At this point in the planning process, you know what your book is about and you’ve outlined its features and benefits. You know who is going to read it and in which what markets you will promote it. You know the competition and how to differentiate your blogged book from other blogs and books on the market already. You’re ready…ready to consider the contents of your book.
However, a blogged book must follow the guidelines of a blog. No long chapters here, only short 200-500 word posts (with a few exceptions). Most blog readers only want to read approximately one computer screen’s worth of copy.
Your task now involves coming up with what in nonfiction book proposal terms is called the “List of Chapters.” This equates to the table of contents for your book and is the first of two sections included in the “Outline” of the proposal.
Once you have your table of contents, chunk the chapters down into bite-sized, or screen-sized, pieces. Each chapter must be broken down into subheads that can be written as short blog posts.
To be sure you remember exactly what you are supposed to write when the time comes to compose those posts, take the time now also to write “Chapter Summaries,” the second and last section of the nonfiction book proposal. This entails a short but detailed description of each post. This will serve not only as a reminder (It’s not unusual after a month or two to find you have forgotten what you had in mind for many of your posts.) but also as a basic outline for each post.
Wow! Great job! You are now ready to create your blog so you can start blogging your book. That’s your next task.
I’ll be helping someone blog a book soon, so thanks for posting this. It’s going to be a reference I’ll come back to.
That’s great…on both counts. I’m glad they are blogging a book and that this blog can be a reference for you as you help them do so. That makes me feel great.
Let me know if you run into any glitches with my info. Feedback is always appreciated. Plus, if you find things that work well or better than what I’ve suggested, send along your suggestions for improvements on those counts as well. I’d also love to hear about your experiences using the process. I’ll incorporate them into the hard-copy book if you give me permission!