For all the time and effort they put into creating their work, many writers and authors are hesitant to promote their works online by writing blogs. While many see writing blog posts as additional and unnecessary work, blogging regularly can actually make it easier for their work to get noticed by publishers. 

Today, most mainstream publishers won't take chances on unknown authors. They'd rather consider a book by an author with a proven fanbase interested in that author's writing - those fans are potential customers for the author's book, after all. What better way to raise your public profile and prove to publishers your work is marketable than by regularly writing a blog? 

Even better, the act of writing a blog can help you write your book. By developing a concentrated blogging strategy and posting prolifically on your book's subject matter, you can quickly garner a fan base interested in hearing what you have to say - and use their feedback to learn what subjects to focus on in your book. 

Think about it. Many popular blogs have gained major followings and have earned publishing deals for their authors. However, those bloggers may not have planned to write and publish a book when they started writing their blogs. Once they got book deals, these bloggers had to repurpose old blog posts to make them fit within a printed book's format. That's a lot of extra work.

If you have an idea of what you want your book to be about, why not just save yourself some time and "blog your book?" Write a book outline and make sure your blog posts fit within its guidelines. Now you can write your book from scratch in post-sized bits and publish them online. This way, you can generate a book's worth of content post-by-post.

When you've finished blogging your book, it's time to edit and revise it. You will have actually written just your first draft, so the manuscript you produced will need some polishing. Now is the time to add in extra chapters, a prologue or epilogue, or any other extra content you withheld on the blog. The editing process will improve your book as well, and you might find you add enough or change enough that your book gets longer, which also may entice many loyal readers to purchase the "new edition."

Before long, you'll be ready to tell your waiting fans they can go purchase your book. And, because you've built that author's platform through your blog, you'll stand a high likelihood of having produced a successful indie book--one that sells way more than the average number of copies.

Want to learn how to blog a book? Get your copy of Nina Amir's How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish and Promote Your Book One Post at a Time from Writer's Digest Press. Or read the blog.