Why are people so hostile, to bloggers who write books, which include subjects covered in their blog posts? That’s not a rhetorical question, I am genuinely looking for an answer and would appreciate your feedback.
The typical complaint I hear, is that some bloggers books contain a lot of the material, which is freely available on the author’s blog.
Here’s how I see it
A blog with hundreds or maybe thousands of posts, can take someone many hours, before they search through all the content to find the key parts they are interested in. Time is money. On this blog, I offer a categories section, a month by month archive and a search box and even I find it hard to quickly locate particular posts!
A site like copyblogger, which has no archives, no dates on any posts and where posts are not fully categorised, would take someone days to mine for all the key information they need. That said, those guys sell inexpensive information products based on much of their cornerstone content, which is an effective solution, in my opinion.
Of course, even after someone trawled their way through hundreds or thousands of posts, it’s probable they will miss key content out, if they haven’t already gone blind from eye strain! Then they need somewhere to put that information, so it can be indexed and easily read.
Now, given that all of the blogger books I have seen, retail at below the hourly income of their intended readership, are they really so wrong to charge for it? It’s also worth mentioning that with a few well-known exceptions, these books offer a lot of new material and fresh insights, not simply rehashes of the authors blog posts.
I would love to know what you think about this, so please share your thoughts.