Have you recently been solicited by a company called Bloggingbooks that wants to publish your blog in book form?
Millions of people share their point of view with the world in real time – This is how blogs have become part of our everyday lives. Blogs focus on the present and thereby provide continuous commentary on daily happenings.
Events and content, that are presented in a chronological order on the internet, get a new dimension through books. By turning blogs into books we create a systematic snapshots through collecting, compiling, categorizing and commenting.
The eccentric English is no accident: Bloggingbooks is a German company–and not just any German company, either. As its domain registration information shows, it’s part of what’s probably the biggest author mill in the world (that’s right, it’s got PublishAmerica beat): VDM (Verlag Dr. Mueller).
I’ve written several blog posts about VDM and its multitudinous tentacles:
VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller
JustFiction! Edition
Blessed Hope Publishing
Briefly, these companies provide bare-bones POD and electronic publication, a life-of-copyright contract with no provision for termination or rights reversion, and a royalty structure that all but guarantees that VDM will never actually have to pay anything (if your royalties “average” less than 50 euros per month–a safe bet, given the books’ ridiculous prices and complete lack of marketing–you get vouchers to buy other VDM books in lieu of money). VDM and its satellite ventures are notorious for direct solicitation and spamming, and for creating “books” cobbled together from Wikipedia articles.
If you want to turn your blog into a book, there are many much better options, including just about any good self-publishing platform.
Thanks for that! I was approached by them two years ago. When I tried to research them at the time, I could not come up with anything negative, and I also saw that some very good blogs were published by them, so I was very close of actually going that way. Thankfully I didn't.
Thanks so much, Julie–I really appreciate it!
Thank you so much for all you do. I've been following your work since the early 2000s and can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Hey, I got that one the other day. I marked it as spam.
You can have your blog up on Kindle as well. I did this once when I had a news blog for Pagans. I made all of 4 dollars on it, but my blog wasn't well known and was short lived. You can find out more here: https://kindlepublishing.amazon.com
Smashwords recently opened up the door for those using their service to do serials…so I would be keeping an eye on them.
It's a shame it's a fraud, since the whole "publish a book chapter-by-chapter" has a rich history. It would be interesting to see people try that again either in some magazine or on some major traffic site.