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#1 Photo Products - The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $8.92
Your Save: $ 6.08 ( 41% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9781439105009
ISBN: 1439105006
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2008-12-02
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Blog Reference
Comment: Whether you are just starting out or are already blogging, this is a great reference. I picked it up for some pointers on how to improve my own blog - www.hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com - one of my resolutions for 2009. I've been following Huff Post since 2005, so all of the history was interesting to read again. I think my favorite tidbit is the Cheney joke by Steve Martin, page 123. There is a lot of good material here,
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great style notes, lots of trash to wade through
Comment: This was a great book on blogging style and I really recommend it for that purpose. I'll warn you, though. You'll have to wade through a lot of "I hate Bush" and gay pride rhetoric to get to the meat of the book. There is no purpose in liberal (or conservative) rantings in a technical book. But then again, if they hadn't the book would have been thin and they couldn't charge me $10.00 for it. Basically, if you are a journalist using blog media or you are having trouble with your writing style for your blog, it's a great book. Otherwise, save your money and buy a newspaper.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A good beginner book in spite of all the self-reference and name-dropping
Comment: I give this book three out of five stars, and while its good points have been covered by other reviewers, I'll air my three grievances. This book would be better if it were 2 inches smaller and about two-thirds the length, and if it was targeted more towards people who have something useful to say to a wider audience.
First, the book has extra large outside margins to accommodate occasional quotes, but a quick flip through the book shows that as just a lot of blank space padding out the book and giving it a more square shape that your average book. Seems like a waste of paper meant to make the book's uncommon shape stand out in physical book stores, and my little eco-gripe with the book.
While no one would deny that The Huffington Post is a successful and influential blog, and is therefor in a place to offer advice, the incessant talking about how great it is and the stories it broke, combined with a lot of "best of" selections is overkill. I suppose if one had never read or heard of blogs before, it would be useful to read so many examples of what gets written in blogs (anything!), but I would imagine most of the book's readers read blogs every day already. At least one-third of the book is about how the Huffington Post got started or excerpts from the site. Personally, I didn't find it all that relevant in a "how to blog" book. It's not as though a reader has no other way of finding out, if they wanted to, "What kind of things are on The Huffington Post?" The authors repeatedly entice potential bloggers with the fact that one of the great things about blogging is that there is no editor dictating a piece's length to you. It seems like this book could have used a cut-happy editor.
Lastly, there's a bunch of rally-the-troops, "Even YOU, a lil' stay-at-home mom, who wants to write about your boring and petty frustrations, CAN HAVE A BLOG!" stuff. Some of us, however, don't need to be sold on the concept of blogging. Some of us already have topics that interest us and experience writing about them. Some of us aim to reach wider audiences than sharing summaries of our daily lives on LiveJournal. I would have liked to see a chapter about fine-tuning one's messages and reaching target audiences for people who, pardon my snobbery, but actually have something of value to say to the world. I realize that most blogs are just tiny personal journals meant only to entertain the author and their friends, but I'd have liked to see a lot more from this book beyond the predominantly surface-level advice for people who are coming from a place of, "Golly, what could I write about? What are my interests? What are blogs?"
All in all, though, I do recommend the book for beginners, and cautiously recommend it for non-beginners. I wish it had less fluff and more intermediate-level advice. Many of the reviewers here praise the book for helping readers find their voice and a topic that interests them, and that's all good and well, but what about people who already had those two things covered long before picking up the book?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great getting-started book on blogging
Comment: The book is structured into 3 parts:
* Part I: The Nuts and Bolts of Blogging
* Part II: The Blog Revolution is Here! Be a Part of It.
* Part III: The Huffington Post Resources Section
I bought this book because I wanted to gain some guidelines and insights into how to effectively blog and because of the notariety of the Huffington Post (this site and the Drudge Report are the 2 sites I usually check daily).
Blogging is simply writing. If you were to do the audio equivalent it would be podcasting; the video equivalent, video podcasting. Not being much of a writer I originally postponed my calling until this month when not only did I start a family blog but a personal one as well. I discovered that I had a lot to say and blogging was an easy way to get my thoughts out to others.
My favorite takeaways from the book include:
* what to write about
* anatomy of a blog post
* Bob Creamer's blogging tips
* Huffington Post's blogging rules
* best practices for building community
Nearly 50% of the book (Parts II and III) talks about the makings of the Huffington Post (34 pp.), how the blogosphere is remaking the media (22 pp.), and resources (56 pp.) contains resources: HuffPost's blogroll, glossary, URL resources and example HuffPost blogs (I quickly skimmed over Part III). Unfortunately while these parts were interesting and informative they did little to provide me with the tips and specifics I was looking for.
I'm sure there are other blogging books available but if you're looking for a current, inexpensive, and easy-to-read book on blogging look no further. You may want to focus on the first half of the book (Part I) and then refer to Parts II and III when needed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Four Rules For Great Blogging (Plus a Celebrity Bonus Rule)
Comment: The trouble with The Huffington Post Guide to Blogging is that, like with so many how-to books, there isn't a book's worth of information here. But there is about a half a book's worth, so it's still worth your time.
The first section briefly deals with the history and purpose of blogs, then gets to how to start your blog. There are practical details about where to blog and what to blog about, technical details about how to set up your blog, whether you can make big bucks with your blog (no), and how to deal with comments and trolls.
The two most helpful pages in the book are the list of Rules for Great Blogging (page 80) and Nora Ephron's blog post about how she learned to blog (page 30.)
Here are the four of the eight most important rules for blogging, according to The Huffington Post Editors: blog often, perfect is the enemy of done, write like you speak, write short.
And Nora Ephron's revelation about blogs is that they are like soap bubbles, ephemeral, lasting only a short time before they're gone. So they don't have to be perfect or polished, they just have to be NOW. And they don't have to end, as essays do. They simply have to stop.
The practical advice stops after the first hundred pages, and then it's pretty much an ad for The Huffington Post, with many sample posts from their stable of celebrity bloggers. If you're eager to get blogging, you can skip the last half. The first half has everything you need to know, and a fair amount of inspiration as well. Recommended!
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Editorial Reviews:
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The editors of The Huffington Post -- the most linked-to blog on the web -- offer an A-Z guide to all things blog, with information for everyone from the tech-challenged newbie looking to get a handle on this new way of communicating to the experienced blogger looking to break through the clutter of the Internet. With an introduction by Arianna Huffington, the site's cofounder and editor in chief, this book is everything you want to know about blogging, but didn't know who to ask.As entertaining as it is informative, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging will show you what to do to get your blog started. You'll find tools to help you build your blog, strategies to create your community, tips on finding your voice, and entertaining anecdotes from HuffPost bloggers that will make you wonder what took you so long to blog in the first place.The Guide also includes choice selections from HuffPost's wide-ranging mix of top-notch bloggers. Among those who have blogged on HuffPost are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Larry David, Jane Smiley, Bill Maher, Nora Ephron, Jon Robin Baitz, Steve Martin, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ari Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Al Franken, Gary Hart, Barbara Ehrenreich, Edward Kennedy, Harry Shearer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam McKay, John Ridley, and Alec Baldwin.
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