Science blogging: The essential guide - Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman 2016
From science blog to book
Brian Switek
Taking the first step from short form to long form can be daunting, but no one is more familiar with the transition from science blogger to book author than Brian Switek, author of My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone. Here he shares his experience on how he transitioned between the two media, and how you can use a blog to pitch, write, and promote your dead-tree publication.
There are no rules for what a science blog should be. A new blog post is functionally no different from a blank piece of paper. You’re free to create within the bounds of what the form can hold. And because blogs are media platforms, they do not require any specific style or type of content. These attributes give blogs a unique versatility, and make them useful testing grounds for other types of media. For science writers who want to compose a book, whether they’re veterans with a new project or prospective authors trying to sell their first title, blogs can be powerful tools throughout the publication process.
Before signing
Science books are sold on the strength of proposals. This is the most difficult and painstaking part of the entire process, especially for first-time authors. A prospective author has to identify an idea worth a book-length treatment, articulate that kernel of an idea with a detailed overview of what the book is going to be about, use that proposal to find an agent, and then refine it to catch the attention of a publisher. In essence, the proposal is an overview of your book before you’ve even fully figured it out. This means that the book you propose and the one you eventually publish will not be exactly the same. But that’s expected. The point of this process is that a proposal will lay out the narrative arc of your book and help you figure out which parts of the story go where. The standard proposal involves an overview summary of two to five pages, a section on competing titles and why your book is different, and a chapter-by-chapter breakdown that briefly describes what each chapter is going to contain. Writer’s Relief breaks down the section-by-section elements of what a compelling proposal must include.1
A tight and polished proposal will help lure an agent, and an agent will help you further improve the proposal before taking it to publishers. Agents are an essential part of today’s publishing ecosystem—most popular science publishers will respond only to proposals that come through an agent. And if you do get an offer, a good agent will be able to haggle to provide you with a better deal and cut through the legalese of a book contract.
While most of the proposal-writing process occurs behind the scenes, science blogs can provide an open space for experimentation during this early stage of the book process. As science writer Jennifer Ouellette once said, blogs are writing laboratories. They are places to try out different styles, structures, and ideas with the added benefit of feedback from readers in the form of comments and traffic. Finding a concept that can support a book and not a magazine story or long-form feature requires writing down certain storylines to see if they open up or crumble. Blogs are a handy proving ground for these early stage book concepts. And since blogs are easy to archive and search, authors can readily go back to review ideas or stories that take on new relevance as projects proceed.
Blogs also offer writers the ability to refine their tone, be it no-nonsense (http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/the-loom) or playful (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies). After all, books aren’t just about content; prospective authors need to consider issues of style and perspective as well. Some books might benefit from—or even require—the author’s involvement in the story, while others are best told from the third person. Blogs allow authors to find the voice they want to present in book form.
Reader reactions can help guide readers through these choices. If a post gets an unexpected response from readers or generates a surprising amount of interest overall, aspiring authors can look into that topic to see if it might fit into a larger pattern worthy of a book. Gauging public interest from an early stage can help refine a book’s central question or thesis into something that the average reader will be interested in rather than a topic of interest only to specialists. The trick is to make sure that your blog plugs into the same audience as you hope to reach with your book. If you write for physicists, and are principally getting feedback from physicists, then your idea probably isn’t going to translate well for those who aren’t as invested in Newton and Einstein. Then again, if your aim is to reach such a niche audience, building that sort of specialized readership can provide a useful sounding board during your book’s development. You will have to be very intentional about your audience throughout the project.
But writing a science book requires more than an original idea. Publishers look for authors who have a broad social media reach and are recognized as prominent voices on science. While not a pleasant truth, marketing concerns can sometimes make or break a deal. Blogs can help overcome this obstacle for writers, especially early career writers who do not yet have a long list of varied clips at hand. Blogs allow writers to show off their expertise in their chosen area of science, connect with experts who could be helpful later in the writing process, and draw the attention of editors who may be able to offer freelance work to build a list of clips.
Ultimately, your blog traffic, the venue you blog at (be it independent or a network), and the way you’ve developed a personal brand will all play into how you are able to catch the interest of an agent and an editor. If you’re serious about writing a science book, the earlier you can start blogging and distinguishing yourself as a unique voice, the better.
While writing your book
So you’ve successfully navigated the hazardous terrain on the way to signing a book deal. Don’t stop blogging. For one thing, readers require regular care and feeding. If you hope to carry your audience along with you, you’ll have to maintain a regular online presence.
If used strategically, science blogs can also allow authors to research their book while building their public exposure. Just as science blogs can be helpful in refining big-picture book ideas, they can also be used effectively to gather anecdotes and other material for the larger work. Science does not wait for writers. Each week there is a new spate of fresh research in a variety of journals, some of which may be relevant to the book at hand. A science blog, which requires regular posts anyway, provides authors with a platform to discuss new finds related to their topic and explore whether those should go into their book or be left out. By keeping up with and writing about studies related to their project, authors will both stay current and bolster their reputation as a good source of information and analysis on their chosen subject.
The trick is to avoid repeating yourself. While it is perfectly fine to write in both your blog and your book about research in your field, you won’t want your editor—much less future readers—to look at your book and discover a series of recycled blog posts. So unless an editor has specifically commissioned a book of blog posts, simply copying and pasting blog posts—or even parts of blog posts—into a book manuscript is a terrible idea. Recycling old text not only may run afoul of contractual obligations to write new material; it will also reduce the incentive for readers to pick up your book. Instead, when covering topics in your book that you’ve previously blogged about, start fresh. Doing so will lessen the chances of you repeating yourself and will ensure that your points flow organically with the rest of the new text.
While blogging about stories related to your book can be tricky, doing so will become more worthwhile as your book starts to coalesce. The ideas and studies that are mentioned in the book will change throughout the writing process, all the way to the end. Especially as the final manuscript starts to form, blogs can act as useful databases of what you’ve previously written about. Let’s say that you’re down to the last edit, and you remember a study relevant to your final chapter but you can’t remember the citation. You know you blogged about it, though, and with a quick search you can pull up the post and check to see if a discussion of the study might fit into the book.
Using a science blog to effectively make public notes on ideas relevant to your book has another advantage. If from the start of your book manuscript’s development you have monitored how readers have responded to subjects that you wanted to include, you’ll be tuned in to what strikes your readership as especially interesting. This means that when your book is completed, you’ll have a sense of which topics in it will likely grab the attention of readers and which will not—and you can use this information to refine your marketing message. After all, you want readers to look forward to your book! If done strategically, the effort of maintaining a science blog will be its own form of self-promotion that starts generating buzz for you as the book nears publication.
After publication
There’s no reason to stop blogging when your book comes out. If anything, authors should plan blog posts that tie into the book around the time of publication. The easiest way to do this is to set up a series of posts on topics that either didn’t make it into the book or that had to be cut despite being interesting in their own right. Science blogs can be homes for book B-sides. Tying those posts into your book is simple enough to do, as easy as adding a line such as “If you’d like to know more, read . . .” with a link to your book.
Just as you shouldn’t straight-up recycle blog material into your book, it is best to avoid publishing long excerpts of your book on the blog. With any luck, magazines and other short-form media will approach your publisher about running excerpts from your book; sharing those snippets on your blog first may scuttle opportunities to have them featured in other venues.
And there’s no reason that all your promotional efforts have to appear on your own blog. Some blog networks and other science-related sites take guest posts. Some of these pay, and some do not, but authors should identify other blog venues that might consider a submission. Even a relatively short post sharing a small story or idea from the book can gain the attention of an audience that you may not have been able to reach otherwise. Similarly, don’t be afraid to ask other bloggers—preferably those with a larger following than you—to mention your book’s publication or to run an interview with you. Use the blog and social media connections you’ve made since the very start of the project to help get the word out through reviews and tweets.
Every book project will be as different as the authors who write them. Veteran writers with a few books behind them will obviously have different needs than a scientist who wants to write her first book or an early career journalist who wants to pursue a question too big for a magazine. But no matter your background or career stage, blogs are excellent tools for developing books and will help you to have a prominent voice in the science communication realm. Don’t consider blogs to be separate from the other writing involved in a book project. Along with other forms of social media like Twitter and possible freelance pieces, blogs can reinforce and amplify an author’s signal in a crowded media landscape. The path from blog to book can be frustrating, and even treacherous, but when employed carefully, social media can help you to navigate it successfully.
Brian Switek is the writer of two popular science books on paleontology, Written in Stone and My Beloved Brontosaurus. His blog is hosted by National Geographic. He has also written for National Geographic, Slate, and Nature, among other publications; is the science writer for the film Jurassic World; and is the host of dinologue.com’s video series Dinovision.
Brian is based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Find him at his website, http://www.brianswitek.com, or follow him on Twitter, @Laelaps.
Note
1. Writer’s Relief, “Writer Wednesday: How to Write a Non-Fiction Book Proposal,” Huffington Post, July 10, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/nonfiction-book-proposal_n_3569043.html.