Many magazine writers seek to make the leap from articles to books at some point in their careers, especially magazine writers who have a well-developed reputation and platform in a particular industry. In part, the idea of having your name on a book's spine is a romantic notion that's hard to overcome. In addition, the more you learn about your chosen area of writing expertise, the more you will have to say to your readers, and the bigger platform you will want to use to herald your idea.

For most magazine writers, moving into the realm of authorship comes along with the desire to expand on ideas more than magazine space limitations allow. A good example is Bill Buford, a writer for The New Yorker who wanted to learn and write about food and the celebrity chef Mario Batali. Instead of simply doing interviews and producing an article for that magazine, Buford spent more than a year researching his subject matter — cooking in Batali's New York City restaurant and traveling to work for Batali's favorite teachers in Italy — and then wrote what he found into the book Heat, which became a bestseller in the summer of 2006. Parts of Heat could have just as easily been sold as separate magazine stories, but Buford simply had too much to say to be confined to ten- or even hundred-page articles.

Expanding on Your Ideas

You can take the same approach to expanding on your ideas in a book, no matter your field of expertise. Any subject that you cover for a long enough time will eventually reveal holes in its marketplace, and you can take the initiative to fill them with a book. It could be a how-to title or a personal memoir, but if you understand how to use your platform to sell it, the odds are that you will be able to interest a publisher in your idea.

Selling book ideas is harder than selling magazine article ideas, though. Instead of writing query letters, you will have to write entire proposals complete with sample chapters and marketing ideas. Then, most likely, you will have to find a literary agent who can help you take your proposal to a publishing house. If you're lucky, you'll get at least a small advance — say, somewhere in the $3,000 range — plus royalties on book sales if your title does well.

Needless to say, unless you're a famous author, writing a whole book for a $3,000 advance doesn't sound too financially wise when you could probably earn the same amount writing just one or two magazine articles. The reason you might take on the job, though, is your desire to expand upon your ideas in print — especially if you know that there may be ways to expand your income, as well.

Expanding Your Income

Virtually all book authors, especially first-timers, will tell you that the money isn't in the book itself. It's in the articles that you can sell to various magazines based on the chapters in your book. Essentially, what happens is that you write the book and then repurpose its content to suit various editors, just as you might repurpose an article that you once sold to a magazine but now want to reshape and sell to another magazine.

In the process, you should earn enough money to make writing the book worthwhile, even if it doesn't hit the bestseller list in The New York Times Book Review. Plus, you will have the satisfaction of having expanded on your ideas in print and having your name on a spine in the local Barnes & Noble, which is a lifelong dream that goes unrealized for many writers the world over.