Size matters.
Your book has to appear to be long enough to be worth the money you are
charging.
Today, many of the high-speed web presses print signatures
of 48 pages. As the paper goes through the press, 24 pages are printed on the
top side and 24 on the underside. The most economical page-counts are in even
signatures. One signature (48 pages) or two (96 pages) will not command the
price you want for your book. A good minimum page count is three signatures or
144 pages. Additionally, since paper it the most expensive component of a book,
288 pages is a good upper limit.
I hope you got as much out of
reading my book as I got spending the money you paid for it.
—Anonymous If you need to lengthen your book, add resources
to the Appendix: List other relevant books, videos, courses, mailing lists,
associations, suppliers, etc. Now your useful text becomes a valuable
reference. You do not want to pad the book with extra writing and dilute your
message. Adding resources is a better alternative.
Other ways to
lengthen the book—while making it more valuable and more
interesting—is to add quotations, stories and illustrations to the pages
and/or summaries at the end of each chapter. Be sure to lay out the pages with
plenty of white space.
Leigh Cohn took three of his wife’s
30-page pamphlets on bulimia and combined them into a single book. They added
resources, a two-week program to stop bingeing and a guide for support groups.
Lindsey Hall’s 160-page Bulimia; A Guide to Recovery has been through five
revised editions for more than 100,000 copies in print.
Since then,
they have written nine books, established their own publishing company with
more than 20 titles currently in print, launched an eating disorder resource
catalog, and published a clinical newsletter. http://www.gurze.com
A
book full of resource material is not just a quick read, it is a valuable
reference.
Dan Poynter does not want you to die with a book
still inside you. You have the ingredients and he has your recipe. Dan has
written more than 100 books since 1969 including Writing Nonfiction and The
Self- Publishing Manual. For more help on book writing, see
http://ParaPub.com. ©
