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In search of the online Tolkien community

© Michael Martinez

I recently looked at the Web site of an Internet PR expert who helps companies and individuals announce their Web sites. His explanation of his methods answered some questions I've long been asking, such as, whenever a news article/columnist mentions a specific Web site, how does the reporter or columnist find out about the Web site in the first place? Apparently several of these PR experts maintain mailing lists the reporters, editors and columnists subscribe to. They send out brief announcements, like "X has just (re)launched (url address)." The media people take it from there. Sure, some of the big guys go out and SEARCH the Web. Harry Knowles, the king of online film industry gossips, browses the Web looking for interesting new sites. He helped to propel The One Ring.Net to popularity simply by recommending the site. A mention in the media helps tremendously. I know, I've had a few mentions myself. Rolling Stone magazine in Australia profiled one of the Xenite.Org's Web sites and interviewed Dixie Harrison, the Webmistress for the site. (Yes, I have help.) That same site, Xena Online Resources, was also listed in Nikki Stafford's book, Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor: Warrior Stars of Xena, as "the #1 Xena page on the Web." Fans simply cannot buy publicity like that. If it weren't for the media, most people would probably never know these Web sites exist. I announce Xenite.Org Web sites to news groups on a regular basis. I include the URL for Xenite.Org in my .sig files for email and news groups. I submit my sites to search engines. We've won some nice awards (recently, one of our sites was given a "Best of Web" award from Britannica.Com). But even today, with nearly 300,000,000 people on the Internet, you're only going to reach a small percentage of people with these announcements. And most of us don't have $2,000,000 to run Superbowl ads. But you'd think, as popular as J.R.R. Tolkien is, there would be a lot of people running around with Tolkien Web sites, and even more people looking for those Web sites. For every Webmaster there are probably five to 10 people who love that Web site's topic enough to be continually on the lookout for more content and discussion. So, if there are 1,000 Tolkien Web sites, there are 5-10,000 people constantly searching for them. I and a few other people have tried to estimate how many people read the Tolkien news groups alt.fan.tolkien and rec.arts.books.tolkien. There are other Tolkien groups, but these are the two most well-known and propagated groups. When they are busy, as many as 300 people may post to them in a one to two week period. Estimates I've come across suggest that for every person who posts a message to a news group, there are as many as 10 or 20 who just read. So, in any given week, as many as 3,000 people may be reading the Tolkien news groups.

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