The Huffington Post complete guide to blogging: a book review

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging by the Editors of the Huffington Post

Simon and Schuster 2008    $15.00        ISBN 1-4391-0500-6    Ebook edition also available

A book about how to blog- now there's a really weird concept! But judging from some of the stuff that goes on here in Gather, a little how-to advice is not amiss. How about

• Don't blog on your employer's nickel or using the office network
• Don't use your blog to purposefully target and defame someone
• Be familiar with copyright law and the idea of what constitutes fair use

Good advice there, huh?

Arianna Huffington knows lots of well known writers and bloggers of course, and much of the book consists of samples of their writing. Yes, weird, I used the word "writing" din't I? She and the Huffington Editors seem to have this odd notion that good blogging is good writing, and after viewing her argument, I guess I buy it.

Arianna covers most of the bases on blogging in this book: getting started (we probably don't need that, we are here on gather obviously), best practices, getting noticed, building community, finding your voice, etc.  So yes, it is worth leafing through it. There are some ideas I plan to use. Don't expect that she will enable you to become the next blogger millionaire- that won't happen.

One little comment that probably does not even need to be made, but here it is just in case. This book Huffington is unabashedly liberal and does not really go for the fairness doctrine. So if you are conservative, you really are not going to be thrilled by that aspect. But there actually are parts of the book that would make sense and be useful to any blogger irrespective of politics. One last bit of advice from the book: keep it short. Why? Because you don't have all day to read this stuff, and neither does anybody else. There's my hint to stop talking.