How and Why to Blog Your Book

There is something you may not know about me. Even though I have now written and published more than a dozen books, co-authored two books, and contributed to many others, writing did not come easily or naturally to me in the beginning. In fact, I actually blogged much of my very first book, Huge Profits with a Tiny List: 50 Ways to use Relationship Marketing to Increase Your Bottom Line. Should you blog your book, too?

My blog to book experience occurred purely by chance. I had created a new giveaway for my Huge Profits Tiny List blog where I included ten ways to make huge profits with a tiny list. I then wrote a detailed blog post for each of these. Then I expanded it to twenty-one ways and wrote the additional posts for them as well. Once I decided to write the book it seemed to make perfect sense to increase it to fifty ways, and then to use these fifty blog posts as the main part of my book. The idea was a good one, my book was published in June of 2010, and I became a bestselling author that summer.

I was just reading a post over at Smart Blogger by author Cathy Presland on this topic of whether or not you should blog your book and why bloggers are in the perfect position to become published authors. Cathy says:

I meet so many people who have been thinking about their books for months, sometimes years. Yet they’re not taking action.

You, on the other hand, are blogging, which means you are writing. And that simple fact gives you three advantages over every other wannabe author.

1. You have content. Your blog is a library of content you can analyze and reuse. Even if you don’t recycle your posts word for word, you already have a valuable source of ideas. Your content is what defines you as a blogger. Own it.
2. You have a writing habit. More valuable than your existing content is the writing practice you’re developing. If you have a schedule, a process, and a commitment to your work, writing the book will be much easier.
3. You have an audience (no matter how small). You have readers, email subscribers, and a social media following. It doesn’t matter whether that’s two people or 2,000. An audience is the key asset that many would-be authors don’t have when they start to write. You, however, have a testing ground — a place to share your work safely, and get feedback.

On top of these advantages, being a blogger also means you have gumption.

Now you may be reading this and thinking that if you are not already blogging on a regular schedule this will not apply to you. To that thinking I say get into the writing habit. I was not a writer until I came online in 2006. When I realized just how important it would be to develop this skill, I got to work every day by writing a two hundred fifty word article to submit to the article directory sites. At this point in my life I can’t not write every day. This skill has changed my life in amazing way. Start blogging, think about the book you’d like to write, and then blog your book over a period of time. You’ll be so glad you did.