Every time you write a blog post, you write great content. You spend time on that content and it has real value. Why not publish it in a book?
Seth Godin, the master blogger, has published an incredible number of books using content that he previously published in blog posts. Every part of his blog posts can and does appear in a book at one time or another. While shopping at the bookstore, I flipped through a copy of a book and realized… I’ve read all of this before. I bought the book. It was contained between the covers; all that wisdom in one place.
Then the concept slapped me on the head and I realized I could have been doing the same thing all these years. Instead of struggling to WRITE a BOOK in the margin, I could publish my blog content in books. me yay!
And you?
Do you have content worth recreating in a published book?
Tricia Lott Williford published her blogs in a book, albeit edited, rewritten, and formatted into a continuum that offered information about situations like hers, but a book. The concept came from writing every day.
In reality, many bloggers have extracted valuable content from their blogs, edited, rewritten, or reshaped their posts and turned them into books. Some writers, like Krystine Kercher, format blog posts in that specific line of thought and write chapters of her book as blog posts you can read. Then publish the book with all the chapters, so you have it in a neat, glossy presentation. And what a cover!
Even if your blog has an amazing cover, your book cover design can improve the marketing of your book. Purposeful design is always an option over the random header and blog branding that takes place on your website. Why not enhance the brand with a great book cover?
Plot your blog for publication –
There’s a secret to writing blog posts for publication, and I’m going to give it to you right here:
- Have a plan for each blog post.
- Create an outline and add your blog post to a specific part of the eBook document.
- Fill in your outline with the articles you write on your blog.
- Submit your document (the one in which you publish all your blog posts) to an online publishing company; I use KDP Amazon to publish my ebooks.
When you sit down to write a blog post, if I’ve learned one thing over the years, from Jeff Herring, the kind of content, it’s the need to have a plan. Your blog post should not only offer incredible value to the reader, but it should be set up in an organized way so that the reader recognizes the value of what they are reading right away. Don’t mislead readers: give them what they need.
Write with intention!