Great post, Meghan.  I was thinking along these lines.  I want to finish writing my novel first, but was thinking about blogging about subjects related to it as a way of promoting it.

I agree that it makes no sense to serialize your book on a website and call it a blog. There's no reason for readers to pay for a printed-bound version of what they can read for free online -- even Justin Halpern's Sh*t My Dad Says was vastly expanded from its original 140-character Twitter-feed origins to create his hilariously insightful ode to his dad/ coming of age memoir. That said, there is a right way for your blog and book to work together to grow your audience for your book AND keep readers entertained between books. One of the best examples I've seen of the blog-book meld is Jerry Mahoney's memoir, Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad. His memoir (which grew out of an incredibly beautiful Modern Love column) is about he and his husband deciding to start a family and how they did that using donor eggs and surrogates. His blog, also called Mommy Man, is about the family in the present day. He built a wonderful audience for his book by blogging about being a gay dad, whetting his readers' appetites for the How That Happened story told in his book. Reading his blog, you can't help but get wrapped up in his family's fun and funny experiences. When the book came out a few years ago, there was a ready audience who wanted to know the convoluted and at times heart-wrenching story of all that he and his partner went through to have the kids he's writing about today. The blog and book work together and support each other by telling different ends of the same story. It's brilliant. 

My business partner Jessica Ziegler and I also used our blog, Science of Parenthood, as a means to get to our book, also called Science of Parenthood, out from SWP in November. We started with the idea for a book, but worked on our blog for about 2.5 years before we started writing it. Ours is an illustrated humor blog that uses math and science to "explain" parenting situations. We used  our blog to build audience for our concept, to network with other parenting bloggers who ultimately helped us with the promotion of our book when it came out, and to road-test material for the book. When we started, we knew we wanted to create a book, but we didn't know exactly how we wanted to do it so that it would be different from other gift books, different from other parenting humor books. So we experimented with concepts till we figured out what we wanted to do. 90% of our book is brand new, never been seen before material, created just for the book. But through our blog, we'd cultivated an audience for our humor and our cartoons, an audience that was ready to buy the book when it came out and promote it to their friends and leave reviews on Goodreads and Amazon too.

So, should you blog your book? If you're thinking about a Dickens-style serial, no. Something like Kindle Singles would be better for that (Julian Fellows is doing just that with his novel Belgravia.) But authors should absolutely look for ways to use blogs in the service of their books. Blogs are one more tool in the writer's tool box.

I agree that it makes no sense to serialize your book on a website and call it a blog. There's no reason for readers to pay for a printed-bound version of what they can read for free online -- even Justin Halpern's Sh*t My Dad Says was vastly expanded from its original 140-character Twitter-feed origins to create his hilariously insightful ode to his dad/ coming of age memoir. That said, there is a right way for your blog and book to work together to grow your audience for your book AND keep readers entertained between books. One of the best examples I've seen of the blog-book meld is Jerry Mahoney's memoir, Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad. His memoir (which grew out of an incredibly beautiful Modern Love column) is about he and his husband deciding to start a family and how they did that using donor eggs and surrogates. His blog, also called Mommy Man, is about the family in the present day. He built a wonderful audience for his book by blogging about being a gay dad, whetting his readers' appetites for the How That Happened story told in his book. Reading his blog, you can't help but get wrapped up in his family's fun and funny experiences. When the book came out a few years ago, there was a ready audience who wanted to know the convoluted and at times heart-wrenching story of all that he and his partner went through to have the kids he's writing about today. The blog and book work together and support each other by telling different ends of the same story. It's brilliant. 

My business partner Jessica Ziegler and I also used our blog, Science of Parenthood, as a means to get to our book, also called Science of Parenthood, out from SWP in November. We started with the idea for a book, but worked on our blog for about 2.5 years before we started writing it. Ours is an illustrated humor blog that uses math and science to "explain" parenting situations. We used  our blog to build audience for our concept, to network with other parenting bloggers who ultimately helped us with the promotion of our book when it came out, and to road-test material for the book. When we started, we knew we wanted to create a book, but we didn't know exactly how we wanted to do it so that it would be different from other gift books, different from other parenting humor books. So we experimented with concepts till we figured out what we wanted to do. 90% of our book is brand new, never been seen before material, created just for the book. But through our blog, we'd cultivated an audience for our humor and our cartoons, an audience that was ready to buy the book when it came out and promote it to their friends and leave reviews on Goodreads and Amazon too.

So, should you blog your book? If you're thinking about a Dickens-style serial, no. Something like Kindle Singles would be better for that (Julian Fellows is doing just that with his novel Belgravia.) But authors should absolutely look for ways to use blogs in the service of their books. Blogs are one more tool in the writer's tool box. 

You post makes sense and yet I can see the temptation to blog a book. When we're nobody from nowhere, it's tempting to just throw it up there and wait for a response. Building a platform is like serving appetizers; you get people interested in more of you.  Hey I tried to sign up for your Social Media workshop in October but when I clicked your email address I got an error message. Where is it being held?

That IS the case, Meghan and thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.

Kathy, It sounds like you're using your blog to build an audience and connect with readers but that you're not actually blogging your book (posting chapters of your book on your blog). If that's the case, I think you're doing the right thing!

Meghan,

I somewhat agree about not blogging the actual book, however, my blog generates and interest in my book, because it highlights themes in the book. I blog at FindingYourFire and my blog discusses how to take your passion and make it happen, addressing issues like procrastination, networking, personal purpose, living authentically etc. These were addressed in my book Finding Your Fire on a more personal, specific and in depth way with exercises, commentaries and suggestions. Having a blog about the book often helps readers connect and be involved and I think helps develop ideas for continued writing, but I do agree blogging the book defeats publishing. I think it depends on what you actually want your book to do. I looked to build a community around a theme rather than entice people to buy and have no follow up. Great discussion post, Meghan.

Thanks for reading, Eva!

You raise many excellent points.  I appreciate your post so much.

Thanks for an excellent article!

Meghan, appreciate the additional input.  I'm still waffling back and forth over parts of this, but for now I've made my blog "private" with no viewers unless I invite them.  For now, I feel very safe in this.  Over time that may change.

Thanks for sharing your experience blogging your memoir, Sherrey. Again, I think you can blog about your experiences without posting chapters of your book. You just have to decide how much you want to keep public vs private and maybe in your case to have two blogs - one for public viewing and one for your private healing process.

Meghan, I can't thank you enough for this post.  I've read Nina's book, and I'm a little skeptical about "putting things out there" in cyberspace for others to decide they like and take for free.  However, being a little bit stubborn, I went ahead and started a blog about my memoir using letters to my now deceased mother as its basis.  In the letters, I give the abused child I grew up the voice she didn't have as a child and "talk" with my mother.  It's my intent to use these as part of my memoir.  Then I got the bright idea to start posting excerpts from my memoir. 

Your post has made me rethink that.  Although a nice place to do this "healing exercise," I think the blog just became "private" with no viewers/readers. 

I would rather see her self-publish than put her book on her blog. I'd be overwhelmed and unsubscribe if the blog were post after post of chapters from the book. Jenny Lawson turned her blog into a book by including original essays. Julie & Julia is another example, as you mentioned. Dooce (Heather Armstrong) got a book deal because of her blog. You don't generally get a blog because of a book.

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Meghan. Much appreciated.

Lynn, That's a very powerful story Karen wrote, and I think it's valuable in giving readers a taste of your book. I think in your case it was smart to include it on your blog. Because you plan to blog excerpts of your book and not your entire book, and because your book has already been published, you're probably fine including them. On the other hand, I think one or two interspersed with tips about writing mother memoirs would interest me more than a whole string of excerpts from the book.

Connie, I wouldn't be too paranoid about plagiarism. In my case, it was a specific excerpt that was appropriated, so I'm wary of posting chapters of my book that haven't already been published in anthologies or literary journals. But I would blog freely about your experiences motorcycling around India - posting pictures and anecdotes about your trip without posting the actual content of your book (and even posting a short excerpt that you don't plan to publish elsewhere is fine to give readers a flavor for your writing.)

Shimi, My feeling is that fiction belongs on websites designed for fiction - online literary journals and other websites that people visit specifically to read short stories and flash fiction. This doesn't mean, however, that you should never post a short story or excerpt of your novel on your blog. If your fiction writing style is different from your blog-writing style, it may be necessary to give your readers a flavor of your work. I link to an excerpt of my book that was printed in an anthology because it has already been published because another drawback of posting short stories or chapters of your book on your blog is that they are then considered published, and most magazines and literary publications won't publish them once they've already been published somewhere else. I'd rather reserve my chapters to submit to magazines before the book comes out in order to help promote the book to a wider audience.

Lacey and Cindy, I haven't read Nina Amir's book, but after looking at the first couple of chapters on Amazon, I got the impression that her argument for blogging your book was based on 1) Building your author platform (for which you don't need to blog your book) and 2) The number of blog-to-book deals that have taken place in the past few years. She doesn't, however, specify which blog-to-book deals involved people who blogged about a topic and then turned the topic into a book deal vs people who blogged the actual content of their books. It's also important to remember that most blog-to-book deals are cook books, humor books, etc. Almost none are fiction or memoir.

Although I think you’re right, Meghan, I took a chance last week and decided to post the first story  out of 40 stories that I wove throughout my newly published guidebook. The stories are “Mother Memoirs” written by daughters and sons whom I call “TellTale Souls,” and they emphasize the points I’m making to guide people to write their own short, true tales.

I’d appreciate thoughts on whether or not this is a good idea, since my plan is (was) to put a new story from the book on my blog every couple of weeks.  I’m not placing whole chapters of the book on the blog, but, if it seems like a bad idea to even post the stories, I don’t want to continue. Here’s the link to the story I posted last week: http://telltalesouls.com/blog/one-womans-story-captured-in-a-song-telltale-souls-bio-vignette-no-1/

Thanks for writing this informative post…

Hi, Meghan:

    Thanks for sharing this... good advice. I will never blog my book!

Grace - "A blog should augment or complement the book and allow readers a personal way to connect with the author, right?" Exactly!

I agree that blogging a book is probably not a good idea, however when it comes to building a platform via a blog, how much information about a book should one put? For instance, I've written a nonfiction narrative about my solo motorcycle journey around India. I've got a tab on my website where I thought I'd put an overview of my book (the page I'd include in a book proposal), but after reading Meghan's comment about writer's stealing, I'm rethinking the idea. Any thoughts on blogs containing book overviews?

As you mention, there are exceptions, but I completely agree with this perspective. Blogging your book is like trying to convey breaking news with a comic strip. No.

What's your take on blogging short stories, esp. flash fiction? I'm working on a novel and have no intention of blogging it, but I've been considering posting some of my flash fiction on my blog.

How timely this post is! I literally just bought Nina's book yesterday. Good thing I had a coupon and only paid $2.32. Now I will go download the Overnight Success for free and we'll see what I can learn ;0)