It's easy to be overwhelmed with all the blogging book choices. A recent book search on Amazon.com for the word "blogging" found no fewer than 1,740 entries.
Diving into this crowded pool comes Bloggers Boot Camp: Learning How to Build, Write, and Run a Successful Blog, by Charlie White and John Biggs.
If you're a beginning blogger, or are just kicking the tires, this book is worth your time. The authors have provided an easy-to-read introductory guide to setting up a blog (including an overview of the various platforms); writing it; keeping the momentum going; building traffic; making money (yes, some bloggers actually make a few dollars); optimizing for search engines; and more. The book is well organized and full of practical advice.
On occasion, though, I take exception to the advice. The authors stress that bloggers "must write a minimum of 1,000 words a day." Why? They point to successful blogger Om Malik (GigaOM), who set a 1,000-word daily limit for himself "to ensure he produced quality content in a timely manner" after suffering a heart attack.
The authors also say "a blog that has not been updated in days is a sick blog."
I won't quibble with this last statement. However, I don't believe it's necessary to write 1,000 words a day to be a successful blogger, and I worry that setting the bar so high may discourage potential bloggers.
The authors offer an example of a blogger, John Gruber of DaringFireball, who writes small "nugget" posts and then writes one long essay on technology every week. This feels more "do-able" to me.
My advice: Feed your blog at least twice a week, more if you can, and focus on quality-not quantity of words. Write when you have something interesting to say; don't write just because you haven't posted in a few days. If you can't think of anything interesting to write about at least twice a week, blogging probably isn't your medium.
Bloggers Boot Camp would have benefited from showing plenty of examples of successful blog posts and then dissecting what made those posts successful. In other words: more showing and a little less telling would have been beneficial, especially for beginners.
Overall, however, Bloggers Boot Camp is a handy reference for aspiring and beginning bloggers. Even seasoned vets are likely to pick up tips and nuggets of useful information, like this: "Experts say people read blogs the most in the morning, with the hour between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. at the peak."
On Amazon.com, the paperback version of Bloggers Boot Camp is $18 and the Kindle edition is $16.17. I'd opt for the paperback version, as it has a number of color images that won't look so hot on a grayscale Kindle screen.