{"id":5933,"date":"2013-08-24T20:59:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T02:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5933"},"modified":"2013-08-24T20:59:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T02:59:38","slug":"please-dont-blog-your-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5933","title":{"rendered":"“Please Don’t Blog Your Book”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an interesting post by Anne Hill, chock full o’ links, called “How to Blog and When Not to Blog<\/a>,” I was led to this one by Jane Friedman, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In other words, most plans for turning blog posts into books do not work. A few have. There might be a few exceptions, she suggests, such as self-help topics. If it’s going to work, she says, you have to be “laser-focused.”<\/p>\n

Not me. No lasers here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From an interesting post by Anne Hill, chock full o’ links, called “How to Blog and When Not to Blog,” I was led to this one by Jane Friedman, “Please Don’t Blog Your Book.” In other words, most plans for turning blog posts into books do not work. A few have. There might be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-5933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1xH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=986","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":0},"title":"After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.He was older, charming,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0919345174","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":42,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=42","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":1},"title":"The ‘Bast’ Mysteries","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 22, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently bought Bell, Book, and Murder, the 3-in-1 edition of Rosemary Edghill's \"Bast\" mysteries: three short mystery novels set in 1990s Manhattan whose protagonist is Karen Hightower (Craft name \"Bast\"), a thirty-something graphic designer. Her design business is called High Tor Graphics, both a pun on her name and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Wicca\"","block_context":{"text":"Wicca","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=wicca"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4812,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4812","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":2},"title":"The Knife Goes In, But You Don’t Feel It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Never underestimate the ability of senior academics to dismiss a book with what sound like words of praise. Today's example, Wendy Doniger's (leading scholar of history of religion, particularly in India) blurb on a new book called The Origins of the World's Mythologies. \"Not since Frazer's Golden Bough, has anyone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14029,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14029","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":3},"title":"Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props \u2013\u00a078 of them, to be precise. I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Tarot\"","block_context":{"text":"Tarot","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=tarot"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/eden-gray-doctor-x.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10938,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10938","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":4},"title":"How Do You Write to a Pagan Author?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I got this email last week from a publishing firm that I had never heard of. I did my due diligence \u2014 I looked at their website and read an article about them from Publishers Weekly. Apparently their nonfiction business model is to do deep data analysis and see what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":658,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=658","url_meta":{"origin":5933,"position":5},"title":"A hare's breath escape\u2022 I\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A hare's breath escape\u2022 I just finished indexing Her Hidden Children, much helped by the fact that I could find search terms by letting Adobe Acrobat search PDF files of all chapters. But before you index a book, you need to strategize about the book's purpose as well as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5934,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5933\/revisions\/5934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}