Blogging your Brainchild:
The Why and How to Blog a Book
You’ve been at this for years.
Homeschooling. Learning alongside the kids. Researching resources. Reading,
reading, reading.
Now you’ve got an idea and you think it is a good one. You can’t find a
book, curriculum, or resource out there to fill the gap you have found. And
who better to step into this gap in homeschooling resources than you? Maybe,
just maybe, this is your calling.
So, with fear and trepidation, you’ve put some thoughts to keyboard. You’ve
been faithfully nurturing along that seed of an idea, watering and tending
it with hours of sweat, brainstorming, and the butt-in-chair method.
Maybe you are still knee-high in word counts, spell-checks and the delete
function. Or, fortunately for you, perhaps you are already gleefully
thumbing through a glossy, pristine, finished product. Either way, the
wonder of the World Wide Web is just waiting to give your words wings!
Blog it!
You don’t need to mortgage the house, learn HTML, or be a tech-genius.
Blogging is really a free, user-friendly, already-packaged website made just
for your book or curriculum! Does it get any better than that?
But why would you blog your brainchild?
Nurturing the idea-seed into a fruit-bearing product is a lonely, solitary
affair.
Blogging welcomes others into your work. Readers leaving feedback in your
comments box may just be the motivation you need to keep writing—not to
mention imposing a mental deadline to produce more installments. Your
project becomes an interactive affair with readership and vision. Instead of
your work living a sequestered, secluded life in your computer files, it
immediately comes to life as you hit the "add entry" button. Writing ceases
to be the life of a recluse, but becomes an animated, engaging pursuit with
your readers who are only a "post comment" button away. Readers interact
with you, the author, and work with you to shape and mold the material. That
comment box can become your editor!
Does my sprouting manuscript really have hope for life as a real mature
work?
Blogging can help determine that. Who wants to spend months sequestered away
from their precious family working on a manuscript or curriculum, only to
find out that they misread the need? When you blog segments of your work and
it steps out into the limelight of cyberspace, it will either thrive or
wilt. You will generate readership—or not. You will know if your idea has
the strength to grow into a vibrant, valuable resource to positively impact
innumerable families or if it is best to turn off the computer and go play
on the back lawn with the kids. Either way, you win. By blogging a book,
there are no losers.
Blog a few chapters and ask interested readers to email for future
installments. Then when you send your regular installments to your compiled
email loop (addresses generated from blog hits), you experience the deep
satisfaction of sweet success! You’ve indisputably succeeded in meeting the
needs of your subscribers! Instead of sweating great drops of agony,
questioning whether you are going to succeed or fail as an author, blog
it—and you will have become a legitimate author in your own right, serving
the real needs of readers who have voluntarily subscribed for more of your
work! Blogging will shift your paradigm from "Will this manuscript find any
success in the highly competitive publishing world?" to "My writing is
successful, right now, in meeting the genuine needs of my subscribed
readership." Instead of thinking about the self-focused aspect of
experiencing writing success, blogging allows the work to become more about
giving back and serving the homeschooling community.
And, at project’s end, you can either self-publish and market your work,
armed with all the glowing testimonies from your blog subscribers, or you
can influence traditional publishers with the sheer number of subscribers
generated from your blog site, which would indicate the possible market for
your work. So, blog it!
Why blog my baby? But maybe you’re already done. You’ve paid the price, your
bum went numb before the screen, you’ve lost (or gained) twenty pounds, but
you’ve finished. You’ve birthed a great homeschooling resource and you’re
ready to send out the announcement cards. So why blog it—especially now that
it’s complete, finished, and ready for marketing? You’re geared up to
self-publish or find an enthusiastic publisher, not blog your baby.
Blogging may just be the side dish to complete the meal. Go ahead and
self-publish or sign a publishing contract, but continue to blog away—just a
couple of paragraphs at a time—or even a page per post. Think of blogging
morsels of your manuscript as a restaurant blowing a fan of tasty aromas out
into the myriads strolling on the sidewalks—you’ll create some healthy
appetites and some talk on the street.
Authors have tried this taste-testing approach. Small Dogs Press, the
publisher of Susan M. Brooks’ second novel Collecting Candace generated
interest and anticipation by posting one page of her novel per day on her
author blog.
"We don't see this as a way of giving away the books," says Susan Sabo,
publisher at Small Dogs Press. "The book is 200 pages long, so this will go
on till the end of the year. If someone is really bent on not paying for the
book, I suppose they could visit the blog everyday and print it out, but I
seriously doubt anyone would want to read a book that way."1
The purpose, says Brooks, is not to get people to hit the blog everyday to
read the entire book, but rather to persuade interested readers to buy the
book after reading a few pages.
Let’s face it. You are not a homeschooling household name like Susan Wise
Bauer and that makes marketing a bit of an uphill march. Blogging tidbits of
your material can make the incline a little less arduous, especially given
the fact that your potential homeschooling readership is congregating right
here at Homeschool Blogger. You are not lost in mainstream blogging, but
your audience is right outside your doorstep. So why not invite them into
your blog to taste-test some irresistible morsels of your work!
Is kidnapping a real risk? Lurking in the back of your head is the big
question: "Could someone snatch my baby, steal my words, runaway with my
brainchild?" The simple answer: No. Your work is forever yours. Well, for 95
years anyway. Whether you publish in a book format or on your blog, or
simply on loose papers floating around your desk, the moment after you have
typed them out, your words are copyrighted for all intents and purposes.
Rest easy—posting your work on a blog does not abandon your words to the
public domain.
Nonetheless, it is wise to post a copyright on each page of your website,
something like this: © 2005 Ann V. All Rights Reserved. Now you are covered.
And if you are the worrying type and still are not sure if someone has snuck
off with your material, then check out
http://www.copyscape.com/. Paste in your page’s URL and Copyscape will
sniff all over the web for you to track down any violators. So, really, you
are not neglecting or jeopardizing the well-being of your brainchild by
blogging it. Quite the contrary! You are releasing it to find its place in
the world!
Whose fandangled idea was this anyways? Actually, there is nothing new in
offering installments of material to a wide readership. Serialized novels
have been around for decades. During the Victorian era, classic writers like
Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy both published serialized stories in weekly
magazines. Dickens’ Great Expectations debuted in this way. This wasn't much
different than blogging in the twenty-first century. Best-selling modern-day
author Stephen King followed in Dickens’ footsteps in recent years,
serializing his work The Green Mile into six different installments.
So blog away. You’re part of a long tradition of suspense and anticipation!
O.K. So now you’re convinced. You’re ready to blog some of that brainchild.
But how do you do it? How can you blog your manuscript or curriculum in such
a way that it looks what it is—professional, polished, and prepared to
benefit a myriad of homeschooling families?
Breathe a sigh of relief. With a bit of ingenuity and tweaking, your blog
can look more like a book than a blog and you’re only a few clicks away from
making it happen.
Beginning to Blog that Book
First of all,
create
a new blog account with Homeschooling Blogger. Make your display name
the name of your book. Remember that your display/username will be the name
of your blog. Most likely you’ll want the name of your blog and your blog’s
address to be the title of your book or curriculum. You are trying to create
visibility and memorability, so keep this in mind as you are developing your
book blog.
Now, title your blog with the name of your book or curriculum. Then write an
exceptional description of your book in the "weblog description" field.
Pick an appealing, eye-catching template. Something memorable.
Next, from your weblog manager page, post your most dazzling paragraphs,
pages—or even chapters, if you choose—as their own individual post entries.
The next step is to collect the permalinks for each of these posts. The most
direct and simplest way to do this is to go to your weblog manager page and
click on the VIEW link next to the post. Then copy that post’s URL or
permalink and paste it in your word processor for future reference.
Once you have copied and pasted all of your individual post’s permalinks,
you’ll need to make one more post entry. This one you’ll entitle "Table of
Contents" and here you will post all the permalinks to each of your other
posts. You can use Homeschool Blogger’s Insert Link feature (the blue globe
on your tool bar) if you need helping making the links. (For example, type
in "Chapter One," highlight that text, click on "Insert Link," and type in
the permalink of the post of your first chapter). Now open up that page in
your word processor where you saved all the permalinks and then list
them—posted by chapter title—to create your Table of Contents page.
At the bottom of your Table of Contents, you could also encourage readers to
email you for future installments. This way, you know exactly how many
homeschoolers out there are truly interested in your work and you create
your own party of editors. Decide how many subscribers you are willing to
dispense your work to and how much of the book you will offer. Perhaps you
will only send out the next three chapters to subscribers generated from
your blog and then announce that you will notify them when the project is
completed so that they can purchase the remainder of the book/curriculum.
This will give you an indication of the interest out there as well as the
motivation to keep writing! Or maybe you will send out all installments of
the book to your subscribed readership, using their feedback to direct
whether you self-publish. The best part is that you get to decide exactly
how you want to blog your book!
Adjusting the Settings
Link onto your general settings and set entries per page to only one
post—thus only your Table of Contents will be displayed as your main page.
Readers will then link from your Table of Contents page to your individual
posts.
Modifying the Template
You may decide to edit your template to make your site look more like a book
than a blog. Click on "Edit Template" and decide if you want to delete codes
from the template such as Recent Entries as this really isn’t necessary when
your Table of Contents page links out to the individual posts.
Next, you can look at the dates. Again, this is superfluous when posting a
book, so just remove this code entirely from the template.
You’ll also want to delete the code directing readers to click for Next Page
or Last Page because you may have posted your manuscript morsels in a
non-chronological order. Readers will find the chronological listing of
posts on your Table of Contents page.
Now for the sidebar. You may want to edit this section of your template,
changing the "User Profile" header in the template to read "About the
Author."
You may also want to add in the sidebar a link to a companion blog. Whereas
your book blog may be rather static after you have posted sample writing,
your companion blog may be another blog account, with a corresponding name,
where you post on a regular basis about corresponding information. For
instance, my book blog, A Child’s Geography, is where I have posted the
first four chapters of my sprouting brainchild. Yet, my companion blog,
entitled Living Geography, is where I post regularly on interesting
geographic news or facts. So, add a link in your book blog’s sidebar to a
companion blog and let each generate readership interest in the other! (Be
sure that your companion blog focuses solely on the subject of the work of
your book—readers don’t want to be reading about what you ate for breakfast
if your book blog is about the history of the state of Texas!)
Next, consider removing headers such as "Archives" as that may not be useful
for a book blog. In general, explore and tweak and edit your template to
best reflect how you want to present your book. Spend some time on it. Time
well-invested in editing the blog’s template will reap a noteworthy harvest.
Still wondering if you can do it?
Check out my book blog,
A
Child’s Geography, and its companion blog,
Living Geography. I am a green, wet-behind the ears, book blogger with
no HTML experience, but I have a wild passion for words and a zealous vision
for the future of blogging.
So, if I can tweak a template and post some tasty tidbits to create a modest
looking site, then I have every confidence in the world that you can dazzle
the homeschooling world with a bang-up book blog!
Don’t waste away your time in front of the screen just wondering if your
book or curriculum can benefit the homeschooling community. Don’t let your
completed product sit on the shelf collecting dust, waiting for some
marketing brainwave.
Take the plunge—blog it!
1.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb218248.htm
Ann Voskamp is writing for an audience
of One at
HolyExperience and writing living geography online for children—and
God's glory—at
ChildsGeography.
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