Ok, Brother! I'm taking the challenge…. I’ll be happy with a book every 2 months, following the process as close as I can, but at this point gonna back up and cover a few steps I missed!
Probably. I’ve heard about a book that was entirely blank.
What I mean is that I have debated turning some of my long form pieces into a book. They all follow a specific theme and have coherence. But I also have like 52 pieces that I wrote that don’t necessarily have a specific theme or coherence as a group.
Ha. In some cases, I’d say that’s pretty true. I have been tho long about it in terms of what will help the reader finish the book.
With attention spans being so short, shorter chapters (1000 to 2000 words) help people move through books and feel a sense of accomplishment as they learn from your content. So that’s what I shoot for.
I really believe the day of 300-page books is in the past and more people who are looking to pick up skills and practical knowledge will gravitate toward shorter books 10,000 to 30,000 words. (This is my target for the time being).
I also think that stringing together some of these short books will help set your readers up to jump into a longer one in the future too if things change or you come across a topic that does need in-depth case studies and explanation.
That certainly seems to be the way to go. I just find it weird that with all these data scientists analyzing everything on the internet, I never hear anyone say “the average book length is...” or “the average chapter length is...”
Kinda feels like an obvious data point to make available for people. Especially with AI in the mix now.
My other big concern is about the legality of non-fiction writing. Especially about copyrighted material. My focus is the philosophy behind various films and television shows. So I sorta fall into a legal grey area when it comes to what can be used as a cover. If I put an image of or from the film or television show in the cover, is that fair use? A transformative work?
I should probably talk with a lawyer or something.
What makes sense in terms of length? My pieces tend to be 500 words long each. My more book length pieces are about 2,000 words each.
I would say based on my current available writing, I have 4 books worth of content. If I use your 7-10 pieces metric. But that’s just my 2,000 word pieces.
I think that can be okay. Once you put an introduction and conclusion in there, you will get some more words in there. You might also expand on some of the shorter posts. The current book I'm working on started out with each chapter at 700-words. Then I expanded some details and made it to about 1000 to 1500 each. Then editing will probably bring them down some, but the key is that if those chapters move people down a journey toward an objective of idea, then it doesn't matter how long the chapters are really.
Yeah, I have thought about adding a few things to it as well. I’ve never been able to get any specific numbers in terms of what constitutes a chapter word count or a full book word count. Too many people say “It’s just whatever you want it to be”. Which is completely unhelpful.
I've been thinking about this for a few days now since you first mentioned it, and I'm still on the fence. I went through the exercise of writing down my book ideas and I have 16 right now, 6 in one series, 4 in another, 2 in another, and 4 seperate ones.
I'm going to give it a few more days before I decide if I'm going for it or not.
That can be up to you. I have at least an hour every day. Though some days I have three. I will also be incorporating old posts into the books, so I’m not writing everything from scratch.
This all seems totally doable. I love your step-by-step process. This is the kind of post I will come back to reread -- there's a lot of information here!
I think having the steps and the steps within the steps in super helpful. And to be totally honest, if you miss a month, you miss a month. It’s really not a big deal.
I think having them in series helps a ton. At least that’s my plan for it anyway.
Ok, Brother! I'm taking the challenge…. I’ll be happy with a book every 2 months, following the process as close as I can, but at this point gonna back up and cover a few steps I missed!
Let’s do it! I can’t wait!
It depends on your definition of a book. I've written quite a bit for my own Substack which could be considered a book.
Would you call this a book? https://a.co/d/iYLHoWd
Probably. I’ve heard about a book that was entirely blank.
What I mean is that I have debated turning some of my long form pieces into a book. They all follow a specific theme and have coherence. But I also have like 52 pieces that I wrote that don’t necessarily have a specific theme or coherence as a group.
Ha. In some cases, I’d say that’s pretty true. I have been tho long about it in terms of what will help the reader finish the book.
With attention spans being so short, shorter chapters (1000 to 2000 words) help people move through books and feel a sense of accomplishment as they learn from your content. So that’s what I shoot for.
I really believe the day of 300-page books is in the past and more people who are looking to pick up skills and practical knowledge will gravitate toward shorter books 10,000 to 30,000 words. (This is my target for the time being).
I also think that stringing together some of these short books will help set your readers up to jump into a longer one in the future too if things change or you come across a topic that does need in-depth case studies and explanation.
That certainly seems to be the way to go. I just find it weird that with all these data scientists analyzing everything on the internet, I never hear anyone say “the average book length is...” or “the average chapter length is...”
Kinda feels like an obvious data point to make available for people. Especially with AI in the mix now.
My other big concern is about the legality of non-fiction writing. Especially about copyrighted material. My focus is the philosophy behind various films and television shows. So I sorta fall into a legal grey area when it comes to what can be used as a cover. If I put an image of or from the film or television show in the cover, is that fair use? A transformative work?
I should probably talk with a lawyer or something.
I think if you can put together 7 to 10 pieces you’ve got enough content to do it.
What makes sense in terms of length? My pieces tend to be 500 words long each. My more book length pieces are about 2,000 words each.
I would say based on my current available writing, I have 4 books worth of content. If I use your 7-10 pieces metric. But that’s just my 2,000 word pieces.
I think that can be okay. Once you put an introduction and conclusion in there, you will get some more words in there. You might also expand on some of the shorter posts. The current book I'm working on started out with each chapter at 700-words. Then I expanded some details and made it to about 1000 to 1500 each. Then editing will probably bring them down some, but the key is that if those chapters move people down a journey toward an objective of idea, then it doesn't matter how long the chapters are really.
Yeah, I have thought about adding a few things to it as well. I’ve never been able to get any specific numbers in terms of what constitutes a chapter word count or a full book word count. Too many people say “It’s just whatever you want it to be”. Which is completely unhelpful.
I've been thinking about this for a few days now since you first mentioned it, and I'm still on the fence. I went through the exercise of writing down my book ideas and I have 16 right now, 6 in one series, 4 in another, 2 in another, and 4 seperate ones.
I'm going to give it a few more days before I decide if I'm going for it or not.
How much time do you schedule for writing (or working on the project) each day?
That can be up to you. I have at least an hour every day. Though some days I have three. I will also be incorporating old posts into the books, so I’m not writing everything from scratch.
This all seems totally doable. I love your step-by-step process. This is the kind of post I will come back to reread -- there's a lot of information here!
I think having the steps and the steps within the steps in super helpful. And to be totally honest, if you miss a month, you miss a month. It’s really not a big deal.
Wow - you are blowing my mind (in a good way)
It definitely isn’t an easy way of doing things, but it’s totally possible.
Thanks for the challenge and giving a practical plan for achieving it.
It’s a fun idea and definitely worth a try! And I think giving a plan with the idea makes it a lot more doable.
You know what, I'm going to give this a try next month. I'm really busy right now, but I'll have significantly more time next month.
I'm going to write a book in June.
This is really an interesting challenge. I wish people really read cryptocurrency books as compared sharing how tos