"Publishing" memoirs as you write them

Yeah usually bloggers put a teaser of their current WIP every Tuesday. If you're worried that someone might steal your work, then you can snip the teaser after a few days. Good luck!

Organique Gal said:

My idea is to post all my stories on my blog, pasting them into an offline document as I go. Once I get to the end of my stories I can start editing and moving things around to make it flow cohesively as a book, and start working on getting the MS published. Right now I just need to get in the habit of writing daily and getting the memories down.

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As I understand it, putting it, or a substantial portion of it, on a blog will exercise First Publication Rights, and most publishers won't be interested in it because of that. If you want to eventually have it commercially published you should be careful how much of it you put online.

That is the one down side, you will already have exploited electronic publishing rights. That's a lot of readers who may not want to buy the book because they have already read most of it for free....

Give this some serious thought before you put them out there. If your intentions are to get an agent and have your stories published then putting them on your blog may well be shooting yourself in the foot.

1. Putting them on the blog effectively "publishes" them eliminating first rights to anyone else. That works against you.

2. If you are seeking an agent for your finished work do you want them to see "as I write them" writing or do you want them to see polished, critiqued and solid work? They will look and you do want them to see your best in this regard. A personal blog is one thing but one where you are posting the work you hope to see published is another.

3. Do you feel your work is to the standard you want it to be for publication?

Those are just a few thoughts I would consider myself. I don't know if you were following along just a few threads back before the holidays but, a couple of members here were posting pieces of rough work for crit help. When they realized that the forum they were posting on was wide open to the internet they had the threads removed and put into a password protected section of AW. They did that because they don't want anything but their best out there for a potential agent to see. It's a lot like dating--you want to make sure you're wearing your good underwear. So Organique Gal, are you wearing your good underwear?

For a really popular blog, the popularity of the blog helps sell the book. But I don't know about depending on that happening. It can go either way.

My personal opinion is in the opposite direction. I am pretty good at blogging but I am no icanhazcheezburger, Smart Bitches or Julie/Julia.

I think having a top blog is harder than selling a non-fiction book--to impress a publisher I would guess you would need a very minimum of 10,000 hits a day and just happen to be in an uber hot niche for a year or two from now. I would say a blog-to-book takes double the risk of a manuscript-to-book. It has to hit the jackpot twice!

But then I would think that, I have done the latter but not the former--and the publisher of my non-fiction book would not touch a reprint and has no history of publishing blog-to-books (so going the blog route would have been a huge mistake for me, that's just me). I would still recommend caution and careful thought. The blog doesn't just have to add value, it has to add more value than you lose by exploiting first publishing rights (which is huge).

I would add that most blogs to books, the book is still at least 50% new content--not just a book of the blog.

Do first publishing rights apply to memoirs, if you've published a small section of your book? A friend, who is a published author, suggested that I take a section from my book, give it the old high polish and submit it to a magazine to earn writing credits, but I'm apprehensive. On the one hand, it could benefit book sales. On the other, it could be something I'd have to explain to an agent down the road.

Organique Girl,

Each time I work through a draft of my memoir, I become aware of places where emotion manifested itself and detoured me from crafting the story to the best of my ability. I think with memoir it is more important to draft things out privately. Especially if your writing about sensitive subjects. I can't imagine being able to hit it right the first time and wouldn't want to seem as if I couldn't write just because I was too attached to a particular time in my life.

I have wondered if blogging about a subject that is a major player in my book wouldn't be a good way to interest like minded people who would later want to read my book. I'm fortunate because I have a huge fellowship of people who share experiences similar to mine, but even being involved in a large organization won't sell if the book doesn't have word of mouth credits.

Well, it's a good question!
Cheers,
RB

Do first publishing rights apply to memoirs, if you've published a small section of your book? A friend, who is a published author, suggested that I take a section from my book, give it the old high polish and submit it to a magazine to earn writing credits, but I'm apprehensive. On the one hand, it could benefit book sales. On the other, it could be something I'd have to explain to an agent down the road.

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Wouldn't this be even more officially published than say a blog? I get the thing about earning some writer's cred but what about just writing a new piece? It could still be about the same thing just told a different way. That way you can go for the publication but avoid issues with your MS. Meh. Just a thought.
I learn so much here.

Why not try and see if you can place some of it as articles in newspapers or magazines? That way, you're already making some money from it, maybe get some professional feedback about your writing, and test the market (is there an interest in your topic).
I think you could still include stuff from your blog or articles in your book, as long as it's just the odd one and you do a thorough re-write on it.

I don't have a blog but I write a newspaper column and magazine articles about the same topic that my book is about. I'm keeping the best stuff for the book but have recycled a few stories that have been published already by plucking them apart and assembling them in a different way.

EDIT: Oops, I just saw that you said in the other thread that you're not too interested in getting your memoir published...never mind then

I wish you the best of luck with this.

A quick suggestion...you may want to clarify on your blog post that it is the synopsis.

I just saw this thread and read your synopsis. Your story is truly amazing. I'm a novice myself so I don't have any experience to add to the discussion of whether or not you should publish on your blog first. Strictly as a member of your reading audience I can tell you that I'm interested in reading your story, however if I can read it for free on your blog then I wouldn't be willing to pay money to buy the published version unless the book contained a hefty amount of material that was not already on your blog.

Good luck in writing your memoir and in all your goals.