Book Review: “How to Blog a Book” by Nina Amir

This book is really geared for those writing nonfiction.  If you are writing on a nonfiction topic, this book should be a great help to you.  The premise is that if you want to write a self-help, how-to or other informational type book, why not do it as a blog?  There are several benefits to this.  It forces you to discipline yourself to write on you topic every day or every other day, depending on what schedule you want to set up for yourself.  Even if you blog just three times a day, by the end of a year, you will have enough material for a book.  And in the processes, you will build and a following.  This following becomes you author base.  I had never heard of an author base before I heard Nina Amir talk about it at a GLAWS Writer’s Conference.  An author base is your followers, people who know who you are and see you as an expert on your field.  This is important to build because when it’s time to seek an agent or a publisher, these are people who are seen as potential buyers for your book.  To a publisher, it means you are not an unknown.

Throughout the book, Amir takes you through the basics of blogging a book, developing a business plan, creating your blog, driving traffic to your blog, and what to do when you have finished your blogged book.  At the end she includes Blog-to-Book success stories.  It’s interesting to note that some authors started a blog with the intention of turning it into a book, while other didn’t, but publishers found them on the internet and offered them a book deal.  It can work both ways.

As a writer of fiction (particularly steampunk) I still found this book useful.  I want to build an author base so that a publisher will be more willing to take a chance on me.  In fact, a lot of strategy that went into making this blog came from this book.  It’s also encouraging to know that How to Blog a Book started as a blog.  http://howtoblogabook.com/   And thought the book has already been published, she continues to post new tips and advice.

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