How to Blog a Book

Writing a blog is a brilliant way to end up with a book and cure writer’s block at the same time.

French checkout girl Anna Sam blogged about the vagaries of her customers and ended up with a three book deal and a film being made about her life … and not working on the checkout !!

The thought of writing a book of say 100,000 words can be intimidating in itself, so why not break it down?

Or why not micro-blog it 140 characters at a time on Twitter?

Here’s the benefits:

1. Breaks a big project into manageable chunks

2. Allows you to get known, liked and followed

3. Regular exercise for your writing neurology

4. Mixing of text with images, audio & video

5. Get early feedback & reviews from readers

6. Leaves a bread crumb trail for potential publishers to chance across

7. Readers correct your speellink misteaks

As another example of where you can go with this approach – in July, this I was approached by author, Sarah Lamb, who’d blogged about her early life – it was on a password protected blog.

We edited the blog into a book and self-published some proof copies in October to get some reader reviews and now Sarah is on a real roll. She is getting rave reviews and working on the sequel …

Last week, she submitted the edited copy to the writer’s community site run by Harper Collins called Authonomy. As I write this blog, she’s shot up over 4000 places and is heading up the “charts”.

You can read a sample of her book here for free & see her new blog site here

I know too that Sarah would be really grateful if you could back it and add a review (you’ll need to register for free).

Such has been the success of this approach that I’m encouraging all prospective authors to go down this route.

They’ll be more news and tips coming soon on how best to do this but to start …

1. Have a plan and a memorable theme and moniker (i.e. a name) like the Twittering Granny

2. Get a free blog with Wordpress … or just blog here (great SEO)

3. Make sure each blog is either a book in microcosm OR a chapter of a book

4. Keep each blog down to less than 750 words (or no more than 1 sheet of paper)

5. Make your title snappy and attractive

6. Tell people about it (Tweet)

If you have experience of this approach or know of anyone who has been successful (or not), please add your comments below …