Apparently blogging is the New Big Thing in the publishing world. I'm working with my literary agent in NYC on a proposal for a new book I'm writing--a relationship memoir written in a humorous style. The proposal is written and pretty much ready to go out to editors, but now my agent has told me that I'll need to create (1) a Web site for the book and (2) a blog as part of the book's promotional campaign because, well, every new author is expected to have a book Web site and a blog. I'm not altogether sure how I feel about this. I don't really mind creating the Web site or blogging. But I'm having some feelings of resentment toward the Powers That Be in the publishing world in that I think they're dumping more and more of the responsibilities for promoting/publicizing a book onto the author. They now expect the author to create a Web site for his/her book and to devote the time to blogging--before they even agree to publish the book! So there's really less and less value being placed on the quality of the writing of the book and more and more value placed on the author's willingness to pay to have a site designed and to spend the time and energy to blog. Is that fair?