The Benefits of Blogging a Book

August 6, 2019

Note From Rochelle

Dear Writers,

I’ve written books in many ways—on assignment, with tight deadlines; alone, without a deadline or an editor; and by blogging a book over a several year period. I learned a lot from every single process, but found much to love about blogging a book. I look forward to sharing it all with you at my class, How to Blog a Book.

During the class, you will learn three ways to blog your book:

+Write your book by blogging regularly

+Use your existing blog to create your book

+Use blog posts to market your published book

Today’s tip is about the benefits of blogging a book! Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Rochelle

The Benefits of Blogging a Book

I’ve coached many people through the book writing process. At some point, my clients have bumped up against challenges like these:

They feel overwhelmed by the project.
They get distracted by other tasks and commitments.
They worry that their content won’t be relevant to their readers.

And no wonder! Writing a book is a big deal! It takes time, energy, and focus to write a book.

But you can overcome all of these challenges by blogging your book. At the end of August, I’ll be teaching a class on How to Blog a Book. As I prepare for the class, I’ve been thinking about the benefits of blogging a book. Here are some of them:

Short Assignments

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott recommends that new writers take on short assignments, because they’re manageable. After writing professionally for 20 years, I’d encourage everyone to take on short assignments. We get freaked out when we contemplate big projects. But all of us can do a small project. A book is nothing more than a collection of small assignments. Novels are made up of scenes. Nonfiction books have many chapters and each chapter contains several sections.

For nonfiction book writers, a blog post can be the perfect short assignment. Each post runs between 350 and 1000 words and covers a specific topic. Perfect!

Pro Tip: Create a book outline or at least a list of topics you want to cover. This will give you plenty of ideas to choose from when you sit down to write your post each week. And know this: you don’t need to write your book in order. Write it in any way that works for you and your blog readers.

Regular Deadlines

The most successful blogs feature weekly posts—which provides you with a series of small, doable steps. It’s much easier to finish short assignments each week than to try to write a whole book by a date far into the future.

Pro Tip: Before you start blogging your book, set up a blog publishing schedule. This can be as simple as knowing that you publish your post every Wednesday at noon.

Feedback from Readers

Most of us write a book on our own, with feedback from a few trusted readers. But when we blog our book, we get immediate feedback from our ideal audience. Our readers will let us know if they are engaged or enraged by what they read. Feedback from our readers can help us shape the book so that it supports their needs.

And here’s a bonus benefit!

Every time you publish a blog post, you have the chance to talk about your book. Your weekly posts will help you get readers excited about your book. It may also attract new fans. Yay!