Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

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.