4 ms·
When I was re-writing one of my books in 2016, I spent the whole summer asking successful entrepreneurs (my reader audience) what was their favorite business bo
by sebastiennight 2y ago
When I was re-writing one of my books in 2016, I spent the whole summer asking successful entrepreneurs (my reader audience) what was their favorite business book, and why.
It turned out that the "favorite book" answer was fairly varied (aside from a couple of big-name bestsellers), but the "why" answer almost always revolved around:
- "bite-size chapters"
- "really quick read"
- "short and to the point"
- "one idea, one example for proof, and that's it, go to next chapter"
My book went from ~120 pages to ~150 during that rewrite, but also went from ~10 chapters to ~80.
Not only did the new version outsell the original by a 10x factor, but I'd estimate the completion rate also shot up considerably (based on reader comments about the final chapters).
- qingcharles 2y agoJames Patterson's books are generally the worst I've ever read, but his short 2-3 page chapters are surely one of the reasons for his success. They're like popping M&M's -- you're thinking, "I can just do one more."
- treetalker 2y agoRenowned author Dan Brown, who walks with his feet while not writing renowned books as the author of them, has renowned books that (quite successfully) fall in this same category of books with short chapters with short sentences that read quickly because they are all short, not to mention renowned. https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/ https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-f...
- GeoAtreides 2y agohappy for you you got that bag, but oh my god do I weep for mankind tiktok and its ilk surely did a number on our collective attention spans (and along with it the capability for nuanced and complex reasoning)
- SllX 2y agoNah, most business books or “ideas” books really are too long. Something I used to do when I was interested in a book is I would go to the local book store, skim the introduction and chapter listings to get a feel for the book, find the chapter that had the same name of the book and just read that. Never walked away feeling like I didn’t get the author’s main idea, and usually most of the rest of the book is trying to pre-sell it and examples of where to apply their idea. Maybe some anecdotes about how it helped them in their life or how other people do it too.