Maybe you, like lots of bloggers, think your site contains enough content—or good enough content—to produce a book. And maybe your blog posts could be turned into a book (or “blook,” as they are called sometimes). Before you go to the time, trouble and expense of “booking your blog,” first evaluate if your blog deserves to become a book.
The following list provides 11 indicators that your blog, or blog content, has what it takes to become a book. The more indicators you can check off the list, the higher the likelihood that you can turn your blog into not just a book but a successful book.
- You have a reasonable amount of unique visitors per day. Your blog readership could be 100 per day or 1,000 per day depending upon the size of your market or your category. (That means you need to know your market and blog and book category.)
- You have a large target market. If there aren’t enough potential buyers for your book, you won’t sell many copies. Often the size of your blog readership indicates the size of your potential book readership/buyership. But you need to know your market so you can target it.
- You blog is unique. Just like a book must be unique and necessary in its category, your blog also most stand out from the pack in the blogosphere—especially from similar blogs. If it does, a high likelihood exists that your blog content is unique as well.
- Your blog content is unique compared to existing books. It’s one thing to publish unique content on the Internet. It’s quite another to do so in the bookstore. You need to know the book you produce from your blog will be necessary for the bookstore category in which it will be sold. To know this, you need to conduct a competitive analysis.
The blog content you plan to turn into a book targets the needs and wants of your target market. If you content answers readers’ questions, solves their problems, eases their pain, or transforms their lives, you’ve got content worthy of turning into a book (unless someone else has written the exact same book).- You have engaged blog readers. Not every blog has readers who comment, and some bloggers have turned off the comment function. But your posts should get shared by your readers.
- Your blog serves a purpose or a niche. Sometimes a blog is successful by sheer virtue of the fact that it fills a need for a small niche market. If that’s the case for your blog, your content might be well-received as a book.
- Your focused your posts on one topic. If you have spent the last three years blogging about a variety of topics, you may not have enough content for a book on ONE topic. However, if you have blogged in a focused and consistent manner, you likely have produced a huge amount of content you can repurpose.
- Your posts fit into the structure of the BEST book you can imagine writing. The only way to produce a book that sells is to create a marketable book idea with a sound structure. If you can do that and then find on your blog the necessary content for your manuscript, you are well on your way to producing a successful book.
- Your blog posts go viral. If your content gets shared on a huge scale on a regular basis, you are on to something!
- You have a strong platform. If you have built a large and/or engaged following on your blog and on social media, including a sizable mailing and subscriber list, you are well set up to promote a book. Plus, you’ve proved in a variety of ways that people are interested in you and your work.
If you feel your blog deserves to become a book and that book would be marketable, purchase a copy of How to Blog a Book Revised and Expanded Edition to learn the best strategies and processes for producing a book from your blog. It contains an entire new chapter on booking blogs.
Thank you for detailed instruction on how to make a book for bloggers. But I`m not sure that people who can find the information in my blog, will buy a book. I tried to publish my blog posts in different magazines, but every time I asked http://www.essaypenguins.com for editing it to change some sentences or even paragraphs, because the readers of a magazine are not the readers of my blog: there are people with other interests and habits.
Elizabeth,
There is a plan for blogging a book so you have some new material for the final product. Blog readers DO buy blogged books and booked blogs; that’s why so many of them exist and why agents and publishers like them.
Of course, you need to edit and revise if the audience is different. And your book–or an article–can’t read like a blog post. These are different content formats.
There are lot to consider if you wanted to convert your blog into a book, I like the points and must-have that you’ve shared Nina, these are things that a blog should have to qualify. I agree that being viral is a factor because it attracts audience as well as your target market.
Most posts or blogs never go viral, though, John. The other points are much more important in general.