Books, Blogs, Tone, Audience, & Morgan Freeman

What would you think is better to use as a driver of expertise: a book or a blog? Well, this is surprisingly a question I have to answer a lot. Books provide a substance no blog could ever provide, but blogs are quicker and easier to read and digest.

So, what's the right option? Many wonder, and only I choose to dream...

Short Story First...

Short story that will make sense later:

I once listened to an audiobook in my car with Morgan Freeman narrating.

Suffice to say, I fell asleep in my car, only to be awoken by an airbag. The moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen, is to never, ever listen to Morgan Freeman's voice narrating a Stephen King novel. It is not only creepy; it will also put you to sleep. Sir Freeman, I apologize but your voice is like a magnetic pillow to me, and I want to fall asleep on it.

The Most Common Answer

The most common answer may be mixed, but more often than not, and in the midst of doing research on this literary topic of mine, blogs are trusted as a criteria of success but not of professionalism, believe it or not. Many assume a blog is more insightful, and that is because of one factor: the human mind wants to "scan" the words of a blog, allowing for more knowledge to sink in, paying attention to headers, while a book is meant to be "read."

It is argued by Scott Young that a book calls upon more points-of-reference, and there may even be a psychological component behind this. For one, more research will go into writing a book than a blog. At least, that is what we assume. A narrative, however, is not going to consist of much research, now will it? Research shows that 77 percent of people will read at least one blog a day. But we have a problem here.

If 77 percent of people are reading blogs, and only 20 minutes a day are spent reading as the average American did back in 2020, that presents a question: are they reading blogs or books? The point of this article is not to sway opinion, but to give hindsight into the inner workings of what will work best for you as a professional, an author, or even a reader.

The "Feel" Of A Book

Now, picture the last time you held a great blog in your hands. Never happened once, right? That is because the feel of a book in your hands (or on your iPad) is so much more weighty than a blog. A blog seems like something "anybody can do."

You would be surprised.

Millions of entrepreneurs use blogs to entertain, to appeal to an audience, and to figure in their daily thoughts or opinions (just like I am doing right now). They write a 300-to-500 word blog a day, or a week, and call it quits. In other words, they have yet to meet me.

But does that mean the book is more emphatic? Is it more or less more "sincere" than, say, a 500-word blog post? I think we would be best thinking about it in terms of vantage points. Some of us prefer a blog as less-of-scale, i.e. we will assume that a blog takes less time to write, subconsciously deviating it from the same level of professionalism as a book. The only thing that matters is the length, and therein lies the question: does time matter?

The Amount Of Time

According to Capital Title, it takes 20.8 hours to write a book, versus a blog at two hours (yes, two hours can be the determining length of writing a 1,000-word blog).

This data, however, is not to be firmly trusted. We know all too well these days not to trust everything we hear, including my ramblings on topics I know nothing about.

So, 20.8 hours to write a book?

Not Exactly True

Are you kidding? This statement was based on the average amount of time to physically write 100 pages, void of the notion that one must think about what they are writing, to research what they are discussing, and to caustically compose a great novel.

But we can say the very same about a blog on, say, kittens. You are a breeder of kittens and you want to make a statement. Do you write 10 blogs at 1,000 words each, or do you write one long book? This is a question many do not realize, with a simple answer:

You can do both, you know.

Repurposing Old Work

It is true: many repurpose old content.

I plan on doing that with my 90 Day Content Challenge, just as you should be considering for any piece of work you felt came out meeting the standard of "you."

Yes, you can repurpose a long blog series into a book, and it matters only on if you have the time or not. "Repurposing" is the act of taking something you once wrote, or drew, or recorded, and turning it into an infinite number of applications.

A blog series can become a book with each blog representing a chapter; just shift the titles categorically and modify in the necessary transitions. This is the same for someone who is, say, a podcaster. A podcaster can take their recordings, transcribe them, and make them into a blog, or a book...you get the ethereal point of this.

My Opinion On This Topic

I feel a book shows more merit than a blog ever will. This series will soon become a book, and next time you feel you need to share expertise or entertainment, do remember that you can always repurpose it later. At the end of the day, just write, or record, or magnify, and take something great by turning around the choice of medium or platform.

I have written twelve novels, with only half of them officially published, and though I hate to bring this horrible discussion up, this is where the audiobook discussion about Freeman comes into my mind. Audiobooks are common, especially on websites like Audible.com. This might have been the first sign of "repurposing."

It was taking a common problem (i.e. people cannot read or watch TVs in their cars, and not all want to listen to the morning's news or Howard Stern, or whoever took his corpse's place) and finding a solution by putting a book into audio format.

This was, in my opinion, the dawn of repurposing.

Many know this term; I am not the only one, and many people do it on a day-to-day basis, turning books and blogs into other mediums, and I once even used a blog topic to trigger a podcast discussion of my own. But books are the king of success.

Expertise Must Be Earned

You see, expertise comes in the form of presentation, not of facts but in tone. When we write, we naturally flow this "tone" to orchestrate our words, much like how a bass guitar mitigates the melody of a song. Sure, you cannot quite hear it, but ever listen to a song without bass? I tried this once, and suffice to say, the song was much, much worse off.

Expertise must be earned not by knowledge but rather, by the way you present the work. There is research (too much to name, but I will stick with Christopher Watling's expertise in this) that several forms of tone exist. It is the "voice" we hear in our heads when we read.

Not many realize they are even performing this phenomenon, but when you read a book, unless out loud, you will hear the resonance of a professional voice versus a story-telling one, and many other variations exist in the phonetical troposphere.

Tone Sets The Mood

So, is a tone the answer? Can you not write a great blog with great tone, or expect only that in a book? I return to the topic: is your tone more important than the medium?

Well, yes!

Sure, a book feels more experienced and "worked on," but in the end, you would be amazed at what you can accomplish with a simple 500-word blog post.

The problem is, many do not write with tone in mind.

They emphasize facts and figures, and I apologize but I have never met anyone who is really, really "into" a blog. A blog psychologically programs us to believe that this is less experienced, less well-orchestrated, and less...well, everything.

Like almost everything I write, there is indeed research behind this, mostly by Christopher Watling, who I have used for a number of sources.

How To Succeed With A Blog

Now, if you came here just to read a discussion, you came to the right place, because that is all I do. I am no man of great matters. I am just a writer, a student, and a figment of your imagination. In a world where A.I. can write, how do you know I even exist?

Yes, as creepy as that sounds, we will move onward.

If you wish to succeed in your efforts without writing a blog, do ourself a favor:

Write with proper tone and your audience in mind.

Stephen King's Mistake

The bastard almost killed me by hiring Freeman to narrate his book.

But I am not here to bash the best writer of all time.

King wrote a book called: "On Writing." It emphasizes these points where, as a species, we all have two things that magnetically coalesce when we are reading: tone and audience.

On a side note, this was the audiobook by Freeman I mentioned, and I later picked up a copy so I could be blown away, only to find the tone of the book was not Freeman's fault with his voice of fluffy pillows - it was Stephen King's tone, but moving on.

Tone & Audience

Tone and audience simply means: the manner in which the reader combines those words on paper and into their brainstems. If you can write meaningfully, but without proper tone, nine out of ten times the person will put that blog or book down in a second. It grows boring.

If you emphasize tone without proper purpose (also called "audience"), however, and this is where I need to to comment and think about this: does the tone allow for you to continue reading, despite not gaining much? If you have read my articles, you will note that I use a mix of tones. This one was satirical; yesterday's was beyond bland; tomorrow's will probably be something I have yet to determine (Bipolar Disorder does that to you).

So, when writing, put the audience down on paper before writing it. Think about what the audience is looking for. Are they looking for meaning? Inspiration? Knowledge? Expertise? That can then determine your tone, which should reflect your audience.

In Conclusion

In conclusion of this debauchery, I have only two things to provide you with today, as you wake up only to find your subscription to the 90 Day Content Challenge is posted every morning at f'ing 3am. One: books hold more merit than a blog, but only under certain conditions we have discussed. Two: never trust Morgan Freeman to read a book out-loud.

Especially a book about writing.

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