Consider the “idea-a-day” format!
The books at left share a common format, each offers 365 tips–one for each day of the year. The idea-a-day format is efficient for both authors and readers.
The idea-a-day format is efficient for authors because it provides a structure for writing.
The idea-a-day format requires more time in the beginning, planning your book and organizing your ideas. But, you save time later, because you don’t need to write as much for each blog post and chapter.
Once you’ve identified the 365 hints, ideas, tips, strategies, or shortcuts you want to share…it becomes relatively easy to write a concise paragraph (or two) about each topic, and elaborate upon it in a daily blog post.
Time spent planning your “idea a day” blog posts and book is offset by the time you save blogging and writing your book.
Bonus: As you move forward with your blog posts, you not only are writing a book, but you’re also building an excellent foundation for a list-building autoresponder series or e-course.
The format is also ideal as the foundation of a podcast or video series.
Idea-a-day books are as efficient for readers as they are for authors. The format offers short, practical ideas that can be easily read and applied on a one-a-day basis.
The format is ideal for business readers who want to make the best of their time commuting or reading. The idea also makes it easy for readers to locate desired information, especially if you incorporate a logical navigation structure for ebooks.
Examples of idea-a-day books
Here are are descriptions of the four “idea a day” books shown above:
- Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans: 365 Design Sins & Virtues…A Designer’s Almanac of Dos and Don’ts. A year’s worth of design discussions and examples.
- A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement. An excellent example of offering a year’s worth of ideas and support for authors and writers on a daily basis.
- Positive Action Plan: 365 Meditations for Making Each Day a Success. Concise, daily advice for entrepreneurs based on compiling advice from a recognized source.
- The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl. The Grammar Devotional is an excellent example of breaking a large, complex topic into chunks of easily-mastered advice.
For more examples, visit Amazon.com and use search terms like “365 ideas for books” to explore dozens of examples of books that you can use for inspiration choosing topics and book titles for blogging a book.
More resources for blogging a book
If the idea of simultaneously writing and marketing a book appeals to you, you may like my recent blog post, More Content Marketing Ideas for Blogging Your Book. It contains links to other topics that lend themselves to writing and blogging, one idea at a time.
Free Book Title Coaching call
To learn more about topics like blogging a book, attend a free book coaching call, Tuesday, February 5, 2013, at 4:00 PM Eastern. I’ll be reviewing my recent discovering about blogging a book and answering your questions about about choosing and testing book titles. To attend, call 605-475-6150 and enter PIN 513391#. Share your questions about blogging a book and book titles, below, as comments.