I think this depends on the field and the audience. I'm not sure about other sciences but, when I was working in Biology and Ecology, there was much higher regard placed on people who'd been published in reputable peer reviewed journals than those that published books on topics.
It usually came down to the assumption that if someone published their research in a book rather than submitting it for peer review, it meant the quality of the research wasn't up to standards and likely would have been rejected and information from scientists published only in books is looked at as questionable and not really a good source to use as a primary reference.
That being said, the general public tends to place book published scientists in almost higher regard than many working scientists and will take information published in such form as undeniable fact.
Fair enough. I should have specified the "software engineering field" as the scope of my statement. I don't know enough about other fields (such as branches of science or history), and certainly writing a fiction book doesn't anchor you as an expert.
A book usually covers a selected topic in depth and in a coherent manner. This is particular useful for graduate students. Besides, some book authors also invite their friends to give comments. The impact of a book can be as rigorous and significant as journal articles.
The blog approach might get a similar benefit if you can get a lot of feedback and discussion for each one. But it seems like it would have a degree of self-selection of readers, where you only get the most motivated commenting on any given post.
But, having taught some in-person and synchronous online classes, the different points of view from students definitely force me to understand the topic at many levels.
One issue teaching might have that blogging doesn't is that it may be hard to find your audience, if it is a niche topic. For instance, I doubt that anyone would have signed up for a Cordova automation course (the topic of my ebook). But perhaps in a world of Udacity I'm incorrect.
That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book. This is because it will force you to learn the topic very well (I remember spending an hour testing out something so I could write one sentence accurately) and because you can say "oh yes, I wrote a book on that" which gives you a lot of credibility.
I think it was totally worth writing the less technical book too. It makes you dig into thoughts and ideas in a much deeper way than blog posts or presentations.
It also opens up some doors in terms of presentations and speaking, if that's of interest. My book wasn't on a technical topic, but if you write one, I could definitely see that leading to some consulting.
I think the best way to write a book is to blog it first, then assemble the pieces (adding in more). This lets you do a number of things:
* you can outline the topic as a series of posts. If you can't do this, don't write a non-fiction book.
* you can see if you like the topic 5-10 posts in. If you do, then you have the bones of a book. If you don't, why would you commit to a full length book?
* you can build an audience. I didn't have a large audience, but had a list of 200ish people I could market the book to. And again, if you blog 5-10 times and no one is interested, they probably won't be interested in a book either.
* you can easily turn it into an ebook (using a tool like leanpub) if you determine you want to self publish. If you work with a traditional publisher, you can still pull and revise the blog posts.
Since the book was just released in August, I have no idea of the financial success. Like the author, I'm not looking to have this be a huge piece of my income stream. If I can earn out my advance, I'll be happy.
Here's the book URL if you want to check it out: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/the-book/