A Book of Posts

This is the sixth and final article in a series of How to Turn Your Blog Posts into Books. Here’s the first article that introduced the idea. Here’s the second article on simply sticking a title and a cover on your posts. Here’s the third article on choosing blog categories. Here’s the fourth article on creating story arcs. Here’s the fifth article on turning your blog posts into podcasts.

What Type of Book Shall I Write?

The biggest challenge for compiling your book is to create the flow between your posts. Typically, for me, when I write a blog post it’s a standalone article. My overall blog is certainly about a consistent set of topics and themes and I don’t write individual posts as a flowing stream of thoughts.

So, how do you overcome this lack of flow? You could spend a bunch of time rewriting and editing your blog posts to make that flow happen.

The alternative is to not to make the flow happen. That’s right! Don’t even try… Let me explain…

Yes! 50 Secrets

I’m currently reading a book by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini called Yes, 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion.

[easyazon_link asin=”1846680166″ locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”designprobe-20″]Yes!: 50 secrets from the science of persuasion on Amazon (affiliate)[/easyazon_link]

It’s a 200+ page paperback of about 50,000 words. In blog posts terms, at 300 words per post that’s 150 posts.

And, as the title suggests, it’s really 50 articles. Or, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, it could be 50 blog posts. The truth is I don’t think this book was written as blog posts first. And, it could have been.

Or better yet, you could!

Create a Book of Posts

What I’m suggesting is that your blog posts could be presented as a list. Previously I wrote about Eight Classic Ways to Structure Your Ebook. This is one more to add to that list.

You may have written some blog posts that are purely lists… I know I have! And, here’s a couple of my samples:

1. Information Products: 17 Reasons to Create Yours
2. 17 Reasons You Need a Manifesto
3. 52 Ways to Share Your Manifesto

Three Steps

1. Theme: What is the theme or connection of overarching message of your book? Or, what have you already written a lot of about in your blog posts? Again, have a look at your blog post categories. This should give you some big clues.
2. Map: Map out or compile a list of the blog posts you have one each one.
3. Compile: Then, if you have enough on a particular topic, compile them into a single book. The key to linking them all together is the overall title and you can explain in this is in a simple introduction.

Bonus: If you haven’t written your blog posts yet, then consider writing an over-arching list. By mapping out your content you can create a list of blog posts to create and publish in the near future. And, you’ll know in advance that they’ll accumulate into a neat little book.

Added Bonus: You don’t need to have 50 articles on a particular topic. You could have seven sub-topics and as long as you have 5-7 articles under each one then you could compile a handy book.

I’ve been getting some great feedback from readers on this series, you might like to add your comment below…