Worker Bees Blog

Early this year, when creating the concept behind Worker bees, I was surprised to find very little in the way of helpful, up-to-date books covering the topics of online buzz marketing, blogging, online community building etc. I wasn't interested in a book that told me how to create a blog, or how to use a blog for self-publishing. I wasn't interested in a book that talked about a utopian blogging society. I was interested in a practical book about how you can use blogs and other online tools for marketing and customer communication.

I thought there ought to be a book.

So, I met an author friend for coffee, mostly to get his ideas on how you pursue such a small germ of an idea. He gave me more than that; he gave me his agent's phone number. What ensued was the writing of a "mini" book proposal, which then blossomed into a full book proposal, which she shopped around. I did get a nibble from Wiley, but they asked me to write a Marketing Plan for the book...how would I help promote and sell it?

Without much guidance as to what they were looking for, and in fact with no knowledge of what promoting a book would entail, I did my best. The agent passed it on with no comment, and the Wiley guy passed. Not enough "tangible" examples of how I would promote the book.

Which still doesn't mean much to me, given my lack of publishing industry knowledge.

Now, not one, but two prominent blogger-types are discussing writing a 'blogging for business'-type book.

Scoble: Microsoft Blog Guru

Jeremy Wright/Ensight

Sigh.

Of course, when it comes to "tangible" methods of selling their book, both of these guys have a huge readership and name cachet, so you got your tangible right there.

And it sounds like they are focusing on just the corporate blogging thing, while my approach was more about new ways small businesses can leverage online marketing on a very small budget. My outline covered search engine ads, blogging, online community creation and participation. And had little Success Stories associated with each form of low-cost, online marketing effort. So, it was definitely more broad. Of course, maybe that was the problem.

Blogging is so hot, hot, hot right now. I wonder whether I should contact the agent again and see whther she'd re-submit a revised proposal. Not exactly sure how I'd revise yet.

Hmmm. The book idea was so random back at the beginning of the year. But now that I've spent all year writing, writing, writing, it seems more reasonable to consider myself a potential book author.

Just mulling it over. Any and all (constructive) advice welcome!