Editor's note: I don't normally preface guest posts, but today I'm super-excited to have Lilit Marcus writing in conjunction with the release of her book, Save the Assistants: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Workplace. I knew Lilit several years ago when she first launched Save the Assistants, and I was launching my freelance career (in fact, I contributed a few anonymous rants to STA). And now she has a book out. How cool is that? I know many of you would love to turn your blog into a book, so I've asked her to share her tips ...
By Lilit Marcus These days, it seems like people only start blogs because they want to get a book deal. While there have been some successful blog-to-book transitions (The Pioneer Woman, Stuff White People Like), there have been even more absolutely terrible ones (I won’t name them, but you can find them). How can you keep your blog book in the good column instead of the bad one?
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Remember what makes each medium unique. Some things that work really well online (funny viral videos, photo memes) don’t always make sense in book format. If there are certain running jokes or themes that you use successfully on your blog, find a way to make them work in the book. On Save the Assistants, I did reviews of new movies with assistant characters in them. For the book, I did a “Classic Assistants In Film” list instead.
- Focus on the universal. With a blog, you can comment on news events and repost memes immediately as they happen. But because of the long process of turning a book around, some of the stuff you talk about on your blog will feel dated. If you’re going to use pop culture references in your book, try to stick with stuff that’s more mainstream and will still be relatable when the book is published. My book had more than a year from the day the proposal was accepted until the day it came out, and my mentions of the show “Ugly Betty” weren’t relevant because the show had been cancelled during that year. Luckily, I was able to change mentions into past tense before publication.
- Offer original content. No one wants to pay money for something they can get for free on the internet. Although I included some of Save the Assistants’ “greatest hits” in the book, almost all of the material in it was new. Make sure that your loyal fans get something new from buying the book instead of a retread of stuff they’ve already seen.
- Find ways to involve your readers in the book. While working on my book, I reached out to a couple of regular readers to ask their permission to include some of their assistant horror stories in the book. Not only did they agree to it, they were all excited at the prospect of seeing their story in the book, and that encouraged them to spread the word. Who doesn’t want to see themselves in print? It was also a way for me to thank some of the people who helped make the site what it is.
- Make the book accessible for people who have never heard of your website. Of course, you’ll want your existing readers to pick up a copy of your book. But you never know who might stumble upon your book in a store and flip through it. You don’t want your book to be so riddled with shorthand, euphemisms, and inside jokes that a non-blog-reader can’t understand it. I wrote an introduction to my book giving some background on the origin and purpose of the site, which provided context for people unfamiliar with my blog. People who already know about Save the Assistants can just skip the intro and dive right in.
Lilit Marcus is the author of Save the Assistants: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Workplace and founder of the blog by the same name.