Can a Great Blog Make for a Great Book?

Every month, I have at least a dozen people tell me that I need to write a book. "The SEOmoz blog is great," they say, "but a book has the power to connect with an enormous audience," and besides, they'll continue, "I need something to read on the plane."

I've finally come to the realization that they're right. Despite my frenetic schedule, packed with travel, clients, in-house projects, editing, managing, phone calls, radio shows (did I mention I did the Daily Searchcast with Danny this morning?), and all that operating a business entails, it's no excuse for not writing. In fact, on this past trip to Boston & New Jersey, I actually started a book. Check out my first stab at an introduction and tell me what you think:

I'm severely addicted to Internet marketing. Every day, I help companies drive traffic to their websites, employing a massive array of techniques that I've picked up by experience and osmosis during my 10 years in web development and consulting. There are two reasons why I've been successful with my work. The first is an innate ability to connect with people (at least, on this subject). When I meet someone new who's seeking to grow their site's influence, my passion for the material, my absolute love of the web as a platform and the possibilities of a single website to make a difference builds an air of excitement and enthusiasm that inevitably makes us great friends in a matter of minutes. I'm not sure that I can express this emotion the same way in a book, but I'll certainly try. I want you to walk away from this book the way aspiring chefs walk away from great cookbooks – filled with ideas and exuberantly anxious to get into the kitchen.

The second reason for my success stems from an enormous amount of practical knowledge, garnered through an obsession with learning. I read almost 100 blogs and a few dozen articles from major media publications each day and spend dozens of hours a month putting hypotheses and conjectures into practice and tracking the results. As you might imagine, my fiancée (I call her Mystery Guest on my blog and intend to employ this moniker here as well) expects that I'll have little to no eyesight capabilities by the time I'm 40 (it's a small price to pay). I'm not just an academic, though; I've actually applied this knowledge to hundreds of projects with dozens of clients. In the early years the process of trial and error leaned more towards the latter; in the past 5 years, the scales have tipped to the former.

To be frank, I can't take all the credit. The opportunity presented by an emerging medium like the Internet deserves recognition. There are very few experts in web marketing and of these, even fewer who possess the specialized knowledge and experience to capitalize on what the web has to offer. There are literally millions of searches performed online every day, millions of visits to websites from visitors seeking to be “converted” - they want to buy something, learn something, subscribe to something, share something - engage with your website in some fashion. From my experience, even the savviest firms are only reaching a fraction of the results possible over the web, and the vast majority are embarrassing underachievers.

My goal with this book, primarily, is to share the most valuable pieces of knowledge I've acquired in a digestible, comprehensible and enjoyable format. This book doesn't just provide stuffy advice, it illustrates the pitfalls to avoid and has plenty of reference-worthy lists and charts and graphics to break up the monotony of text blocks. I also won't be boring you with tedious statistics like these:

• Internet penetration in the US is now XX%
• Hours (on average) spent online by web-connected Americans each month is XXX
• Number of web searches performed each month averaged XX million in 2006
• Percentage of US Economic activity conducted online was XX billion in 2006
• Estimated growth of B2B commerce online - X% for the next X years, rising to XX in 2010
• Estimated growth of consumer spending online - X% for the next X years, rising to XX in 2010

Luckily, all of that is right out, as is any humor (especially irony).

There are, however, a few, brief prerequisites that will help you to get the most out of the next 75 pages. The readers who will benefit most from this material are those who have significant incentive to increase the effectiveness, profitability and popularity of a website (whether that site belongs to an individual, non-profit, government or corporate entity). Web-based business owners, in-house directors of marketing, online marketers of all stripes, bloggers (one of my favorite new professions) and anyone who designs & develops websites for a living will derive great benefit from this information. I strongly urge professional kelp farmers, nobel laureate poets and men of the cloth to return this book – you've made an unwise investment (that is, of course, unless you're planning to take your vocations online, in which case, proceed).

OK, it's not great, but it's a start, and through ruthless editing and the brilliant writing skills of those around me (namely Mystery Guest & Rebecca), I hope to get a real book (pages and numbers and professional book design and everything) completed by the end of the year. If you've got any suggestions or if anyone reading has experience transitioning from the blogosphere to the print world, I'd certainly appreciate your insight.

BTW - We're also thinking about making a less formal, best-of-the-SEOmoz-blog book that features a collection of 50-100 of our best posts and some transitional writing to help connect the fragments. Does that sound appealing?

UPDATE: Just to answer a few questions that have come up repeatedly in the comments:

• This book will be in print version, not an ebook.
• It's NOT designed to compete with Aaron Wall's book or Mike Grehan's - it's much more broad than just SEO/M, and covers the range of Internet marketing and brand building on the web.
• If anyone has any suggestions on self-printing or print-on-demand (besides the massively overpriced Lulu), that advice would be greatly appreciated.
• I read two books on the subject that I enjoyed; 78 Reasons and the Self Publishing Manual.