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How to Win By Writing Shorter Books

October 26, 2023

How to Win By Writing Shorter Books.

Here are a couple of reasons why you should write shorter books:

  • They take you less time to create
  • They take your customers less time to read

A win-win

You can list them for $0.99 on Amazon

And if you feel guilty about charging money for a book that’s too short, donate your proceeds to charity

I’ve done this multiple times

Here are 3 book examples:


Book 1: Rule #1 for Nonfiction Authors

Inspiration: A build-in-public project to show others that you can repurpose your older content into a short book

Strategy: Used a chapter from one of my other books called “Write Your Book on the Side.” Sifted through the “popular highlights” feature in Kindle to know which sections stuck with readers and used that to write the book

Time to write & publish: ~4 hours

Length: ~1,600 words

Check out “Rule #1 for Nonfiction Authors” by clicking here


Book 2: Inverse Leadership

Inspiration: A suggestion by the CEO of OpenAI that someone should write a book called ‘the areas where you have to do the opposite of conventional management wisdom’

Strategy: Used ChatGPT to help me come up with a title, outline, and structure for the book. Also wrote it with the help of ChatGPT and refined the output based on my experience in management & leadership

Time to write & publish: ~48 hours

Length: ~3,400 words

Check out “Inverse Leadership” by clicking here


Book 3: This Book is One Page Long

Inspiration: A response to a common question that I usually get: “How short can a short book be?”

Strategy: Wrote a 1-page book as a joke. Focused on explaining why and how others can write short nonfiction books. Made it inspirational.

Time to write & publish: ~4 hours

Length: ~440 words

Check out “This Book is One Page Long” by clicking here


Results

Every one of those books hit the Amazon #1 best-seller list in different categories when they launched

And each sells around 1 to 2 copies a day in steady-state (i.e., no marketing or shout-outs; just organic marketing via Amazon’s marketplace).

So if you’re thinking about writing your own book but don’t know where to start, check out this free book: “Write Your Book on the Side.”

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