You might have probably heard that “the book is the new business card.” This primarily applies to non-fiction authors, but it could also broadly cover literary writers since their work forms part of their portfolio. By writing about a topic around your subject area, you’re not just sharing skills and knowledge but demonstrating yourself as an expert as well.

Get “royalty” from your following

Maybe you already have a huge following in your blog or pages. However, if you package your content as a book, it will find a new set of readers who might not have heard about your online brand. Your audience grows, and so does your influence.

The book is still the best way to present complex ideas and engaging stories. Content you’ve already produced as a website, video, or as a social media post can sometimes be easily forgotten about. That’s the nature of the Internet – everything is ephemeral because of information overload. But with a book, your content can have some sense of permanence and longevity.

Publishing a book should be a calculated risk on your part. It’s hard to fill some 100 pages with your thoughts, and then be open to public scrutiny and judgement. There’s also capital required if you fund your own printing and distribution. But with that said, you can earn passive income from a book. You can generate royalty, but more so expand your outreach.

There’s a subtle difference between the notions of a writer and an author. With “writer”, the stereotype is that of a starving poet or novelist, who’s main dedication is to art. But with the term “author”, there’s a stronger appeal to be considered an expert. Remember that the word has close affinity to “authority”.

For a more idealistic concept, here’s a quote from Neil Gaiman – “a book is a tangible dream”. But again, any book is a business as well. You should know which category your work belongs to, because each one has its own conventions. Regardless, you’re also offering a service, so you should consider what your customers might find delightful.

Back to publishing basics

Let’s review the definition of a book. Per UNESCO, a book is anything printed and bound with at least 49 pages. With the coming of the e-book, the book is more fluid and could even come with embedded multimedia content.

So how do you publish a book? The obvious start is with conceptualizing and creating content. Then you need quality assurance – a thorough review for grammar and accuracy, and also to weigh on its substance. Of course you want a great cover, but you also need to consider the interior pages where you decide on fonts to use, spacing, graphic elements, and the like.

When you have a complete manuscript, you’d want to find a publisher or a printer. Depending on where you want to make your book available, you have to deal with consignment, distribution schedules, and marketing strategies.

Steps to authoring your book

There’s a simple process for structuring and collating your online content into the book form. First, now that you know about the market situation, you’d want to play your cards right. Here are some considerations.

The first thing to do is audit your available online content. Pull out the analytics and check which are among your most popular posts. By reviewing which of your content already garnered attention – page views, likes, comments – you’ll have a basic idea of what your book might be about.

Next is to find the common theme that unites your content. Here you’d want to decide on your own flavor as well. You have to frame your work into something that people would want to buy and read.

Then you’d want to sit down, brainstorm, and commit to a working structure. This is where it starts to get hard. But you’ll need this step to give shape to your content, and to get a more concrete assessment of the work involved.

Once you have an outline, it’s easier to decide which posts could standalone and get copy-pasted to your manuscript. You can also work on what needs to be rewritten and created as original content.

When you have everything nailed down, structure your complete manuscript following the format of a book.

Remember that it’s not only blogs and websites where you can source content. Social media quips such as from Facebook or Twitter have proved to be best-selling ideas too. Recover your best content from the quick obsolescence of the digital labyrinth and get it to the longer-lasting form of a book!