Here we are at Book Expo America 2005 in NYC. Today was filled with educational sessions and a major theme was how the Web in general - and blogs in particular - affect the way books will be written, published, marketed, and sold. We heard about writers serializing books on blogs, authors and publishers making books available online, bloggers as book reviewers, and driving online book sales with Google's new book-search tool Google-Print.
But before we got to BEA and today's sessions, just after arriving at our hotel on Wednesday night, Yvonne settled in as the featured guest on the ConversationsWithExperts teleseries hosted by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff (sponsored by their Build a Better Blog). The interview focused on Yvonne's writings and experience in Smart Marketing to Women Online and is summarized on their blog.
At the end of the interview, Denise and Patsi made an announcement that provided a perfect segue to the theme at BEA today: they're offering a new service they're calling the Blog to Book Project. The program offers several levels of service, but the key benefits are captured in a few nuggets from their descriptive page:
- lessons will be delivered via a private blog with steps and guidelines on how to write a book, followed by actual examples of books being created in real time ...
- organize your chapters through categories on your blog ...
- post articles for your book and get feedback from readers along the way, helping to shage the content of your book to meet readers' questions and needs.
As noted above, today's sessions at BEA showed that these techniques are gaining the attention of the publishing industry. We've encouraged authors to incorporate blogs into their writing and marketing efforts ourselves. Denise and Patsi have developed a program that should provide writers with a valuable service.
J. Greenshaw - blogging your book is an excellent idea. WRite about the experience and offer some of the content to get people hungry for more. But, you still have to produce a book...you can market it to publishers but - that will be a 2-3 year experience. How much is your time worth?
Posted by: Yvonne DiVita | June 06, 2006 at 09:44 AM
my book is almost finished. i have had a one time writer for tv shows read the book, make comments, and generally edit information on the book. i know this is a good book because i have had people i don't know read the book, and like the book. so, now what. everyone wants money to publish and i haven't sent them the book because i don't believe i should have to pay someone to publish a good book, and this book is good. should i blog the book?
Posted by: j. greenhaw | June 06, 2006 at 09:37 AM
my book is almost finished. i have had a one time writer for tv shows read the book, make comments, and generally edit information on the book. i know this is a good book because i have had people i don't know read the book, and like the book. so, now what. everyone wants money to publish and i haven't sent them the book because i don't believe i should have to pay someone to publish a good book, and this book is good. should i blog the book?
Posted by: j. greenhaw | June 06, 2006 at 09:35 AM
I like the whole idea of what you've written in. Completely agreed that your comments are nice compilation of links and information, in addition to the nice way of expression...
Being an author with an inspired blog, http://sharetechs.blogspot.com , I love the way you've put forth the guidelines.
Posted by: Vikkythegreat | September 14, 2005 at 10:52 AM
This is quite exciting. Using blogs as a writing tool is something I've been taking note of and studying.
Thanks for the great info.
Also, thanks to Stacy of Mind & Media for finding you. I'm looking forward to utilizing your resources.
Posted by: Lexie | July 07, 2005 at 12:29 AM