For an author starting a new book project and desiring to use a blog as a title / readership development strategy, here is one way to structure your blog as a book.
BOOK |
BLOG |
Title |
Title |
Subtitle |
Tag line |
Chapters |
Categories |
Section headings |
Post titles |
Section content |
Post + comment content |
Footnotes, endnotes |
In-post links |
Bibliography |
Blogroll |
Index |
Search the archives |
This format is probably most suitable for non-fiction works. I will discuss potential blog formats for novels in future posts.
Using some intentional structuring helps the conversion process. One of the interesting tools available to pull content from a blog and convert it into a book format is the Blog Slurper from Blurb. Blurb is a self publishing service that provides tools to help authors easily create books for publication. The tool imports and maps blog text, images, comments, and links into a book template, in real time. It currently supports Blogger, LiveJournal.com, TypePad, and WordPress.com blogs.
I tried it out on one of my old blogs. I didn’t take advantage of all the various formatting options the tool provides, but the basic layout I chose produced a very attractive draft book in a matter of minutes. This type of technology can do a lot to accelerate the blog to book strategy, especially for authors who are publishing independently.