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I admit – I hadn’t ever thought that this was an issue that people were having. And yet, there are multiple people every day going on Google and asking the search engine Should I write a book or a blog? So clearly book vs blog is a problem that needs solving.
I don’t know if those people are getting the answers they want, but seeing as I write books AND a blog, I feel like I’m the right person to tell you about both of those options. Keep reading to hear about my favourite resources for blogging and for writing books!
What do you want to write about?
When you’re trying to choose whether you should write a book or write a blog, you need to first know WHAT you’re going to write.
If you’re not yet sure, you should start by listing what kinds of things you like writing. When you were in school, did you like to write stories or did you prefer essays? Shorter or longer texts? Just make a list of everything you enjoy writing.
Then, make a list of things you’re actually good at writing, something that comes effortlessly or naturally. When you look at your two lists, are there types of writing that you enjoy and that you’re also good at? You probably have your answer there.
That said, you can always learn to be better at anything you decide to improve. I’ve recently started a private blog where I write “columns” in Finnish because I’d love to be a column writer but also because I’ve completely fallen out of practice of writing non-fiction in my own language. If there’s a type of writing you enjoy but you’re not good at, I have full confidence that you can learn to be better at it.
Who’s your audience?
Blogging and book-writing are two very different mediums and they reach people in very different ways. Sometimes they can be for totally different people, but the audiences can also overlap.
Obviously, there are people who read both blogs and books, but then there are people who read books and don’t spend any time on the internet and people who spend a lot more time on social media than figuring out where the closest library is. (Not judging either group of people here.)
When you think about sharing your writings with the world, WHO do you want to read them? Do you have a very specific group of people in mind? Where do they find their information or inspiration? You need to know this and meet them where they’re at.
“Just tell me, should I write a book or start a blog?”
Since you came in here looking for answers and not just more questions, here are some answers to your question of whether you should write a book or a blog. Or rather, suggestions.
Do you like to write short stories and do quick writing exercises that you don’t want to spend too much time working on? You could share your stories in a blog or perhaps on Wattpad.
Do you have useful information about a specific subject that you want to share with the world? If you’re not yet a well-known expert, you should probably start with a blog, podcast or a Youtube channel. It’ll be easier to sell books on that subject if your audience already recognises you.
Do you want to share your life story – something that has already happened – with people who can relate to it? You should write a memoir.
Do you want to share your current life with like-minded people? You should write a blog.
Do you have a lot of opinions that you want to share with the world? You should write a blog.
Are you very enthusiastic about a subject that you’re educated on or qualified to talk about? You could write a book, a blog or BOTH.
Are you enthusiastic about a subject that you’re not an expert on? You should start a blog.
Are people always telling you that you should write a book when you tell them your stories? You could start a blog, but if you feel called to write a book instead and you have a solid idea, you could figure out how to write a book and then do that instead.
Types of books you can write
Here at Protagonist Crafts, we pretty much exclusively talk about fiction novels. I write fiction myself and I only educate people on fictional books and stories. However, I still read many other types of books so I can give you some ideas and point you to useful resources that you might need.
That said, we’re going to start with fiction, anyway.
Types of fictional books you can write
There are so many genres in the world that I’m not even going to attempt to list them all here. What I want you to know is that if you can think about a kind of story you want to write, there probably are other books in the same genre already. This is great news! It means there is a market for your book, i.e. somebody will want to read it.
You can also combine different genres. Do you want to write a romance novel but make it about pirates? You can do that. Do you want to write a very funny, comedic book but have it take place in a dystopian world? Knock yourself out.
Some people are worried that only general fiction books become mainstream and that only they are taken seriously, but you shouldn’t worry about that. First of all, I don’t personally think “being taken seriously” is the ultimate compliment, and really, there will always be elitists that will judge writers based on petty much anything and everything. It wasn’t THAT long ago when woman writers weren’t taken seriously either, so what you should do is put your best work out there no matter what.
The second thing to consider when writing genre fiction is that great books will always stand out. According to Donald Maass in Writing A Breakout Novel, all the genre books that become really popular have the same qualities as other “breakout novels”. What that means again is that you need to focus on the quality of your story and your writing, and everything else will follow.
What can you write a book about if you have no idea?
Sometimes you just have that itch to write a novel but you don’t exactly know what you should write about. Annoying, right?
If you’d love to write fiction but you’re not sure what to write about, I have a free workbook that I made for people just like you. Better than writing prompts, it tells you exactly what YOU should write about. Just fill in the form below and check it out.
Short story or poem collections
If you love writing short stories or poems, you could also write a collection. These types of books are more difficult to market than full novels, but there’s still an audience for them.
If you have an existing audience on social media or if you’ve got a podcast, it coud be easier for you to self-publish your collection and market it to your audience who already know you than try to get traditionally published. Literary magazines are always looking for poems and short stories to publish, so don’t be afraid to take part in competitions and send your writing to magazines to consider.
Types of autobiographical books you can write
I admit, I just googled “types of autobiographies” because I wanted to give you the best information I could find. Unfortunately, every article said something like “there are four types of autobiographies you can write” and then they all listed slightly different things.
Because I want this blog post to be easy to approach even for people who don’t have a lot of experience with books or with analysing literature, let’s just put it this way: Biographies and autobiographies can range from very serious and factual to more comedic and also more fictionalised. You get to choose how you want to tell your story.
Autobiography vs memoir
Here’s an important distinction to remember if you want to write about your own life. Autobiography generally tells your entire life story up until the point you’re writing the book. Memoir, on the other hand, focuses on a specific time in your life.
One of my favourite memoirs is Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim which mainly focuses on what it was like working on Little House on the Prairie. Can a “normal” person write a book about their own life? For sure, as long as they’ve got something interesting and unique to share. You’ll find more ideas if you keep reading.
Types of nonfiction books you can write
Much like fictional genres, nonfiction books span over such a big variety of subjects and types that I probably shouldn’t try to list them all here. But what I will do is give you some ideas.
We just talked about autobiographies, but if you have a very interesting relative, for example, whose life story you’d like to share, you could consider writing a biography. If your entire family has been through a lot, you could also write about that.
You could also write a book about something you’re trying to achieve, like about your health journey or about moving to China, if you feel like a book is the best format to tell that story. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible by A.J. Jacobs, which is about… well, just read the title. Is there an experiment out there that you could try and then write about?
If you already are an expert on something, like the history of forks or about dying your hair, you could write a book about that subject. Being an actual expert is important here because you do want to provide factual information and not just guesses. It’s also a lot easier to get people to read your book when they feel like they can trust you.
An exception to what I just said is writing a book where you interview people who have experience with what you want to write about. For example, if you’ve always loved the history of old houses, you could photograph old houses, interview people who live in them and take care of them, and ask about their history from local historians.
Types of blogs you can write
There’s almost no limit to what kinds of blogs there are out there in the world, and almost any type of blog can make you money if that’s what you want and are willing to work towards it. Many of these blog ideas can also work as Youtube channels or even podcasts, so don’t feel like you’re limited to only the written word.
Lifestyle blogs you could start
The word “lifestyle” is a bit vague, but generally these are blogs that focus on multiple things or on living in general. You could write about life in your hometown, about building a house while running a crafts business or you could just write about the different aspects of your life.
One of my favourite lifestyle blogs is Forever Amber, and Amber writes about parenting, fashion, writing and general life shenanigans in Scotland. She is also so, so funny. If you also want to write a lifestyle blog, make sure you can stand out – they’ve lost a lot of their popularity in recent years.
Blogs with specific niches
A niche is kind of like the genre of a blog. Back in the day, you could just write about whatever and people might even read your blog, but these days you do need some kind of a focus for your blog. Although lifestyle blogs still exist, they’re increasingly hard to monetize.
If you’ve been wondering if you should write a blog or a book, you’ve probably already got a specific niche in mind. Maybe you’re into fitness or painting with acrylics. Maybe you’re raising twins or building a house and you want to share your experience with that. Whatever it is that you’re interested in or going through, you could always start a blog on that subject.
Start a blog to teach specific skills
In the beginning, the Protagonist Crafts blog was about my many creative endeavours, including crochet and selling on Etsy, but these days it’s almost exclusively focused on teaching people how to write stories that just work. I occasionally have lifestyle posts for writers and readers, but mostly I’m focused on teaching storytelling skills.
If you have a skill that you could teach others, whether it’s DIY, SEO or some other abbreviation, you could write a blog about it. You don’t even need to be an absolute expert on the subject – you only need to be a couple of steps ahead of your audience and then include links to resources you’ve found useful. This type of blog is generally speaking the easier to monetize, meaning that you could sell affiliate products or you could make your own (digital) products to go with it, if you so choose.
Blogs with short stories, poems or other types of fiction
I’ll be honest, I’ve never gone to someone’s blog to read their story, except when someone was giving out exceptionally bad writing advice and I wanted to confirm that their writing really wasn’t all that. (That’s so petty, I know, but at least I didn’t share my opinion with them.) But if you don’t want to share your writing in places like Wattpad, then starting a blog for your stories might just be the right thing for you. That means you won’t have to worry about anyone else’s guidelines and you can write whatever you want.
Blog about your own life
In the beginning of blogs, people were usually just writing about their daily life like they were sharing their diary with the world. Although these types of blogs don’t tend to be as popular these days, there’s nothing stopping you from doing that if you want. If getting a big audience is not what you’re after and you just want to write, you’re welcome to share your life and writing in exactly the way you want to.
Remember: you’re not entitled to readers
There’s a lot more content on the internet than anyone could read in their lifetime. There are more blogs than there are stars on the sky. (Okay, probably not, but it must be close, I swear.) Just because you have a blog or a website, it doesn’t mean anyone will ever read it.
If you want to write for an audience, you have to make sure that audience finds your blog. You need to work for it. I’ve seen people complaining about nobody reading their blog, and all the while I’m wondering, why should anyone read it? Why would anyone look for it and then spend time reading it? If it’s not obvious, it won’t happen.
If you want your blog to be found on Google, you need to write about things that people are searching on Google. You’ll need to actively research those subjects and include them in your blog. This is a very slow and often unreliable tactic, however, and you might do better trying to get a following on social media instead. Find out where your audience hangs out and share your posts there.
Why not both?
As I already mentioned, I’m a writer of books AND blogs. If you love writing and you have a lot to say and a lot to share with the world, you might want to start a blog and start writing a book as well.
Whichever option you choose, I just want you to remember this above everything else: If you want to share your writing with a lot of people, and especially if you’re hoping them to pay you, you can’t skimp on quality. You’ll have to have an open mind for feedback and a commitment to keep learning. If you couldn’t care less about those things, you might not be ready to share your writing with the world.
How to start writing a book
Since you’re reading this post, I can guess that you probably haven’t started your book-writing journey quite yet. I’m so glad to have you here! It just so happens that I teach people just like you with how to write their first novel.
I’ve found that starting is one of the most difficult things for aspiring writers and they get stuck on all kinds of details they really shouldn’t be thinking about before they’ve even written a single word. If you don’t want to be one of those people, you should take my totally free 5-day course that tells you exactly how you can start writing your first (or next!) novel.
Resources for blogging
There’s A LOT that goes into blogging and you can definitely end up spending a lot of money on it, but you really only need a few basics to start with.
Where should you host your blog
Although there are a number of totally free blogging platforms, you will be able to have more control over your blog if you pay for your own hosting. If you use a free blogging platform, you can’t control the adverts that appear in your blog and all your work could be taken down on a moment’s notice. You also might not be able to monetize your blog the way you want to if you’re using something like Blogger.
You might think that hosting your own blog is really complicated, but these days it doesn’t require any kind of knowledge about coding. All you need to do is click a few buttons. I’ve used Bluehost for my hosting, which is really affordable for the first three years and fairly beginner-friendly, and it’s very easy to use with WordPress. If you get a lot of traffic, however, you’ll probably grow out of Bluehost after those three years, but fortunately migrating your website to a different host isn’t a huge headache.
Where to learn about blogging
I am a BIG fan of online courses, and although there are plenty of free resources to learn from if you want to learn to blog, you can save so much time if you make a small investment and purchase a course on blogging.
$1K Blogger by Let’s Reach Success is a really good and thorough course on blogging for people who are starting their blogging journey from scratch. If you’re serious about making money from blogging, they also have a more advanced course called Blog To Biz System that helps you reach financial success through blogging.
If you’d like to also make some money with your blog by teaching what you know, you should check out my course Earning With Educational Etsy Products where I share everything I’ve learned about selling digital products through my blog.
I’ll be updating this list from time to time when I come across useful blogging products that I can personally vouch for, but you can also ask me for more recommendations in the meantime.
Have you now made up your mind about whether you should write a book or a blog? Is there something you need more help with? Let me know your thoughts about this blog vs book thing in the comments!
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
