Blogging as book platform?

I have an idea for a book similar to "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (by Barbara Ehrenreich). The topic covered is completely different, so that's not the issue. I'm just talking about the type of book: try a money-related experiment for a period of time and then write about the experience.

I've been searching online for similar experiences and I've run into a few sites/blogs where people talk about doing something like that. For example,

Fregan Experiment
$1 Diet
$100 a week
Minimum Wage

Some of these are not about money per se but you get the idea: these people are blogging about the day-to-day effects of the experiment. If you take the time to read through the entries, you'll see that they eventually sold a book about it.

So my question is... should I start a blog to go along with the experiment? On one hand, I think it will help me establish a following so when I eventually pitch the book, agents will take notice. On the other hand, I figure that if I do have a free blog about it, why would anybody want to buy the book later on? Any thoughts about this? Ideas? I'm a little confused (and conflicted) about it.

Thanks The idea is appealing. I guess I'm wondering, more than anything, what are the pros and cons of keeping such a blog when it comes time to sell the book (which is my goal, obviously).

Hi Susan. Thanks for the answer. At what point did you start querying agents? Long after the blog started running? Before the book was finished but with the blog as a background? I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this.

susangpyp said:

My book was sold with my blog as a platform. I built it up for almost a year (11 months) and had thousands of visitors each day. When I sent out my first batch of queries a few agents asked why would someone buy something that's free and I had to address that so in my next group of queries, I wrote that the book would include the blog material in organized fashion (that's important) as well as new materials including my replies to letters from my blog readers.

Another thing I did was take down some things on the blog that was put into the book word for word.

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