4 Reasons to Write The Book 2.0 Way Book 2.0 – The Blog

By Chris Maddock - Dec 30 , 2008

Book 2.0 refers to writing a book via blog posts. This manner of book creation has several distinct advantages to the ivory tower method:

1. You’ll write your book. Too many would-be authors forget this important facet of author-dom. This “baby-steps” approach gets the words and ideas flowing with regularity.
2. You’ll find a voice that resonates with an audience. If you follow the specific advice to be given in this blog, you’ll learn to write in ways that appeal to the preferences of several types of personality(tune in next week). As you receive comments and feedback on each piece you write, you’ll get a clearer picture of your audience. This is invaluable information that most publishers would pay oodles for. At the same time you’re generating content for your book, you’ll be performing significant market research you can use when ready. As I’ve mentioned – whether you publish your book, or a publisher does – a solid marketing plan is almost as important as the book itself.
3. You’ll create an audience, that by the time your book is ready, is interested in you, your content, and who will likely purchase your masterpiece. My partner, Mike Drew, and I often recommend putting off the publication of a book until one has created a large and deeply motivated constituency for one’s content. If you haven’t already written your book, blogging it in this “Book 2.0” fashion will allow you to write and platform-build simultaneously. Why is that important? Because publishers love people ready to buy books. You will, as well, if you’re self-publishing your book.
4. You’ll have a good feel on if its time to publish or not. Often the worst thing that can ever happen to an aspiring non-fiction author is the premature publication of their book. If you’re book is published, and put on shelves without the marketing plan or audience base to supports its sale – it can very often doom your writing career. If you can’t promote the sale of about half the books shelved at a bookstores in 90 days, your books will be returned to the publisher, and often, your name blacklisted by buyers for years to come. There is solid utility in using your blog, and its readership and feedback to gage the proper timing of your content’s incarnation as published work.

Next week we’ll get into the specifics of how you’ll need to blog your content to get it ready for bookhood…