Should you blog your book ahead of time? Recently, there have been several blog posts hinting that it’s a bad idea.
This advice can cripple authors. They fear that once they blog something, it can never be in their book. This pushes them into boring, off-topic blog posts that don’t resonate with readers and ultimately hurt their marketing.
If that is you, I have good news.
Blogging Your Book Lets You:
- Test Your Ideas
Build Your Audience
Make Your Book Better
You can blog your nonfiction book ahead of time. You just need to do it the right way.
To be clear, we’re specifically talking about about blogging non-fiction. Fiction is a different animal. I am not a huge fan of blogging fiction but it can work. Rachelle Gardner has a good post about The Pros and Cons of Blogging your Novel that I encourage you to check out if you write fiction.
Blogging a Book: A Case Study
I wrote a blog post, Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed, which went viral (over 1 million views) and turned into a Kickstarter Campaign that raised over $11,000. It ultimately became a book, ebook, and audiobook (affiliate links).
Joshua Harris read Courtship in Crisis and other similar books and changed his views on his own book titlec I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Not only did my book begin as a single blog post, drafts of some of my finali chapters still exist as blog posts today.
Your reach with a blog is wide. Your reach with a book is deep.
More people read my blog than buy my books, which is find by me. My ultimate goal is to get the message out as widely as possible. And while the reach of the blog is vast, the five minutes readers spend reading my blog post won’t have the same impact as two hours reading a book.
Blog reading and book reading are fundamentally different experiences. Someone can read your content in one medium and have an entirely different experience with the same content in another medium.
Saying nonfiction readers won’t read your book after they read your blog is like saying that fiction readers won’t watch a movie after reading the book the movie is based on. Fans of a book are the first in line for the movie and fans of the blog are the first ones in line for the book.
The movie and the book share the same story, and yet the different mediums make the experience of the story entirely different.
And some movies (like Julie & Julia) are based on books that are based on blogs.
People who read your blog will also want to read your book. Don’t listen to people who tell you otherwise.
Blogging Your Book Improves the Book
Blogging is a two-way dialogue between you and your readers. It allows you to hone your ideas as you get reader feedback.
While the “first drafts” of some of my chapters still appear on my blog, the edited final versions in the book take into account the comments and criticism I received on the blog posts.
In some instances, readers misunderstood what I meant, and I was able to make corrections before my book released. I also was able to cut whole sections that didn’t connect with readers. Other sections I thought would be boring turned out to be incredibly popular, like the chapter on the history of courtship.
My editorial policy was that if a post did not meet a certain threshold of views (as reported in Google Analytics), I did not include it in the book. Because of that, my book is a curated collection of the very best blog posts. It also has content exclusive to the book.
I was writing a controversial book, and I wanted to be as clear and convincing as possible. Blogging the most controversial elements ahead of time, helped me do that.
Takeaway: Use your blog to get feedback from your readers. Incorporate that feedback into the book. This makes your blog and book different while making the book better.
A Blog is Not a Book
Good blog posts use photos and videos, which don’t work in books. My blog content is shorter, rougher, and uses hyperlinks instead of footnotes. Each post links to several other posts, so readers aren’t always sure what to read next.
Blogging is a non-linear reading experience which is very different from a book where chapter one is always followed by chapter two.
While it is hard to binge a blog, people binge books all the time.
Jane Friedman says, “Never use a blog as a dumping ground for material that’s already been written” and I agree with that to a point. The final versions should be different from each other.
If you copy and paste from blog to book or vice versa you are making a mistake. You need to adapt your message to the medium.
Blog Posts Are Advertisements for Your Book
The parts of my book that live online as blog posts can go viral and promote the book all over again.
From time to time, blog posts like this one will flare up on Facebook. Suddenly, thousands of new people are reading it, and I did nothing to make that happen. This leads to a whole new round of attention for my book.
Why wouldn’t I want that free attention for my book? What would I gain by taking those posts down?
After your book is published and for sale online, you can add links (or better yet affiliate links) to your blog posts so readers can easily buy your book and learn more.
But what about the contract?
The critics of blogging your book are correct when they say that publishing chapters on your blog before publication forces you to use different language in the contract. But this is a small price to pay for all the attention you can get for free when your great content spreads around the web.
The challenge is that the editor negotiating the contract is not typically involved in marketing the book. Marketing isn’t her area of expertise, and she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. She often doesn’t appreciate the value of a popular blog posts in terms of Google rankings and sales.
If you decide to go traditional, make sure you pick an agent who “gets it” and is willing to negotiate for your blog posts to stay up.
Why would someone pay to read your book when they won’t read your blog for free?
One big challenge in publishing is that it is hard to predict when a book will succeed. Some books that are “sure-fire winners” flop while others come out of nowhere to become runaway bestsellers.
If a topic or writer is failing to find resonance with free readers, the writer will struggle to find paid readers. (Click to Tweet)
If only there were a way to test a book ahead of time to see if it resonates with the market?
Oh wait, there is. It’s called a blog.
The solution is not to stop blogging and hope your publisher can find an audience where you can’t. Instead, you need to either invest in your craft as a blogger and get better or pivot your topic to one that better resonates with your readers.
Use your blog to test your ideas to see if they have resonance with an audience. Typically, if it won’t work as a blog post, it won’t work as a chapter.
Case Study: Stuff Christians Like
(Affiliate Link)
In the popular book Stuff Christians Like, you will notice there is a picture of a “side hug” on the front cover.
There are over 100 different Christian quirks in the book that Jonathan Acuff could have featured on the cover.
Why feature the side hug?
Because it was one of his most popular blog posts from his blog Stuff Christians Like. His publisher, HarperCollins, was smart enough to see the value of those blog posts as advertisements that would help sell his book.
He knew the cover would resonate with his audience because the “side hugs” blog post was already resonating. Not every blog post made it into the book. Many of his posts flopped and did not make the cut.
Acuff wisely put his most popular posts in his book along with completely new content exclusive to the book. This gave his true fans and new fans something to love and talk about.
I think Acuff’s approach is the best approach. It makes sense to save some content exclusively for the book.
For my book, I had about a 60/40 mix. The only way readers could get 100% of the content was to buy the book.
Make sure your book has some unique content not found on your blog, but don’t go crazy. Put as much of it on your blog as you are comfortable with.
Bottom Line
As an author, your primary challenge is obscurity. Blogging can be one of the best solutions to the obscurity problem for you and your book.
Blogging:
- is a great way to test your ideas, find your audience, and find your resonance.
- is not for everyone and you don’t need to blog your book first for it to succeed.
- can make you a better writer.
- helps sell more copies of your book.
