Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Blog-to-book deals.

A good post yesterday on Splitsider, about the difficulties of turning your blog (or in this case, your Tumblr) into a book. 

I haven't done a ton of blog-to-book deals, partly because the field got very crowded very quickly, and partly because a blog, even a really popular one, is free, and no matter how much people love something, it's not always that easy to get them to shell out money for it. So for me to do a "blog book," it really needs to be something that makes sense as a book independently of the website on which it's ostensibly based. The real acid test: if someone picks up the book in a bookstore (yes, they still exist!), and they've never heard of the website, will the book appeal to them?

Do you spend much time thinking about "target audience" when you write? Do you find that it affects the quality of your work, or its success in the marketplace?

3 comments:

Melissa Camara Wilkins said...

I don’t think I’ve ever bought a blog-to-book book, even if I liked the blog. I guess I feel like I’ve already seen it and read it? (Though I have, of course, bought and loved books written by writers who blog!)

I write personal essay and parenting humor stuff, and my goal is for my blog to appeal to the same audience that my other writing, so I do think about target audience when I blog. When I write other pieces, I spend time thinking about audience in the planning and rewriting stages. Not so much during the initial writing.

Shoshanna Evers said...

The main Blog-to-book that I've bought and loved is JA Konrath's the Newbies Guide to Publishing. It follows his journey, so at times his blog posts completely contradict one another, which is interesting. It's super long, but at least having it in book form I can search the Table of Contents and stuff.

I blog but I wouldn't make a book-to-blog. I write fiction, and when I do that I am assuming that I am my own target audience, since I like to read the sorts of books I write.

In other words, if I like it, I think other people will too. If I wrote it but can't stand it, no one will ever see it. I have an entire manuscript like that (ummm...that would be the YA modern-day Macbeth thriller with adult-style cursing and sex.) I don't even know where I could find that thing, since it was back in the days of paper.

Unknown said...

Hey!! This is too good and nice blog.I dint knew that there is any blog to book.

thanks

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