Ask Our Coach: How to make a book out of a blog?

Question

Can you put together a number of daily blogs into book form? How do you do this?

Barbara Minkoff, Member of our Journal Writing Tribe Facebook Group

Answer by Sheila Bender, IAJW Journal Council Member & Writing Teacher

It is certainly possible and has been done but the blog entries themselves do not make a book. A blog is a more freewheeling venture where the author gets to write about what interests them and what seems important to say each day or week or month. Putting together a book demands a reason for readers to read from beginning to end–an organization around a discovery.

I would suggest that a blog is way for a writer to keep writing about their topic and eventually find that they can write a book using a lot of the material in some way–maybe the blog entries have passages that might serve as openings to chapters. Maybe the tags one makes on the entries suggest chapters or sections. Maybe the blog is a mine of researched information the writer can integrate into a book. Maybe the blog starts out covering an adventure or search for an answer to a mystery–those kinds of blogs have a built-in trajectory toward discovery.

If you Google “creating a book from a blog” some interesting links turn up.

Here is a link that has some insightful perspective on the issue: https://blog.reedsy.com/blog-to-book/

There are lots of possibilities for using blogs as a foundation or contributing aspect of crafting an eventual book.  A book has an intended audience, a clear sense of what the book offers, what discoveries the reader will make from reading the book, and a coherent narrative that builds and runs through it.  If your blog can be worked to achieve these elements, then it can become a book.

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Ask Our Coach Guest

Sheila Bender is the founder of Writing It Real, an author of many books, and creator of our excellent online course From Journal Entry to Personal Essay. She is also an IAJW Journal Council expert.