We say that we judge a book by its cover, but that’s only part of the story. We use the book’s cover to decide whether to buy it, but we judge it based on what’s inside.
The evidence suggests we don’t think much of what we find in business books. One reader analytics firm found that “fewer than half of the books tested were finished by a majority of readers. Most readers typically give up on a book in the early chapters.”
If you have a Kindle, you can test this yourself. Pick a book. Pull up the “Popular Highlights.” In most business books, you’ll discover that the last popular highlight is well short of halfway through the book
Why is this happening?
You can blame a lot of things for this. We often blame short attention spans for the problem. Today’s readers are distracted readers, constantly abandoning one bright shining object for another, brighter, shinier one. And you can certainly blame legacy publishers whose insistence on 250-page business books has led to business books with 250 pages of text that deliver only about 50 pages of value.
Yeah, there are lots of things you can blame. But don’t shake your fist at the sky, put your energy into things you can control.
Concentrate on what you can do to keep readers reading.
You can’t control the culture or the business practices in the industry. You have no influence at all on the people who buy your book.
Concentrate on the things you can control. You control the value your book delivers. You can write a book that people read all the way to the end.
Come out punching! Then, keep punching.
An astounding number of readers abandoned business books before they even finished the first chapter. If you deliver value, they won’t do that. So, start your book strong. Deliver a lot of value from the beginning. Don’t start to prepare to begin to get ready. Don’t tell readers all about the run-up to the book. Forget foreplay. Just start delivering value.
To deliver value, you must know your reader. You must know what problem you’re helping them solve or what opportunity you’re helping them seize. And you have to know if it’s really important to them.
Don’t stop at the first chapter. Deliver value in every charter.
No fluff. And here’s a news flash. That great story you want to tell or that great experience that you want to share? If it doesn’t help to move the book forward and deliver value, it doesn’t belong in a book.
Write the way people like to read.
Readers don’t want an academic treatise. They want solid ideas they can implement in language they understand. Keep it simple and conversational. Write like you’d tell it to a friend in a social setting.
Don’t go more than about 2000 words without changing things up. Readers perk up when one thing ends and another begins. Share some research. Then illustrate it with an example. Then explain why it matters. Then… something else.
Use the end of each chapter to hook readers into moving on to the next chapter. Cliffhanger endings are great. If you want to know how to do them, read some genre fiction.
Stop while you’re ahead.
No fluff. Give the reader everything they need to solve an important problem or seize an important opportunity. Then shut up.
If you want readers to read your book all the way through, give them reasons to keep going. Start delivering value at the beginning and don’t stop. Make it easy by writing conversationally and using devices that help them maintain momentum.