Blog to Book - Part 1: Starting a blog and generating interest

Read the other parts of this series:

• Blog to Book - Part 1: Starting a blog and generating interest
• Blog to Book - Part 2: Writing a book proposal
• Blog to Book - Part 3: Negotiating a contract
• Blog to Book - Part 4: Logistics, writing schedule and book brain
• Blog to Book – Part 5: A book is not a blog
• Blog to Book – Part 6: Revising and editing
• Blog to Book - Part 7: Copyediting and proofreading
• Blog to Book - Part 8: A title, an author photo, and a cover

Blog to Book

Bloggers want book deals. Not all bloggers, but some bloggers want book deals. You don’t need a book deal to write a book. You can do that yourself without any contracts or agents. You can publish it and promote it yourself and it’s just as much of a book than if you’d been legally bound to hand in a manuscript by a certain date. But there is an air of validation and perceived success that comes when you convince a publishing house to print your words and send paperbound copies to bookstores where you can pick your writing off a shelf. Call it success, call it vanity, call it madness, but bloggers want book deals.

I am a blogger who was fortunate enough to get a book contract. Since there is a lot of interest in this topic and since I’m a blogger, I’m going to blog about how I got a book deal. I’ll also cover how I went about writing a book based on my blog without simply copying and pasting entries into a Word document. These posts will only cover my own experience, since that’s all I’m qualified to talk about. I am by no means an expert in the publishing industry, but I have learned a lot from this experience. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will find this information helpful and can learn from it. If they want to buy my book as a way of saying thanks, that would be great too. Consider it research! I’ve talked with a couple other bloggers who have written books, and every one of them found their own way into the process. Everyone’s story is different. Here’s mine.

Starting the blog

I used to be morbidly obese. I started a weight-loss blog, Half of Me, in November of 2003. I didn’t lose much weight and I didn’t write many entries. In January of 2005 I started another weight-loss attempt. I lost a lot of weight and I wrote a lot of entries. Still, it was a “secret” blog that I didn’t tell anyone about. In August of 2005, I started to write fairly regularly and began including my blog address when I left comments on other people’s blogs. Traffic steadily increased over the next year. I didn’t have any ads on my site and I wasn’t making any money, but I wrote 3-4 times a week because I loved it. It was something I was good at and I loved getting comments from readers, partly because I enjoyed knowing people liked my writing and partly because I loved the community. The more I practiced writing, the better I got.

A spark of interest

In September of 2006, I was visiting my brother in Boston. I darted into his bedroom to quickly check my email. Among all the comment notifications and spam there was a message in my inbox from an editor at Seal Press. She’d heard about my blog at the BlogHer conference from some attendees who had said I should write a book. I’d had some of my blog readers tell me that I should write a book. I found that flattering, but I didn’t take them that seriously. I also figured it was something I shouldn’t do until I’d actually hit my goal weight. I stared at the computer screen for a minute, reread the email and thought, “Huh, weird.” Then I shut down the computer, went back to my vacation and ate way too many blueberry muffins for someone trying to lose weight.

When I got home I googled the editor. She seemed legit, so I reread her email. In it she asked me if I had thought about writing a book and if it was something I was interested in. My first instinct? “No, thanks! Please go away now!” If I pursued this and didn’t get a contract, I would be a failure. As it was, I had never failed to get a book deal because I’d never tried to get a book deal. If I wanted to, I could always tell myself I could write a book if I really tried, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. if I went after this and didn’t get it, that excuse wouldn’t work anymore. But as much as I was scared of becoming a gigantic failure, I knew it would be completely idiotic to blow off an editor. I had to pursue this. Besides, I simply wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Then any potential shame could be suffered in private with me and a pint of Oreo ice cream.

How do you turn a blog into a book?

The danger of crushing my ego was bad enough, but I was also concerned about how to convert my blog into a book. The blog was like a series of columns. They were all about weight loss, health and fitness, but reading all the archives in order was somewhat jarring because I frequently shifted topic and tone. I could write a serious, introspective entry about obesity one day and then write a silly post about accidentally eating cat food the next. How was I going to link all this together? What would the book-writing process involve? My editor and I exchanged several emails discussing these issues and throwing around ideas. A book would be about 80,000 words. It could include recipes or tips if I wanted, but I’d have to include transitions of some sort between topics. I would also have to look at similar books that had been published to see how my book would be similar or different and so the publisher could see how well they’d sold. They are in the business of making money after all.

Eventually she asked me to send some links to my best entries to see if they’d be interested in pursuing this further. I fretted over what to chose. I don’t think authors always know what their best or most popular writing is. Something that had deep, personal meaning to me might be my favorite, but could be forgettable to others. I decided not to overthink it (since I figured this book thing probably wasn’t going to happen anyway). I quickly pulled out some entries I thought were pretty good and sent an email and the spark of a dream into the darkness of cyberspace.

And I didn’t hear back.

Continued in Blog to Book - Part 2: Writing a book proposal

Summary

• Start a blog and post to it regularly. Write well and write often. It will make you a better writer even if no one is reading.
• Build traffic and a faithful audience. This creates a strong platform to sell your book, which is appealing to publishers.
• Create connections where you can, and not just because you think you’ll get something out of it. The woman who mentioned my blog to an editor didn’t have any publishing industry connections. She’s just a friend.
• Be open to opportunities as they come.
• It’s okay to be scared, but pursue what you want even if you might fail.