This came to me quite suddenly the other day: a lot of how people interact with your stuff online, especially on your blog, has a lot to do with whether you’re writing chapters or whether you’re writing episodes. They’re quite different, obviously. Let’s dig into that.

Chapters vs. Episodes

First off, neither method is wrong. Television shows are based on both models. In the “chapters” model, we get a little precis at the beginning of each episode. It says, “Previously, on ____.” Then, we get to see a few seconds that should remind us of whatever it was we saw last time we tuned in.…

I don’t do guest posts on [chrisbrogan.com] for a bunch of reasons.

1.) Most people used to complain that they came to read me and that they didn’t want other people’s posts.
2.) People offering guest posts didn’t write anything of value (my opinion).
3.) People offering guest posts sent them horribly formatted and I’d spend 20 minutes fixing syntax errors.

Of these, #3 was probably the most annoying, and so I stopped bothering.

On Tuesday, I posted this massive, monstrous, huge guest post by Tommy Walker, and it was heavily tweeted, heavily commented, heavily visited, and bookmarked like bookmarks were on sale at WalMart (probably because it’s the longest post I’ve ever published on [chrisbrogan.com]).…

If you’ve been fortunate enough to write your blog for any length of time, I can almost guarantee that you have posts from the early days that people haven’t seen that are still relevant. It’s not that they might be the best thing you’ve ever written, but they can still be of value.

For instance, I wrote If I Started Today back in November of 2008. It’s still valid. Almost 3 years later, I’d do pretty much the same thing. So, that makes it a post worth resharing. But how? And what can I do to make it interesting for you to visit?

Recycle Your Blog

There are a few ways to recycle your blog.…

If you swing by [chrisbrogan.com], and click on any post, you’ll notice there’s a little Google +1 button at the top, alongside the Facebook Like button. Okay. It’s easy. You don’t even have to comment. You can just +1 something and move on, if you like it. It’s like jazz people snapping their fingers a few times at a good line or riff.

A +1 is a pretty nice thing, indeed. It has some potential implications to search value, or so I’m learning, but I’m not smart enough to talk about that kind of stuff. Read Search Engine Land and SEOmoz to learn about that stuff.

But then, there’s this extra step.…

MMMMMMMM, money. How do you make money writing a book?

Earlier posts in this series:
Writing a Book – Finding Time
Writing a Book – Discipline
Writing a Book – Structure
Writing a Book – Marketing And Promotion

So, we’re at the end of the series, kids, but lots of you have asked along the way, “but can I make any money at this book thing?” Here’s the real answer first: yes, but you’ve gotta work at it. Sorry. You don’t get all that rich writing books, unless you’re James Patterson or Stephen King or that marketing guy who made 7 figures selling ebooks through the Kindle store and will gladly sell you his secret to selling you ebooks.…

Earlier posts in this series:
Writing a Book – Finding Time
Writing a Book – Discipline
Writing a Book – Structure

Writing a book doesn’t stop when you’ve handed in the last of your edits. Oddly, most authors think that it’s the role of the publisher to market their book, but this is fairly far from the truth. I’ve worked with two mainstream publishers and one widely-published-author-turned-publisher, and in all cases, they’re more like “air support.” It’s still your job to be the primary marketer of your book. So, here are a few thoughts that might help you get into the spirit of that.…

Earlier posts in this series:
Writing a Book – Finding Time
Writing a Book – Discipline

The trick with book writing, fiction or otherwise, is structure. Even with the best fiction, the most flowy-seeming fiction, there’s a structure. With nonfiction, there’s always a structure. The best book I ever read about this was Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting (amazon affiliate link). Don’t worry about whether you’re going to write a movie. You’re probably not (unless you are). Instead, buy this and read it. Get the hardcover, unless you are a good note taker on a Kindle.…

In our Writing a Book series, yesterday, we talked about finding time. Today, let’s talk about discipline.

Writing a Book – Discipline

One of the most difficult parts of writing a book has nothing to do with the work, exactly. It has everything to do with sitting still, and putting the words down on paper (and “paper” is so quaint to say in this digital age, but when I interviewed Ryan Blair, he said that he wrote his book longhand on paper). Discipline is probably 80% of what keeps someone from writing a book. But it’s not like you can’t do it. It’s not like you can’t exercise these muscles.…

You want to write a book, and have been wondering about the process. Maybe you’ve started a bunch of times, but something got in the way. Motivation failed you, or you lost track of the time, or you wrote the entire thing but never got it out there in any form or fashion. There are lots of roadblocks and dead ends in the world of writing books.

Finding Time to Write a Book

Most people, when I queried them, said that finding time was the #1 complain/worry/issue they had with being able to write a book. As I’m about to complete my fourth, and my fifth will be finished a few months after that, I can tell you that it most certainly does take time, but that time can be found.…