In my opinion, blogging and book writing go hand-in-hand. All it takes to bridge the gap from blog to book is a bit more forethought, discipline, and structure, and of course a publisher, and BOOM! you’ve got a book. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. My experience co-authoring a book (The Art of SEO) was nothing like that. But still, it’s nice to romanticize the process — simply assemble your blog posts into a cohesive structure and send it off to a publisher. What could be simpler?

More often than not the author’s blog is an afterthought. The book came first. Then the blog came second as the book’s marketing vehicle, a complement/supplement. I’m not knocking it, but it’s great to see a high-quality blog turn into a high-quality book.

As both an author and a blogger, I can really appreciate when a blogger succeeds in transforming their blog into a book. It’s inspiring. One of my favorites is PostSecret, which was turned into a whole series of books. More prototypical examples of blog-to-book projects are The Long Tail (blog / book) and The Search (blog / book). Both are excellent blogs, and excellent books. Sometimes Twitter feeds turn into books too, like S*it My Dad Says. That’s some funny stuff. Now it looks like CEO blogger Steve Spangler is coming out with a book too. His is called Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes. A curious title. In actuality I think his book is more of an amalgamation of his video content than his blog posts, but nonetheless the finished book looks impressive. Congrats Steve!

Folks often ask me if I’m going to write another book. My answer: I doubt it. It’s too painful (like birthing a baby, though, as a man, I can’t truly appreciate the pain of childbirth), and it pays less than minimum wage if you work out the numbers. Folks will then chime in with “Yeah, and why bother with a physical book anyways when everybody’s migrating online!” That I don’t agree with. There are a very large group of holdouts — me included — who still prefer the feel of printed books, who enjoy the experience of curling up with a good book rather than a laptop or ebook reader. And yes I own an iPad, but I don’t read books on it. And I don’t plan to anytime soon. Call me a Luddite.

So, I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days, but I’ve been busy. Busy getting ready for a new full-time job. Yes, as a few of you might have already seen here or here or here or elsewhere, I have taken a position at DoubleClick as Research Manager.

Honestly, I’m thrilled. My private consulting was actually going quite well over the last three years, especially this year, but this job is just a great fit for lots of reasons. It will, however, leave me less time for extracurricular blogging. (You can bet one of my first recommendations on the job will be a…blog, but that wouldn’t be extracurricular, now, would it?)

Less time, but not no time. I am pleased with this little resource I’ve started here. I have ended up getting a few reasonable consulting leads out of the blog, though I can’t honestly say that response on that score has been overwhelming. Moreso have been press interviews — I’ve been averaging about two a week on the subject of business blogs for the last few months.

Anyway, instead of walking away from this or updating it with a post here and there every few weeks, I’ve decided to turn it into a modest group blog. A lot of smart folks out there already touch on this topic of business blogs, but most do it in a rather scatter-shot fashion, along with posts on lots of other unrelated topics. A few others also concentrate on this topic (including some of those I link to in my blogroll), but with all due respect none that I follow do it with as much dedication as I think this resource could offer. Therefore, I’ve asked already a couple of other bloggers to pitch in, and I plan to ask two or three others to pitch in over the coming weeks.

So, without further ado, I’m pleased to announce that Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion and B.L. Ochman of What’s Next will begin blogging here, as soon as they see fit. Steve, as many of you probably know, is a blogging machine, consistently scooping me already on things related to this topic. B.L. is someone I’ve gotten to know personally in the last year or so and have a lot of respect for. They’re both PR professionals, which I don’t hold against them. I’ll try to find some other folks to help out here who come at the topic from a different discipline, so this isn’t doesn’t turn into just another PR blog. (BTW, I’ll update the site shortly, probably over the weekend, to include pointers to them in the left column About This Blog stuff.)

Anyway, thanks to all my many (several?) readers who seem to have found value in this site over the last few months. Anyway, this isn’t goodbye, it’s just hello steady paycheck.

UPDATE:
Great news: Todd S. of A Penny For… has also agreed to pitch in.

Is it a humorous attempt to turn a weakness into a strength or a shameless promotional gimmick? You decide.

BizNetTravel’s Travel Log is a travel agency blog I help produce with Adrants‘ Steve Hall. We both suck at spelling. So, for the next two months, BizNetTravel is giving away travel guide books to folks who can find spelling errors and other language mistakes in Steve and my posts. Sadly, this applies only to the BizNetTravel’s site, not on our other sites. What do you think we are, made of travel books?

BizNetTravel: Find Spelling Errors, Win a Guide Book

Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing asked me and a few other prominent marketing consultant bloggers what we thought was the future of blogging. Part I of the post is up today. Part II is supposed to come tomorrow. In typical fashion, my answer is longest.

Radiant Marketing: The Future of Blogging, In Their Own Words, Part I

AdTech is the leading conference for Internet advertising and marketing professionals, with some 3,000+ attendees expected for the next three days in San Francisco. I am one of the co-creators of the AdTechBlog, along with the other folks from MarketingVox and a team of volunteer bloggers. We pioneered it in November at the NY show, and the folks who run AdTech liked it enough they agreed to let us partner with them again.

It’s an interesting partnership whereby they retain “ownership” of the product, at least in as much as the domain name, yet they cede to our team total editorial independence. They make a handful of free passes to the three-day show available to our team (which otherwise sell for $1,500 each), and we agree to write something (as we see it) about many of the show sessions, as well as the after-hours party scene, the buzz at the exhibit hall, etc. Promised to be fun.

Frankly, I think it’s a model that would make sense for a lot of industry conferences.

Link

I can now die a happy man, having achieved a lifelong goal: a position on DayPop Top 40, thanks to this blog.

(You love me. You really, really love me!)

The next-closest thrill that compares to this was when I Farked Robert.

Meanwhile, I come up with a lot more links on Technorati