Blog to Book : My Top Tips For Bloggers Looking To Publish A Book

Welcome back to Day 5 of 2020, Day 5 of the year that you publish your book. To kick-off 2020 I am bringing you 5 days of fresh content to kickstart your year.

In the past year, I have helped several bloggers become authors. This is an excellent path for bloggers who want to monetize their writing or for aspiring authors who want to hone their craft and build an audience before writing a book. It is a very natural progression for a writer to go from a blog to a book. But, it is not as easy as copy+paste and you are turning your top blog posts into a book. The kind of person who is going to read your blog is not necessarily the same person who will pick up your book (although your dedicated blog fans will likely purchase the book to support you). Book readers want and need different things than blog readers. So let’s dive into 5 of my top tips for making the jump from blog writer to authors:

Why do a book? – To reach a new audience. There are many people who prefer to learn something new from reading a book over a blog. Or maybe they like to read blogs but they haven’t discovered yours yet. The purpose of your book should be to educate on a given topic. You need to balance making sure that the book is relevant to the topic of your blog because you have been building credibility. Make sure that your topic is related to your knowledge base, but have a clear, tangible learning objective or outcome for your readers.

Blog launches the book – You need to leverage your current platform – your blog- and your network to promote the book. Don’t think that because you are a top blogger in your specific blogosphere that your book will necessarily become a bestseller. You still need to promote your book through the channels that you would use to promote your blog.

Only say “as mentioned in my blog” x2 – As a blogger, you will have spent a lot of effort trying to drive people to your blog. You only make money from ads or affiliates, when people go to your blog. So it becomes a habit to say “check out my blog.” Don’t do this in your book. You can mention that you have a blog, but try to cap it at 2 mentions. If people like your book, they will search out your blog. If they get the feeling that all you are doing in the book is plugging the blog they will drop it and leave you a negative review so fast.

Unique content – For someone who has never read your blog, your book will be 100% new for them. But you want to make sure they are getting value. If your book just contains recycled blog articles people will feel like they could have saved the money and just read your blog. You need to include new content that has not been published before. Also, you want to provide something new for those blog super fans.

Bibliographies matter – We all know we are supposed to give credit to data, ideas, quotes, etc when we are writing. With a blog you can easily link to your digital sources, included photos and gifs to accentuate your point, and provide quick access to your other content and other bloggers in your space. Your sources need to be referenced and included in a bibliography. A hotlink in your eBook is fine, but for your print books, you will need to strip out all of the links. It can be tough to break the habit of just adding the link and moving on, you will need to be methodical in listing your sources. And if you are referencing an article that is referencing data, you still need to drill down to find the original data source.

Which of you are looking to take this path? Where are you in the process? And if you are thinking of making the jump from blogger to author, be sure to check out the Inspired Words retreat this April 1-4, 2020 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. You’ll be able to connect with others on this same journey and make some great progress on your book.

If you have found this information helpful please let me know if the comments and be sure to give this video a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe and ring the bell.

Inspired Words Retreat: https://www.financialcoachacademy.com/inspired-words-retreat/