Blogging Lesson for Publishers:A Scrapbook Is Not a Book

Following up on the issue of underperformance by bloggers with book deals, Simon Owens of Bloggasm considers what separates the strong blog/books from the weak. Owens cites Crashing the Gate by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Daily Kos) as one of the flops, and Glenn Greenwald’s How Would A Patriot Act? as one of the successes—but how did that happen, he wonders, if Kos has a way bigger audience online?

The answer: Zuniga does little more than throw up snippets of news with a minimum of analysis, while Greenwald uses other stories as a genuine springboard for his own point of view. “If you’re a publisher who’s looking to give a blogger a book deal,” Owens concludes, “look for bloggers who are big on content, because it’s not just the readership that’s the key, but rather why the readers are going to the site.”

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