
Do you remember the last business book you read with unflinching focus? The last time you were so engrossed in a nonfiction book that you lost track of time?
If you’ve had this experience recently, I’ll bet it was when you were careening through the air at 30,000 feet. For me, there’s nothing like being on a flight if I need a productive window of focused reading time. I’ll even save up new business books to read on my next flight.
That’s why I also recommend that you write an “airplane book.”
What’s that? The sweet spot for a business book: 40,000 words, 100-150 pages printed (depending on formatting and how many graphics you include). It’s a book that can be read on a three- or four-hour flight.
It’s the ideal length for you to write as the busy business owner turned authorpreneur. And it’s the ideal length for your reader as the busy business owner turned devotee who wants to implement the recommendations in your book.
Here’s my case for writing a short, sweet 40,000-word business book.
Author Benefits:
First Class Speed
When you set a word count goal for yourself as an author, you set yourself up to get your draft done quickly. While some authors prefer to give themselves time goals (e.g., I’ll write for 30 minutes 2x per day), I find word count goals to be more helpful.
This makes it easy to do some simple math (it’s really simple; I promise) and figure out when you’ll have your first messy draft complete. You can reverse-engineer the writing process too by setting a deadline for yourself and figuring out how many words you need to write each week to hit your deadline.
To figure out how long it will take to write 40,000 words, do some timed writing sessions. Sit down for 30-, 60-, or 90-minute sessions and keep track of how many words you write. Then come up with an average word count per hour and divide into 40,000 to figure out how many hours you need to write your draft. Once you have this number, you can figure out how many hours per week you need to write to hit your weekly word count goal.
Example: Suppose you find that you can write 250 words per hour. This means it will take 160 hours to write a 40,000-word draft. If you spend 5 hours per week writing, then it will take 32 weeks (or 8 months) to complete your draft.
If you don’t like the result, you can increase the amount of time you spend writing or work on increasing your writing speed (though this won’t be easy).
No Excess Baggage
40,000 words is also a helpful guardrail if you tend to write too much. Think back to when you wrote essays for your college professor. Were they always too long or did you often find that you hit the assignment length before you finished writing every part of your outline? If so, then you will likely run up against this challenge with your business book too.
To avoid this, create an outline for your book, figure out the average length for each chapter, and make it your goal to stay within those parameters. This will ensure that you write with clarity and precision, leaving the excess baggage back at home.
Example: Suppose you create an outline with 8 chapters. This means that each chapter should be roughly 5,000 words.
On-Time Departure
Finally, writing an “airplane book” will launch your Big Idea into the market where it can help you grow your business. Publishing your business book is an investment of time, effort, and money. It’s important that once you decide to write this thing, you commit and get it done as quickly as you can, so you can put this book to work.
How your book can grow your business:
- Increase your authority and credibility as the go-to expert in your industry
- Give you the confidence to own your expertise
- Generate leads
- Help you close sales
- Start conversations in-person and online
- Grow your audience
- Spread the word about your work
Reader Benefits:
Clear Skies Ahead
As much as you don’t want to write a 300-page tome, your readers don’t want to read it either. We’ve all seen those Amazon reviews saying, “this book could have been an article.” Readers know when we’re padding a book or piling on examples just to make ourselves feel smarter. Don’t do it.
Your readers will appreciate the clarity that comes from a focused book that allows them to get in, get out, and start applying your tips to improve their business. Also, when a book is concise, readers can maintain full attention and better absorb the key ideas without getting lost in unnecessary details.
Perfect Flight Time
40,000 words is easy for many readers to consume and absorb in one sitting. This is especially true if you include reflection questions or other prompts along the way to help them think about how they will implement your recommendations.
And this is exactly how most of us want to read business books. I don’t know about you, but if I have to come back to a business book because it’s too dense and I can’t make much progress in a few hours, I’m much less likely to power through. It may even give me a guilt hangover because as much as I hate to leave a book unfinished, the struggle may be just too much for me.
Write a book that your readers can digest on a three- or four-hour flight or during a Saturday afternoon and you’ll be doing them a huge favor.
Ready for Landing
Just as you’re writing a business book to grow your business, your reader is reading your book to grow their business. This means that serving them immediately actionable ideas that they can implement to solve a problem is a great way to earn their trust.
Also, if you intend your book to generate leads for a one-on-one service, the sooner your readers put your strategies to work on the ground, the sooner they’ll realize they need to bring you in to share your expertise.
Curious to find out the length of a book that you’re reading? Here’s a simple way to estimate the number of words: multiply the number of printed pages by 275 (the average number of words per page).
Example: 183 pages x 275 = 50,325 words
If you’re shaking your head at all of this, I get it, but I want you to consider how much the publishing world has changed over the years. Our attention spans have shrunk since we started doing so much daily reading on screens and digital distractions have become a way of life. Younger generations are reading less and less. It’s hard to believe that this won’t affect the business book market.
Why not get ahead of this by learning to write an “airplane book?” It just might be your ticket to authorpreneurial success.
Image by: https://www.freepik.com/author/javi-indy