An 8-Point Blog-a-Book Checklist

I’ve been touting the benefits of blogging a book for five years. I’ve written about the process over and over again here and on other sites. I even revised and expanded How to Blog a Book. And I’ve blogged several more books.

Hopefully, you’ve decided to blog your book. I realize that, even though the process inherently breaks writing a book into smaller pieces so you don’t feel so overwhelmed, you might still think blogging a book might be difficult or complicated. After all, it involves technology. Sometimes checklists alleviate that feeling—or at least make the task easier. You just follow the checklist step by step, and, before you know it, you’re done.

To make your blog-a-book process easier, here’s an eight-point blog-a-book checklist. It includes the major steps you need to accomplish as you write, publish and promote your book on the Internet.

1. Brainstorm ideas.
2. Create a business plan for your book to help determine the marketability of your idea.
   • Write a 50–1000 word pitch.
   • Craft a brief summary of your idea.
   • Make a list of reader benefits.
   • Conduct a competitive analysis (include books and blogs).
   • Conduct a market analysis.
   • Brainstorm content.
   • Create a table of contents that reflects a unique and necessary book in a particular bookstore category and huge benefit to your readers.
   • Write chapter summaries.
3. Break your content down into post-sized bits—5 to 15 (or more) posts per chapter.
4. Determine what content will remain unpublished (not included on your blog but retained for use as new content in the finished book).
5. Create a WordPress.org blog
   • Choose a hosting company and pay for hosting.
   • Have your blog designed or design it yourself.
   • Choose an email marketing service that will deliver your posts to subscribers and where you can build a mailing list.
   • Craft a call-to-action: a free item to attract readers to your email list.
   • Install appropriate widgets and plugins.
   • Register for Google Analytics and install this on your blog.
   • Create a page to host the table of contents for your blogged book.
6. Determine how many posts you need to write per week to blog your book by your deadline.
7. Make a blog plan and schedule.
8. Start blogging your book!

Follow this checklist and you’ll be well on your way to a blogged book.

There are many smaller details that could be on this checklist. I’ve included the ones I feel are most important or represent landmarks in the process.

Of course, once you finish blogging your book, you need to publish it! That’s a different process.

Read the NEW revised and expanded edition of How to Blog a Book to learn more about how to blog your book so you can write, publish and promote at the same time and even become a blogpreneur.