish yourself from your competitors, especially if you have no real talent to start with. For this reason, you must find your own publishing ideology that you can use as your Unique Selling Point (USP). At the moment, the most popular ideologies/USPs are free downloads, the release of your work under an UnCreative Commons License and similar. Dumb suckers lap up this sort of thing, even if none of it makes any sense in the long term, and you can build your whole career from spouting this gibberish. Remember, ideology is only useful for marketing, and is not to be taken seriously. When the next business model or distribution paradigm comes along, feel free to jump on that new bandwagon.
Find your own voice, but whatever voice it is, make sure it's contentious. Pompous and sarcastic work best. 'Self-important' is an oldie but a goodie.
Furthermore, when you've found your own voice BE QUICK TO TAKE OFFENCE! Has someone taken your work off the web by accident? Has the SFWG ignored some of your recommendations regarding epiracy? SHOUT AS LOUDLY AS YOU CAN. Don't bother querying the people you're annoyed at directly - that prevents you from creating a big fuss, and you certainly don't want to miss this chance to get your name out there in front of the public. Instead wait until a couple of days have passed and you learn the truth. That way you can appear magnanimous by issuing a fulsome apology on your blog. So what if a few independently minded people think you're a dickwad? Your target audience is too stupid to realise what a jerk you've been.
The principle here is to sling as much mud as you can in all directions. If your competitors are covered in it but the audience can see you standing there unsullied, your face shining brightly in all its righteous innocence, well, whose book do you think the audience will buy next? Too damn right, it'll be yours!

Finally, remember our most important guideline: if the eyes are the windows of the soul, then the browser is the door to the bank vault. Keep those readers' eyes on your blog and the cash pouring in to your account.

And above all else - SELL, SELL, SELL!

BONUS:
'Our Enemies Must Die So That We Might Live!' the manual of the Secret Masters of the Blogosphere is now available as a download from TSMOTB.com under an UnCreative Commons Licence. Coming soon in podcast form in a variety of languages, thanks to all those wonderful suckers, sorry UnCreative Commoners and Blog Zombies, out there who will toil away at all hours of the day and night to produce it in these many, many formats at no expense to us. We love you all. But you can't have any of the money. We're keeping that. Every cent of it.

The manual is only available in Anti-DRM format and so can only be read on the following platforms: Buggy KDGnomE-TLA-Gibberish-Linux, MoreTimeThanSense OS, Parallel World BSD, 2BeOrNot2BeOs, Apple-We-Hate-Them-These-Days-OS XII, and Windows 3.1.

As a special feature, our download process will remove the latest versions of Windows from your system and will instead install one of the aforementioned operating systems. Because of our anti-DRM ethos, the new system will not allow you to read any content that comes with DRM. We're confident that once you try it, you'll be happy to be locked in to our Anti-DRM system.

Support (when you inevitably require it) is available from a pair of hairy-assed geeks called 'WolfCreek' and 'H@ckman', at a randomly changing website, using a language that closely approximates but is not quite English.

Welcome to the Open Content Movement!"

Lucian: There was much more to this transmission that I don't have room for here. Extracts to follow include:

E-Pirates: Your Best Mates?
Expunging Your Work of Original Ideas
Trendy Is As Trendy Does

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