I blogged parts of two books, and the posts serve to draw readers into my topic, and then point them to my books.
Some people turn blog posts into a book, while others blog parts of their book once they have written it, and a few people blog the book as they write it.
This works great with nonfiction and memoir, but it’s difficult to pull off for fiction. (See my post, “How to Blog Your Fiction Book.”)
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Part 6 in the continuing series on using WordPress for blogging: a platform-building, book-selling tool.
Today we’ll cover plugins.
In many ways a WordPress plugin is similar to a WordPress widget: both enhance the functionality of a blog or website. Though widgets are visible to readers, plugins generally work behind the scenes. If a widget is like a smartphone app, a plugin might be akin to a computer software program. Here are eight essential plugins. These, by the way, are all free (though some have a paid premium version):
Akismet: Protects blogs from comment and trackback spam. If you have comments and trackbacks turned off, you don’t need this plugin, otherwise, it’s essential.
All in One SEO Pack: The plugin adds search engine optimization (SEO) options to your blog, allowing you to add a title tag and meta description and keywords. If you expect people to find your blog, you need a good SEO package. This is the one I use, but others are good, too.
Broken Link Checker: Broken links are a disservice to readers and are penalized by Google search. This link checker alerts you to broken and redirected links so you can fix them.
Google XML Sitemaps: You don’t need to understand sitemaps or even know what they are, but search engines expect you to have one. This plugin automatically adds an XML sitemap to your website.
Jetpack: Jetpack provides a slew of added functionality to WordPress, and it now comes with all new WordPress installations. You won’t need every feature, but some are indispensable. Just activate the ones you want, and leave the rest turned off.
Online Backup for WordPress: Your host company should backup your site and the WordPress export tool allows you to save all your posts, pages, and feedback, but you still need a complete backup of your entire website under your control. I like Online Backup for WordPress since backups are a breeze. However, restoring files is not as easy.
Wordfence Security: In addition to providing needed security protection for your websites, such as real-time blocking of attacks, a firewall, and the ability to scan for known malware, Wordfence Security also includes two caching options to speed up performance.
WP-Sweep: This plugin removes old and obsolete items from your WordPress database. The result is a reduced database size for quicker downloads, the need for fewer storage requirements, and a faster site. Some of the items it removes are post and page revisions, deleted, unapproved, and spam comments, and orphaned or duplicated information. It also optimizes database tables.
More: There are now 50,000 other plugins to consider, but these are the ones I think are essential. Just as it’s unwise to become carried away with widgets, be careful to not overuse plugins. Only install what you need and completely remove any you don’t use.
If you are just getting started with plugins, install one and learn how to sue it. Then pick a second one and work through the list.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
DeHaan has indie published (also known as self-publishing) over thirty books in the past five years, with no signs of letting up. “I am excited to give back to the author community by sharing what I’ve learned on my writing and publishing journey. I hope that others can learn from me and avoid some of my missteps,” DeHaan said.
“I firmly believe there’s never been a better time to be an indie-published author. We have more tools, resources, and opportunities than ever before. For me, self-publishing is the way to go.”
A prolific author, DeHaan has published hundreds of articles and thousands of blog posts during his decades-long career.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is an entrepreneur and businessman who has managed, owned, and started multiple businesses over his career. Common themes at every turn have included sales and marketing, customer service, and leadership and management. He shares his lifetime of business experience and personal insights through his books, articles, and blogs to encourage, inspire, and occasionally entertain.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
There are several blogs I follow; I read them whenever I can. Sometimes I just read, and other times I read and comment. Only a small percent of blog readers take time to comment. The reasons are many: too busy, a lack of confidence, not knowing what to say, fear, and so forth. There are, however, some reasons why we should comment. Here are three:
1) To Interact With Others: The biggest reason to comment is to connect with other likeminded readers. Some do more than just comment on the post, they also comment on other comments. Just remember to keep things positive and civil. Don’t say something online you wouldn’t say in person to your closest friends.
2) To Connect With The Author: As we read blogs, we get to know the author, but the author doesn’t know us at all, though most want to. Adding relevant comments, with appropriate self-disclosure allows the author (and other readers) to get to know us. And don’t we all want to be known?
3) A Link to Our Site: Though it’s secondary, most commenting programs allows us to include a link to our website when we comment. This is good for search engine optimization (SEO), and it provides a means for others to learn more about us if they wish.
4) Not to Promote Our Book: Commenting on blogs is not the place to promote ourselves or our books. Comments are for dialogue not marketing. Avoid temptation.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Some people say that if you’re blogging as a hobby, wordpress.com is okay, but if you consider yourself a professional you need to go with WordPress.org (the self-hosted version). Is it possible to do a professional website with WordPress.com?
Though I’ve seen some successful authors use a WordPress.com powered website, it always surprises me. Yes, you can have many of the elements of a professional site using WordPress.com, but it will always have a basic, less-than-optimum appearance.
If you have the time and the interest, you can develop a nice, professional-looking site by yourself and for little cost using wordpress.org (the self-hosted option), which is why I advocate it.
As an alternative, many people will design a WordPress website for you and even host and maintain it. But the costs add up.
However, if you don’t want to invest the time or if the thought of doing WordPress.org yourself is overwhelming, then focus on making your WordPress.com site as good as you can.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
Blogging is an important aspect of book publishing. This series on blogging with WordPress provides a starting point.
Last week, focusing on WordPress, we talked about two options: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. In a basic way, WordPress.com is analogous to Gmail, while WordPress.org is more like Outlook (or in the extreme, it could be like an in-house email server). The differences are the amount of effort to get started, the degree of control, the number of options, and the level of technical expertise required.
WordPress.com, like Gmail, is an online tool. You log in, set up your account, and begin using it. It’s basic, powerful, and easy to use. It provides some options, but not too many.
WordPress.org, like Outlook, requires more effort to configure, while giving more options, greater control, and increased flexibility. This is what we’ll go over today. (An extreme example, like setting up an email server in-house, is setting up your own webserver and adding WordPress to it. Few users, however, go to this extent.)
WordPress.org is a self-hosted option, that is, the user needs to find a host, usually tapping a company that specializes in web hosting or WordPress hosting (as opposed to setting up their own computer to host it).
If I was starting from scratch, I’d likely use BlueHost to host my website. Check out Jeff Goins’s concise 8-minute video to make it easy.
Aside from BlueHost, there are many other hosting options. Just do a search for “website hosting providers” or, even better, as your friends for recommendations.
While WordPress.com can be completely free, there are two costs associated with WordPress.org. The first is an annual domain registration, usually around ten bucks and a monthly hosting fee, starting around five dollars, but which can go up to twenty or even more for high-volume, feature-rich, robust hosting.
Read more posts about WordPress.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
To start your own blog, there are two aspects: the technical aspect and the content aspect, what is, what to blog about. Let’s look at the content part of blogging first:
Find Your Blog Focus
If you write whatever you feel like writing (as I did when I started), you will never find an audience. Pick one topic as your blog’s focus. Then go to the next step.
Brainstorm Ideas
With your blog topic or focus determined, brainstorm for ideas. Don’t stop until you hit at least twenty ideas you can blog about. You may not use them all, but at least you know you have plenty of ideas to write about. If you can’t come up with twenty, then you won’t likely be able to sustain your blog, so search for another topic.
Pre-Write Five Blog Posts
Before you even set up your blog, write your first five posts. Some people launch their blog with several posts already there.
Set a Blogging Schedule
You should plan to blog at least once a week. How long did it take to write each of your posts? Do you have that much time every week to devote to it?
If you still want to blog, you can move forward with the technical aspects of setting up a blog. More on that in future posts.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
I write a lot and in many areas: magazine columns, newsletters, multiple blogs, non-fiction books, memoirs, and I recently added short stories. But this doesn’t sap my creativity; I still have more ideas than the time to explore them.
Here’s how I fuel my writing:
Keep a List of Blog Ideas: I have a running Word file of concepts for posts. Whenever a thought comes to me, I jot it down on whatever is available and transfer it to my blog file. Some ideas are immediately useful and some evolve over time, while a few fail to materialize. With this list, I always have a starting point for my next post.
Maintain a File of Book Concepts: I also have a running list of book ideas, which currently exceeds four dozen. It has a list of working titles, along with a premise, logline, or theme. As the idea blooms, I start a separate folder to collect a growing body of ideas and resources for that book. Soon an outline follows. When I contemplate my next book, I simply pick the most developed or promising item on my list.
Record Every Presentation: I don’t often speak publically, but when I do, I always record it. This isn’t because of ego but because my words may be a basis for a book. If so, I simply have the file transcribed, and I edit as needed. An hour of audio roughly equates to 10,000 words.
Save All Cuts: Each time I remove a scene from a book, a section from an article, or a paragraph from a post, I keep it. It may come in handy one day. Often it becomes the basis for another book, article, or post. Whatever I cut, I always save.
File Every Published Work: Once I publish something, that’s not the end; it may be the beginning. Books can come out in different forms or formats; articles may be reworked; posts can be repurposed. I never want to recreate when I can tap something already finished. (There are legal and ethical limits to this, so proceed carefully.)
Retain All Non-Published Work: Just because I can’t find a home for something now, doesn’t mean it’s worthless. It could be the timing’s off, the right outlet hasn’t been found – or formed, or the audience is temporarily looking elsewhere. Perhaps I need to set it aside for later tweaking. Regardless, I never delete or dismiss it. Sometime, somewhere readers will be waiting – and I want to be ready.
By implementing these steps, I always have ideas on what to write.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
I once read that blogging is a form of self-publishing. The author’s opinion gave me pause. It seemed a simplistic claim. I felt it in some way diminished the noble art of publishing.
Anyone can blog, and it seems most everyone does, but not most everyone self-publishes a book, even though the tools are there so that anyone can.
While some blogs are profound and worthy, other blogs are trivial and unworthy.
Oh, wait, some self-published books are profound and worthy, while others are trivial and unworthy. Perhaps there are some parallels after all.
Given that some blogs become books, either verbatim or as a springboard, perhaps blogging is prelude or preparation to self-pub.
What I do know is that blogging is a good practice for publishing. Blogging can accomplish the following:
Blogging Teaches Us to Meet Deadlines
Having a regular blogging schedule gives us mini-deadlines to hit. Every week we must write, produce, and publish what we create. If we miss a deadline our readers know it. Even worse, we know it. Deadlines prep us to be ready to hit bigger deadlines later for our books.
Trains Us to Write When We Don’t Feel Like It
Writers write—even when we don’t want to. Sometimes we need to write when we’re sick or tired or lacking motivation or have nothing to say. That’s life, and blogging trains us to realize and accept that.
Conditions Us to Publish
We write a post, edit it, and then…vacillate. It’s scary to press “publish” and share our work with the world. What if they don’t like it? What if the piece isn’t ready? But after a couple of dozen posts, it gets easier; after a couple hundred, it’s not a problem; and after a couple thousand, I don’t even think about it. That readies us to click publish on our books, too.
Prepares Us to Receive Feedback
Blogging puts our words out for the public to see. Some will like what we write and others won’t. Others will point out typos, and a few will find errors that don’t exist. This will happen with books but on a greater scale. Blogging prepares us for that.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
As someone who’s written 2,500 blog posts and counting, you may be surprised that I don’t think a writer must blog. Here are two considerations, followed by a blogging option:
Fiction Writers
It’s hard for fiction writers to build a following with a blog. Unless you want to blog and have ideas for posts that align with your author brand, then don’t do it.
Your agent or publisher may have different ideas, but don’t worry about that unless the issue comes up.
Nonfiction Writers
It’s much easier for nonfiction authors to blog. Just blog about the same things you write about in your books. Build an audience around your content, and they will likely be interested in your books too. Given that, don’t blog if you:
Don’t have the time
Lack of incentive
Fear it will drain you
Aren’t ready to commit to it
Don’t have enough ideas of what to blog about
Blogging Alternatives
As an alternative to starting your own blog, you can look to guest post on other people’s blogs.
Blogging isn’t right for everyone. If it’s not right for you, invest your time and creativity elsewhere.
Some publishers and agents insist that your blog, but if you know it’s not the right fit for you, don’t let them force you into doing something you don’t want to do.
Just walk away, and look for a publisher or agent that doesn’t take such a hardline approach.
Learn more about writing and publishing in Peter’s book: Successful Author FAQs: Discover the Art of Writing, the Business of Publishing, and the Joy of Wielding Words. Get your copy today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan is an author, blogger, and publisher with over 30 years of writing and publishing experience. Check out his book Successful Author FAQs for insider tips and insights.
