Not every blogger could write a book. Just because you are
a blogger doesn’t
mean that you can change your blog post into a book. But as a blogger, you have a big change to turn
your blog post into a book since you can use uour blogs as gold mines filled
with abundant content waiting to be extracted, refined and cast into books.
As mentioned by Brian AKlems, an editor of Writer’s Dig, if you have a blog, there’s a high likelihood
there’s a book in there somewhere—or at least the beginning of one. Don’t let
that book go to waste. Turn your blog into a book, or “book it,” as author and
book designer Joel Friedlander likes to say. Repurpose your blog content into a
book.
Klems also mentioned that booking a blog may
seem simple to do, and a variety of services and blog plugins allow you to go
straight from blog to book. Yet, there’s more to turning a blog into a book
than simply loading posts into a program and hitting a button that sends it to
epub or print—at least if you want to produce a book that’s up to traditional
publishing industry standards. In fact, some of the things you need to
know about booking a blog are inherent to writing books as opposed to blogs.
This makes writers particularly equipped for the job.
According to Klems there are
seven tips on how to book a blog and turn out a professional manuscript—one
with a high likelihood of achieving self-publishing success or landing a
traditional publishing deal—in the process:
1.
Pick a unique angle for your book.
You may already have blogged
a book if you’ve been blogging for a long time and have focused your efforts on
one topic. Indeed, your blog may represent the foundation of your book. Even
so, you might still need to choose a unique angle for your book based upon
competing books. On the other hand, if you’ve jumped from subject to subject
with no clear direction as you’ve blogged, your blog may be a repository for
nothing other than a jumble of vaguely related posts. In this case, you need to
hone your book topic and determining if you have previously blogged even part
of a book.
2.
Create a content plan for your book.
Begin your project by
creating a mind map or conducting a brainstorming session to flesh out the
content that needs
to be in your book. Come up with a full table of contents or an outline based
on the book you want to write and on the most marketable book, not on the blog
you’ve already written. Don’t get stuck looking at what you’ve already
published on your blog; this may not represent the best or most complete book.
3.
Mine your blog for posts that fit the content plan of your book.
Once you have a content plan,
find the published blog posts relevant to the chapters you’ve outlined. Search
for them in the categories you’ve created, which is where most bloggers “file”
posts by subject matter. Also search for them using the “tag” or “label”
function in your blog program; if you’ve used them correctly, you should have
assigned each post tags or labels when you published them. When you find an
appropriate post, copy and paste it into a word processing document, thus
creating a manuscript. When you are done with this process, you’ll know how
much you need to write (or cut) to finish your book.
4.
Blog your missing content.
If you find you must fill in
large gaps in your manuscript, work smarter rather than harder. Blog those
sections. By so doing, you continue to promote your book and build author
platform—a fan base of loyal blog readers—as you are revising your manuscript.
5.
Edit your manuscript prior to going to print.
Don’t make the mistake of
using one of the quick and easy services that allow you to just pick the posts
you want in your book and then convert them into a book without ever editing or
revising them. See your blog, and the manuscript you create from it, as the
first draft of your book—and likely an incomplete one at that. All manuscripts
need editing and revising. Edit it yourself, and then have it
professionally edited.
6.
Entice publishers and readers with unpublished material.
Include new content in the
ebook or printed edition of your booked blog. A few new chapters, interviews
with experts, case studies, or any special features that did not appear on the
blog will drive book sales by loyal blog readers and make a publisher more
interested in your blog-to-book project.
7.
Blog your next book.
While booking a blog offers a
superb way to repurpose your great blog content, the more efficient way to
produce a book on a blog involves blogging a book—writing one from scratch.
Searching out content for a book and then making it fit into your content plan
can prove a long and tedious task. A booked blog manuscript can need a lot of
revising and editing because you blogged content wasn’t originally written with
a full-length book format in mind. So, next time you want to write a book, map
out your content in post-sized bits in advance. Then write your book on your
blog. You’ll produce a manuscript quickly and easily and promote it in the
process. Plus, you’ll end up with a first draft of your book that needs much
less editing and revising because you set out to write a book rather than a
blog.
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