Which Blog Platform Should You Use to Blog a Book?

by Linda Locke
MidlifeWriter.com

The easy answer to this question is:  Use www.Typepad.com to blog your book.

Here's why . . .

There are three main blogging platforms that most people use: Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad. There are lots of others too, but to keep this simple, I'll focus on the big three.

Blogger

www.Blogger.com is a free service and is owned by Google.com. I have set up three blogs using this service and it's the platform I used to start my own blogging adventures.

Pros: You can't beat the cost and it's fairly easy for beginning bloggers to set up and use. You can host your blog on the free blogspot service that comes with blogger or host your blog on your own website.

Cons: Blogger is a pretty basic blogging tool. You can gussy it up a bit, if you know html coding or want to learn more about style sheets, but you want to write a book, not become a web designer, right? Also, you'll want to set up categories in your blog for your book chapters and Blogger doesn't support categories. Also, if Blogger hosts your blog, you have to display the Blogger Nav bar ad at the top of your blog, which can look a little tacky.

And as my mother always said, "You get what you pay for." And boy was she right about this.

I was merrily humming along with two of my Blogger blogs, which I hosted on my own domains and everything was working just fine. Then one day, Blogger wouldn't connect to my sites and I couldn't make posts to my blogs. So I shot off a quick email to their tech support and waited and waited and waited and waited for an answer. After several weeks I got a canned response that basically said, "Tough luck! There's something wrong with your web host." And that was it. No help. Just, we don't have time to respond to individual tech support issues.

So I went looking out on the web for answers and found a lot of other people who had the same problems and boy were they mad! So I can't recommend Blogger, even if you host on their network, because it's just too unreliable a platform for blogging your book. And if you run into trouble, you're on your own kid, because Blogger's technical support is minimal.

Wordpress

www.Wordpress.org is also free, but you'll need to install the software on your own domain before you can start using it. I currently have one of my blogs hosted with Wordpress. They also have a new free hosted option for Wordpress at www.Wordpress.com that you might want to check out too.

Pros: The price is certainly right and the software has all the bells and whistles (including the category option for setting up your book chapters).

Cons: If you aren't real comfortable with techie stuff and getting "under the hood" to tweak the html code, then Wordpress is not the best choice for you. It also requires a little more time to "get up to speed" for users new to blogging. Also, you'll need to pay for a domain name and a web site hosting account with a database, before you can set up your blog.

Typepad

www.Typepad.com is the blogging platform that I use now for all my new blogs and in my humble opinion it's the best choice for writers who want to get off to a fast and easy start without a lot of hassles. There is a small fee for using the service, which ranges from $4.95 to $14.95 per month. I recommend that you start with the Plus account for $8.95 per month.

Pros: The service is very easy to use and set up and is great tool for beginning bloggers. You can sign up for a trial account and take it for a spin for 30 days. You get excellent customer service (worth the small fee I think) and all the stuff you need to get started fast. They offer password protection for your blog if you want to write in private and you can also add categories for your chapters. Best of all you can get your blog set up in under an hour and get started with your writing right away.

Cons: I can't think of any.

Next Step: Take your first bold step towards blogging your book right now and sign up for a free trial of www.Typepad.com.