How to Blog a Book

If you are still sitting on the fence about whether or not blogging your way to a book deal is a good idea. Consider this. You don’t necessarily have to blog your whole book to get a book deal. (I still, say, “Why not if you are already going to the trouble of blogging every day or several times a week? Why not put that time to good use?”) You don’t even have to do any of the things I’ve suggested; many bloggers have gotten book deals without even trying. (But my methodology will surely help.)

Think about blogging about your expertise (with a book in the back of your mind—or not). For instance, www.Blogher.com Contributing Editor Susan Getgood’s book deal was the result of her social media expertise, which she blogged about for many years and quit often. She also built a platform speaking about this topic. She is the author of the forthcoming Professional Blogging for Dummies. Her book, Professional Blogging for Dummies was released by Wiley in July 2010.

Consider simply going back to blogging’s early roots and blogging in a unique way about your life or some aspect of it that interests other people. Less current maybe but worth a visit to the blog even now is Zoe McCarthy’s My Boyfriend is a Twat, which got a book deal back in 2007. She calls the book, with the same name as her blog, “[A] glorious celebration of living with a complete twat of a boyfriend. Sensibly categorized and filled with observations and recommendations, this is the ultimate field guide to that most irritating of the species, the Twat.”

McCarthy simply wrote about her annoying (actually rather average) boyfriend—after he dared her to do so—and her life raising children and working as an office manager. Her online diary, written from her home in Brussels, became cult reading for thousands of frustrated wives and girlfriends—and now book readers.

With millions of hits and several European Bloggies, her book deal was a natural progression from her blog. Billed as “an affectionate guide to spotting, dealing and living with a twat, aka the average English bloke,” My Boyfriend is a Twat was published by the Friday Project.

By the way, the boyfriend, Andy Carling, was happy about the blog and the book deal. McCarthy, the daughter of a diplomat, is twice divorced and has three children. She met Carling, a conservationist, in 2001.

Ready her blog. You might get inspired. Or read her list of donations (Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie)…or anything else on her site…like her bio…just for fun. Read it if you decide not to write your blog; it will give you something interesting to do. She’s a hoot.

There are more…I’ll write about them next time. In the meantime. Consider blogging your book—or at least start blogging and building a readership.

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Sometimes one blog posts is all it takes to get you noticed by readers, other bloggers, radio show hosts, agents and, ultimately, a publisher. That’s how it worked for award-winning author Patricia V. Davis anyway—and it can work the same way for you.

She wrote one blog post that went viral, grabbing the attention of agents and publishers and now she has a brand new book deal.

Davis, the author of Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss and Greece, wrote a blog post called “From an Older Woman to a Younger One” to support and encourage a 21-year-old reader of hers. That post (also titled on some sites, “Ten Things I’d Tell My Younger Self”) struck a chord with many people. Within weeks, hundreds of other blogs picked it up, and eventually the producers of the nationally syndicated radio program Your Time with Kim Iverson asked Davis to appear on the show to read her post. The day after the program aired, dozens of listeners befriended Davis on Facebook and retweeted the post.

Not surprisingly, this attracted the attention of a literary agent, who asked Davis if she’d be interested in expanding the post into a book. That book, The Diva Doctrine, was picked up by Cedar Fort, and will be published in 2011.

So, while I encourage writers to blog a whole book in the hope of getting discovered, here’s an example of how one really great post can accomplish that feat. So, at least blog if you don’t blog a book!

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I came across an interesting blog post not long ago and bookmarked it. I also left a comment. If you are considering blogging a book, you might want to read it–just to get a different perspective than mine. It’s written by Joel Friedlander, the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, in San Rafael, CA. Joel is a book designer, a self-published author, and blogs at TheBookDesigner.com. He has been a guest blogger for me on Write Nonfiction NOW!

He offers five reasons why you shouldn’t blog a book, including:

1. Blogging is specialized writing
2. Blogging needs lots of formatting
3. Blogs are mostly written in either a commercial or a journalistic style
4. Blogs are about communication
5. Blogs need a schedule

You can read read his post here.

Joel brought up some good arguments in his post. However, I would say that if you go through the nonfiction book proposal process first to see if your book is worthy of being blogged, and then you set out with the intention of blogging a book to create an audience and attract attention and get that book written, you’ve negated many of his reasons for not blogging a book. Plus, if you edit your manuscript to rid it of blog-like formatting and overly blog-like style–and then hire a professional editor to polish it up, you’ll have a manuscript that reads well enough for a traditional publisher or for you to independently publish without fear of turning away readers.

So, I say, keep on blogging those books. But take Joel’s words of caution to heart.

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I’ve been asked the same question several times: If someone blogs a book—actually composes it in the form of blog posts they publish on the Internet—do they need to worry about a copyright for that blogged book. The question has been asked about blog copy in general as well.

Previously, I’ve offered a general answer: As the blogger, when you hit the “publish” button, you basically copyright the material by becoming its publisher and publishing it.

In fact, my answer was correct. I just didn’t offer you the background material to go with it. I’d like to do that now. Under the Copyright law of 1976, which went into affect in 1978, any work created in a fixed form is protected by copyright upon creation. That means that when a work is put into any fixed form—printed out from your home laser jet printer, published as an e-book, booklet or POD book, or sent into Cyberspace as a blog post, your written work is protected by copyright. Thus, completed and published blog post, or all the posts that comprise a blogged book, comprise written works created in fixed form and are protected by copyright.

This information comes straight from a copyright attorney. I asked another literary attorney as well, who advised that writers always print out their work. That means, as a precaution, simply print out your blog posts before actually posting them on the Internet.

The so-called “Poor-man’s Copyright,” putting your work in an envelope and mailing it to yourself, only serves to prove when you wrote something not that you wrote it.  However, it can be a handy piece of evidence should you need it, I’m told by the copyright attorney.  As he said, it’s useful but not terribly essential.

And actually filing our work with the copyright office can be a royal pain in the rear if you produce a lot of writing, such as daily blog posts. If you want to sue someone for infringement and collect damages, if you worry about being infringed, or if you ever want to bring a lawsuit against someone for infringement and want to collect money, having a document that says you own the copyright to your work certainly can be a useful.

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Some of the blogs that have become books have involved little writing—or almost none at all. A recent pick involves awkward family photos with short pithy captions. That’s it.

Mike Bender and Doug Chernack turned embarrassing family snapshots into a booming Internet industry—and now a book. First they took photos that used to gather dust in the back of family albums and put them into an online album. Now they’re giving the world a chance to chuckle at them on the printed page.

The L.A.-based screenwriters turned AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com into one of the biggest hits on the Internet. The blog garners 15 million people a month visiting to leaf through photos of families they don’t even know. And now their book, Awkward Family Photos, made the New York Times best-seller list.

These bloggers new they had a hit from the start, though. Within days of launching, the website crashed from too many photo submissions. They receive some 6,000 admissions glasses glory.

If they can do this simply with photos and captions, you can do it with some great copy. You just need a super idea to go with it and some really good niche marketing.

To read more about this blog-to-book, click here.

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A while back I mentioned an awesome blog I found that was turned into a book. This blog goes to show that anyone can find something about their life to blog about–or about which to blog a book.

Neil Pasricha

During the worst year of his life, Canadian Neil Pasricha decided to try to focus on the positive and come up with 1000 simple, free, awesome things most people take for granted, posting one each day on a blog 1000awesomethings.com. Pasricha, 30, who works in human resources in Toronto, won two Webby awards, known as “the Oscars of the Internet,” at the same time that his marriage broke up and one of his closest friends committed suicide. Yet, he kept on finding little things that he found awesome…like putting on underwear hot from the drier, the moment when you unravel the knot in a necklace, finding change in your pocket, and a new checkout lane opening up at the grocery store.

The Book of Awesome, published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam April 15, 2010, contains 200 of his awesome things.

Wow. What an awesome idea! And what an awesome practice. I’m going to start looking for awesome things in my life every day–or more awesome books to blog.

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This actually brings us to the end of this blogged book. Amazingly, I began blogging in February and I have completed the whole book before the end of June—just five months later. I do have some additional material I plan to add to the physical printed book, but I do not intend to ever place that in the blogged version.

So, what happens to this blogged book now? You will find occasional posts here about blogs that have become books. You will find information pertinent to books being blogged or how to blog books that I come across and feel I want to share with my readers. This information may also get incorporated into the physical book.

You may also find me creating information products into the mix, if I have the time or energy to do so. I’m a firm believer in creating a business around a book.

This blog will, indeed, also become a physical book. My agent likely will peddle it after she finishes trying to sell my current book. If nothing happens with it, I will produce it as an e-book.

So, keep watching the blog for additional posts, which will be fewer and farther between, and for notices of new products and services.

Until then, I’m patting myself on the back for finishing a book—23,076 words—in five months. As I said at the beginning of this blogged book, that’s a good enough reason in and of itself to blog a book—you get your book written.

With that in mind, I hope you will sit down and start blogging your book. Let me know when you’ve finished yours. I’ll create a resource page of people who have followed the advice in these blogged pages and finished a blogged book.

Good luck and happy blogged book writing!

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When you finish blogging your book, consider writing short posts to promote new information products you create related to your book. Information products, such as special reports, videos, recordings (mp3s, CDs or DVDs), e-books, workbooks, teleseminars, webinars, home study courses, or on-line courses can provide great income sources.

Your book shouldn’t be your only source of income; if it is, you might fin find yourself in the poorhouse. Therefore, use your blogged book to create multiple streams of income.

Look at your manuscript and see what parts of it could be expanded into information products you could sell. You can create a page on your blog site or on your website with a shopping cart so readers or visitors can purchase these items at any time and download them. You may need to sign up for a service like www.aweber.com. This allows an auto-responder to send the purchased items immediately.

You might also provide these free as a way to entice people to sign up for your mailing list. For example, you can offer a free e-book or special report if they agree to be on your mailing list.

In either case, don’t consider your blogged book as your only or last bit of written copy. See it as your first and as a constant source of continuing information and income. Consider it the kernel of a total business.

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Okay, so you’re a traditional publishing holdout, and this blogged book exercise managed to get you to write your whole manuscript but didn’t get you discovered. Now it’s time to get that proposal written and approach an agent or a small to mid-sized publisher.

In this case, you must do two things: write a fabulous query and write a phenomenal proposal. A query letter contains three things: a lead paragraph that entices an agent or publisher to want to read your manuscript, your pitch plus information about the length of your book and any special features, and why you are the perfect person to write the book.  The proposal contains the nine essential elements a publisher will use to determine if your book fits their list, if they feel a market exists for the book and if they feel you are both the right person to write the book and the best person to become their business partner. To learn about these elements, go back and read the earlier posts about the sections of a nonfiction book proposal. You can find the first one here; subsequent ones follow.

Put your book proposal together and have it professionally edited. The nonfiction book proposal represents the most important selling document you will ever create. They say you only have one chance to make a first impressions; that holds true when pitching a book. Let a professional help you make the best first impression possible. Make every word count and present an error-free document. Also, be sure that the editor you choose knows what goes into a nonfiction book proposal. Don’t just use any editor.

Also have your query letter professionally edited and proofread.

Then send out the query letter to agents and publishers. Large publishing houses typically only want agented submissions. You can submit to small and some mid-sized publishers without an agent.

Once you get a positive response from an agent or publisher, you can send in your proposal with a cover letter.

Check publisher’s and agent’s submission guidelines. For submission guidelines or to find agents and publishers, check Writer’s Market or Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents.

Don’t give up if you are rejected many times. Even the best authors have been rejected hundreds of times. I’ve heard this advice: When you get a rejection letter, just say, “Next.” Or say, “I must have sent that query to the wrong address. Next time I’ll send it to the right address.”

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If you don’t want to go to much expense, you can simply convert your blogged book to an e-book yourself and sell it from your blog site or from a website. This doesn’t make it available on e-readers. It does, however, create an information product from which you can earn money.

Creating this type of e-book is pretty simple. You do need some design savvy, though. You must create an e-book that looks nice and has some decent graphics, especially if you plan to charge a fair amount for the book. After that, you need only get yourself a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional. Save your finished manuscript as a secure PDF, and you are ready to sell it.

Many people ask if this PDF needs to be password protected. You can do that if you like. I’ve never yet purchased one that was. Most people treat these just like books, which are purchased and then lent out if they are well liked.

If you want to create an e-book that is ready for most e-readers, try the service offered by Fastpencil.com, which claims to create e-books for ALL e-readers. You also can try Smashwords.com. You can format your book for the Amazon Kindle here.

If you are still wishing for that traditional contract, check in next time for more information on pursuing a traditional publishing contract.

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