4 ms·
Ask HN: Self publishing book vs. writing a blog series
Is it worth authoring a book and self publishing it or converting that book into a blog series?
- verganileonardo 7y agoStart with the blog, see how people react, incorporate feedback and them consolidate your blog posts into a book.
- vira28 7y agocheck https://twitter.com/dvassallo https://twitter.com/dvassallo He self published a book recently.
- billconan 7y agoI guess I will publish a book for monetization. I will select a few chapters to post on my blog.
- CM30 7y agoIt's probably worth converting that book into a blog series, at least when starting off. That way you'll get a bit of an idea about whether people like the idea/content and have the opportunity to build up an audience/fanbase over time, which can then be used to market the actual book at a later stage. Starting out with a book seems like it'd just make things more complicated, since nobody knows who you are and you'd be stuck trying to sell people on a paid product they have no incentive to buy.
- stewfortier 7y agoA year ago, I ended up deciding the risk of writing a full-length book without being certain of a market wasn't worth it. Instead, I started to blog on a range of topics to see what got the most interest from an audience. Recently, I've started even smaller. I'll tweet about something. Whatever gets a reaction, I'll expand on in my weekly email. Whatever gets a reaction in the email eventually becomes a blog post. This has the added benefit of building an enthusiastic (albeit small) following of readers who feel like they're on the journey with me and are genuinely thrilled whenever I publish something. I've also found that people love shorter-form, "condensed" content, and have found a lot of success keeping my email fun & short. Were I to write a book now, I think I'd keep that in mind and keep it relatively short, entertaining, and to-the-point. (For the curious, here's the newsletter: https://stewfortier.com/subscribe https://stewfortier.com/subscribe)