Image: unsplash.com
Many writers turn to blogging as a way to practice their craft and even generate an income. But for a lucky few, a blog can also lead to the publication of a physical book. Remember those?
For writer and book editor Lorelei Vashti, her blog Dress, Memory was a way to showcase her writing to potential publishers with the eventual aim to turn her work into a published book.
‘I could see how important it was for a publisher to be able to see my writing and what I could do before offering me a book contract, and the best way to do that seemed to be via a blog,’ said Vashti.
‘I conceived of the Dress, Memory blog as a way to tell a piecemeal memoir of my twenties, and every week for six months in 2012 I posted a very short story (400 words) every week. By the third week, I had been contacted by five publishers.’
Read: How to make money from your blog
Clint Greagen, author of Reservoir Dad, turned to blogging when he became a stay at home dad. ‘I thought I would be too busy to keep writing novels, so this was a way for me to keep writing while I had really young kids running around everywhere.’
‘I started the blog not even knowing what a blog was and I had no idea what kind of opportunities would come up,’ said Greagen.
After blogging for several years Greagen won the parenting category of the Australian Writers’ Centre blogging awards. Winning this award put him on the Random House radar who then offered him a book deal.
Crossing the divide
Moving from blog to print isn’t a simple process. Once the book deals are signed, the writers are then given the heavy task of rewriting.
‘To put a book together you need to have a story that runs from beginning, middle to end, and all sticks together. But of course the nature of the blog is that I didn’t include everything. I included parts of my life that I thought where something I wanted to remember for a long time, or things I thought other people could relate to,’ said Greagen.
‘So when we got together with the editors it was about developing a timeline and saying the blog covers this amount of time, but there are all these things that are missing if we are going to put it together as a story. I had to go back and start filling in gaps between the blog posts basically.’
Vashti also spoke about the unseen challenges of moving from blog to print. In the end, her book Dress, Memory: A memoir of my twenties in dresses was almost entirely new material.
‘The most surprising thing for me was how difficult it was to rework the blog for print publication. I basically had to rethink the entire project, and try to figure out how to turn these tiny short stories, which were very fragmentary and filmic, into a longer narrative that would keep the reader engaged over the course of a book,’ said Vashti.
Advice for aspiring writers
Vashti advises writers who want to use their blog as a way to move into book publishing to develop a clear idea about the book project you want to write up front and make the blog about that.
‘ You also have to put your own money and time into it, obviously—I invested quite a lot of money into my blog, but it was a project I believed in. So even if nothing came of it, it was something I wanted to do anyway. Just believe in it and want to do it! ​I am a DIY-er at heart anyway.’
Speaking from experience, Greagen found that taking your writing seriously from the start is key to catching the attention of potential publishers.
‘When I look back on it, what led to a publisher approaching me was that I wrote each blog as if I was writing a novel and I wrote it as well as I possibly could. I remember telling a group of bloggers that it takes me between six to eight hours to write a blog post and they were shocked because it only takes them an hour.’
‘Over the time I was working with the editors I heard that one of the reasons I was offered to write a book was because I wrote well. I think if you want to have the opportunity to write a book based on what you are writing on your blog you have to take the writing side of it seriously and make it as good as you possibly can.’
