How to Turn Your Blog into a Book

In this guide, you’ll learn how to go from a blogger to a published author by using your existing content to turn your blog into a book.

We’re talking mainly about non-fiction blogs here. Regardless of your niche, you can choose some of your best blog posts around 1 topic that’s in demand in your field, and turn that into an eBook, audiobook, paperback, or all 3 of these.

Why Most Bloggers Don’t Create a Product

In the US alone, there are over 30 million bloggers in 2020. That means over 10% of the population has created a blog and published something. 

It’s safe to say blogging has evolved since its early days in the 1990s. It’s not just a hobby anymore, the barriers to entry are pretty low, and almost anyone is a blogger these days.

But that shouldn’t discourage you. You must keep going and learn more about all aspects of blogging so you can turn that into a full-time business and achieve location independence and financial freedom. 

You should also be looking for ways to stand out and that means doing more than the regular blogger.

Maybe it’s through your unique voice, podcasting, video content, stunning blog design, or the digital products you offer. The last option might be a book, online course, templates, webinar, photos, membership program, coaching, or other services.

One of the easiest things to start with is creating an eBook. That’s because you’re already a blogger, have chosen your niche, know your audience, have published some content online, and have probably read a lot more. 

This is a fantastic way to take your blogging career to the next level and stand out in the industry as most bloggers don’t publish an eBook, don’t find the courage to create something of their own and distribute it to different platforms. They are afraid to call themselves an author and to sell to their audience. 

But guess what? Digital products are exactly how the highest-paid bloggers out there got to earning 5 and 6 figures a month. In the beginning, they too didn’t know where to start, were afraid they might not be taken seriously and that no one would buy.

This takes courage as it means your first product won’t be perfect, and that’s okay. You won’t have a real sales funnel yet and won’t be sure what you can do to promote your product and see sales come in every month.

But over time, you can refine your strategy, update your product, and turn that into a recurring passive income stream, a new way for you to provide value to your audience, a new great offer you have to share with your readers, and a chance to appear on new platforms (like Amazon Kindle) and be seen by more people.

If the technical aspect of publishing a book has been a barrier for you so far, I’ve got you covered. Not only will you see the steps to publishing your first eBook as a blogger, but you will also learn that it’s much less time consuming than you thought. 

How to Go from Blog to Book

1. Come up with an idea for your book.

Every project starts with an idea, and turning your blog into an eBook is no different.

Here are a few questions to answer so you can find the right idea for a book:

• What categories are you covering on your blog?
• What is one topic you’re passionate about that you have written a lot about?
• What is the book you wish you have read on that topic but which you didn’t find?
• What are the main pain points of your readers?
• Which of your blog posts has received the best feedback?
• What’s a book topic that can perfectly fit your brand and the message you’re trying to deliver with the content on your blog?
• What kind of a book can you imagine selling to your audience easily simply by explaining to them why you wrote it and how it can help them?

Jot down everything that comes to mind. Forget about that list of ideas for a day or two and then come back to it. Which are the 3 top book titles/topics that just feel right?

What’s the one you can create a book out of right now if you gathered some of your blog posts? That’s your book idea and you can move onto the next step.

2. Validate your idea.

Before you create a digital product, you must make sure there’s a demand for it. 

Some of the questions from the previous point must have already helped you with that but there’s more you can do. You wouldn’t want to invest time in a project only to see that it’s not something your readers are interested in.

Here are some quick and easy things you can do to validate your idea before turning your blog into a book:

• In the next weekly newsletter, ask readers if they’d buy a book like that. Create a short survey and let readers answer the questions (there might be an open one asking them to suggest a completely different idea so you can see what topics they are looking for).
• Publish more blog posts on the topic first to see if there’s interest.
• Check if there are other similar eBooks on Amazon. While these are your competitors, it also means they did their research and found out this is a topic worth digging deeper into with a digital product like an eBook.

3. Create a one-pager for your book.

A one-pager is usually used for a business and describes what it’s about, what problem it’s trying to solve, and what its goals are. There’s also information about the team, market, business model, and more.

In the case of a book, you simply need to outline your main idea, the points you want to cover inside, and who your target market is.

This helps you see the big picture, stay organized when choosing the right blog posts, and also explain your idea better when using a service to turn your blog into a book.

4. Choose the blog posts you want to turn into a book.

Gather all your published content on the topic and choose the articles that you want to be part of the book. Organize them in a way that makes sense, remove or add some paragraphs, turn each post into a chapter of the book.

That’s your manuscript. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right from the beginning. You’ll get help.

5. Use Publishing Parrot.

There are services you can use to turn a blog into a book and one example is Publishing Parrot. You provide the material and your book idea to the team and they use these resources to turn it into a book and send you the first draft for review.

You can add comments and request changes, after which they edit and proofread the final manuscript.

In addition, they can design your book cover, format the book for Kindle and print, prepare the sales copy, and even turn it into an audiobook.

Learn more about their services here.

6. Launch your book.

Once the hard part of the process is done, you can think about launching the book on big platforms like Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, etc.

Through your blog and email list, different social media channels and the publishing platforms you’ll upload your book to, you can reach many people interested in the topic and grow your brand.

What’s next?

Once you add a new income stream to your blogging business, you might keep doing it by launching more books.

The more blog posts you write, the more material you have to turn into a manuscript and then into a real book. 

Follow the steps in this guide to go from a blogger to a published author.