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Can You Blog a Book? (And should you?!)

You know I’m a fan of writing. You know I believe that we should each write Every.Single.Day. to exercise that muscle and make sure we’re in momentum.

But have you ever wondered what you should be writing?

Let me be honest:

When I got started with publishing my books, I did take a collection of my past articles, shape them into chapters, and use that as the basis of my book.

I’ll say that again:

The BASIS of my book.

I didn’t take 25 blog articles, slap a cover on them, and call it a book. That’s not a book!

I did the work to see what I had, see what I was missing, and then bring the two together into a book.

And that work great if you have a backlist of on pointe articles that are already written in a way that would support that approach. For example, my book on fishing “Must-Know Trout Fishing Tricks, Tips, & Techniques” was written this way. I’d spent the 4 years leading up to that book writing a weekly blog article about fishing so I had content already created.

So you want to write a book…

  • Do you start with a blog or a book?
  • Should you “blog a book”?
  • Do you write articles related to the topic so you can “get started”?

(I was asked a variation on this overall question just this week!)

My short answer:

No.

Don’t start a blog when you really want to write a book.

Write the book!

Don’t write articles on that topic when you really want to write a book.

Write your book!

Don’t think you can “blog a book” – with a series of articles so you can slap a cover on it and call it good. (BTW: Amazon won’t let you publish a Kindle book when too much of the information is already available on free websites.)

If you want to write a book – write a book. Get into the nitty gritty of it, hone your idea and WRITE YOUR BOOK.

You don’t need to do “practice” writing first. It’s okay (yes, really) to go straight into writing your book.

Now, if you have a blog already and now you’re thinking of using that topic for a book, that’s a different conversation on the what and how to use that as the basis for your book.

Writing skills DO transfer between the shot-form writing you do in a blog (or even an email or social media post) but it’s not a one-to-one conversion. A book gives you more space to develop your stories and ideas. In memoir, it gives you space to develop your characters so that your reader really cares.

Leave me a comment about where you’re at with your writing!

Kim Galloway
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