Jan. 15: I cut out this Globe and Mail article way back in Dec. 17, 2009. I kept this article all these years. It was vital information if I wanted to get
published. It’s a really good article.
This is an inspirational article.
From blog to book deal in just two months
She posted a screen capture of the atrocity to her blog Regretsy, which showcases some of the more aesthetically unpleasing items for sale on the craft e-commerce site, with the caption: "I couldn't help but notice the dead prairie dog foot around your neck. So do you wanna ... ?" Just two months after that post - and dozens of unfortunate crafts and snappy comments later - she had a book deal with Random House.With her contract she becomes the latest blogger to make the lucrative jump from the computer screen to the printed page in the past few months. In many cases, just a few weeks of blogging have turned into hefty advances from publishers. What's the secret to spinning sarcasm into six-figure deals? A handful of the lucky writers open up about how they struck it rich.
Write about something that actually interests you
When Christian Lander, a Toronto native who now lives in Los Angeles, created the witty blog Stuff White People Like, he had one goal in mind: to make three of his friends laugh. Before he would post anything to the site, he'd send them his draft. Even after Random House assigned him an editor to turn the blog into a book last year, he continued to run things past them.
"If they said it was funny, it went up, if they said it wasn't, it didn't go up," he says.
His own habits and preferences turned out to be great blog fodder, he says, which is why it was so easy to keep going.
Kate Hamill, an editor at HarperCollins's It Books division, says she looks for consistently witty, intelligent and original content when she's searching out blogs for book potential. She found that in Justin Halpern's Shit My Dad Says Twitter feed (a log of quotes from Mr. Halpern's curmudgeonly father), which is being made into both a book and a TV series.
"Content is the main thing and once we've established that the content is comprised of something we'd want to publish, the platform is the gravy at that point," she says.
Don't overpromote
If the content is good, the site will develop a strong following on its own.
Many of the blog-to-book authors sing the same tune: They never actively marketed their work.
Don't be a fame seeker, Mr. Lander says. "People can honestly see when you're trying to do something to do something else."
His blog went viral after he sent an e-mail with the URL to 20 of his friends, who passed it on to their friends and so on. It eventually found its way into the hands of influential bloggers.
It's the same story for Walker Lamond, from Washington, D.C., the man behind 1,001 Rules for my Unborn Son, a blog full of pithy, often humorous advice such as: #237. Don't throw sand or, when you're older, mud. His book was published by St. Martin's Press in October. Mr. Lamond largely credits the Tumblr platform - which shows you who shares your blog posts and how they spread - for his success.
Another way to get attention, he says, "is to reblog other bloggers' stuff. Any shout-out is usually reciprocated in some fashion."
Post your e-mail address
When Jessica Hagy, based in Seattle, constructed her blog Indexed, the design was simple: the blog's title, entries (clever graphs or Venn diagrams illustrating an unusual or funny relationship between things), links to archives, and most importantly, her e-mail address.
"If people wanted to ask me questions, I answered," she said. "You never know who's going to pop over."
At first the only ones writing to her were interested readers, but six weeks after she'd started the blog, a literary agent found it and asked to represent her in an e-mail. A few months later, she'd signed a book deal with Viking Press.
Resist get-rich-quick offers
"Take your time," Mr. Lamond says. "Everyone always makes you feel like 'We have to do this now or you're going to miss your opportunity!' "
If your blog is popular now, he says, it likely still will be in another month.
In addition to interest from a literary agent, Ms. Hagy says she received offers from people to buy the site or place ads on it. Scoring a few thousands dollars was tempting, but she resisted.
"I knew that people went [to my blog] because it was a pure, clean thing," she says. "I didn't want to sell out something that could be a lot bigger over time for something quickly now."
She maintained the ad-free aesthetic and the waiting paid off: She got a much fatter cheque from Viking than she would have from the previous offers.
Don't be picky with media
The first people who asked Mr. Lamond for interviews were small blogs and online magazines, and he happily obliged. After hearing about 1,001 Rules for my Unborn Son from one of those publications, an influential blogger from Glamour.com clicked onto the site.
"When she found it and blogged about it, all of a sudden my audience doubled," he says. As media reports increased, so did visitors to his site.
It was the smaller Web shout-outs and articles that helped Mr. Lander expand Stuff White People Like's audience, too. And though he has since been featured in both The New York Times and The Washington Post, he remains humble.
"I made a policy on the site that I do every interview request I get, period. For a podcast or a small blog, I make myself available to all of them," he says.
Jan. 30 Being an actor: I’ve mentioned before about
how I wanted to get into acting. Here
are some questions: Can you take your clothes off for the camera? Can you kiss a guy that you hardly know for
the camera? There’s this kind of
vulnerability to it.
Whenever you put yourself out there, there is
criticism. That’s the thing with my
blog, some people will like it, some people don’t.
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