Why You Need a Business Plan For Your Book (Before You Blog It)

Historically, the majority of blog-to-book deals have been booked blogs. That means the blogger didn’t plan out a book and write it on the blog. When the blog became successful, a publisher asked the blogger to repurpose the blog into a book manuscript. Not only that, most bloggers don’t plan out their blogs. They just decide to start blogging.

If you want to succeed in the blogging and publishing worlds, begin with a business plan. Create a business plan before you write or publish your first post. The foundation I use to produce a business plan for a book logically comes from the publishing world. I use a book proposal. That’s why in How to Blog a Book and on this blog I call this planning stage the “proposal process.” In my new book, The Author’s Training Manual (Writer’s Digest Books, Feb. 2014), I elaborate on this process and rename it the Author Training Process, because writing a business plan for your book trains you to become a successful author. It helps you think like a publishing professional, and they think like business people.

Publishers are concerned with selling books. To do that, you need a marketable, or salable, book. Whether you blog fiction or nonfiction, and whether you plan to self-publish or traditionally publish your blogged book, a business plan helps you produce a marketable book (and blog)—one that attracts readers. That means you will later be able to sell your book (to readers and to a publisher) and to monetize your blog.

Think Like a Business Person

Not only that, creating a business plan before you write a word of your manuscript and publish it on your blog (or anywhere else) trains you to think like a business person. You need that mindset if you plan to help your book succeed through the creation, publication and promotion stages—on your blog or off.

After all, you want to blog a book that attracts readers to your blog and, later, to your ebook or printed book. You don’t want to blog a book that no one ever buys, which means no one ever reads.

You Need a Business Plan for Your Book

Here are eight reasons to create a business plan for your blogged book using the proposal, or Author Training, process:

• Reason #1: You can find out if you know what your book is about and why someone would want to read (buy) it.
• Reason #2: You can analyze how many people really might buy your book.
• Reason #3: You can discover if your idea is unique and necessary.
• Reason #4: You can examine the structure for your book and see if it is sound.
• Reason #5: You can decide if your book’s content matches your initial vision of your book.
• Reason #6: You can rate your ability to create a brand and become an authorpreneur.
• Reason #7: You can weigh whether you are the best person to write your book and decide on the best time to publish.
• Reason #8: You can gauge if you make a good publishing partner or indie publisher.

Evaluate Your Book for Success

As you can see, when you go to the time and trouble of creating a business plan for your blogged book, you actually go through an evaluation process. You learn many things about your idea, which gives you an opportunity to improve it. Then you, can produce a marketable and successful blog and book.

You can create a business plan for your blogged book in 8 weeks during Author Training 101! Study at your own pace with this home-study course, or choose the option to participate in live coaching calls. Register for the Author Training 101 Home-Study version and transform yourself from aspiring to successful published author today.