Turn Blog into a Book in 10 Steps

Step 1: Identify your business purpose for writing a book.

• Is it to: establish a leadership, build credibility, get more consulting engagements? How will this integrate your book into your marketing and business plans?

 

Step 2: Develop the thesis statement for your book.

• What is your book about? A narrow focus on a broader topic.

 

Step 3: Identify your target market.

• Ideally, the target reader should be your target client.

 

Step 4: Identify the questions your target has about your thesis.

• Start with the questions that your clients currently ask you about your topic/thesis on an ongoing basis.
• What are the questions that you want to have documented, so you don’t have to answer again
  • Suggestion! Pretend you are going to an interview. Write down the questions you want the host to ask you. Don’t think about the answers, focus on the questions.

 

Step 5: Organise the questions identified in the previous step into a logical sequence and have them form the outline of your book.

• Write down all questions on post-it notes, one question per note. Stick them all in front of you and organise them as book chapters. If a question is too broad, drill down and develop it into more questions.
• Answering each of these questions can become new blog posts, that later can be organised in a book.

Step 6: Create a project plan – what you will write and by when.

• Use the chapters and sub-chapters identified in the previous steps to create a project plan.
  • Example: If you want to have the book complete by the end of one year, and you are committed to writing one blog post per week (average of 650 words), you will have 30,000+ words by the end of the year.

 

Step 7: Follow your project plan and write a minimum of once per week.

• Rinse and repeat till your project plan is executed.

 

Step 8. Review your blog post and remove those that don’t fit.

• Towards the end of the project plan, review and evaluate your blog posts to ensure they fit into the overall outline.
  • Exclude blog posts that are: About recent news or current events, as these may not translate well to a book and will make it look outdated.  A book needs to be evergreen.

• That don’t add weight on your subject.
• That don’t tie back to your thesis statement.

 

Step 9: Organise your blog posts into the first draft of your book.

• Remember posts may be great individually, but they need to be organised in sections so that they hang together more coherently.

 

Step 10: Find a publishing partner and/or an editor.

• Decide if you are going through a traditional publisher or self-publish.
  • Suggestion! Self-publishing is an affordable option, and it allows you as an author the total control over the project, as well as total control of the profits.

• Whether you’re going through a traditional publisher or self-publish you will need to get your book professionally edited.

So, you see, no matter how overwhelmed you might feel at the prospect of writing a book, whether you’re a writer, blogger or an already published author, these 10-steps will ease the stress and help make the process a whole lot easier. 

You have no excuses now.  

Start positioning yourself as an expert, increase your ability to grow your business by using content marketing tactics to attract and educate your ideal customers today.  

Still think you may have some stumbling blocks along the way?  

Check out this video for helpful hints on how to overcome your writing stumbling blocks and turn blog posts into a book.