As we approach the publishing of our first 24PageBooks title, I’ve had feedback from many people regarding our pricing decisions ($9.99+any applicable taxes). Most have been positive once people think through the value proposition. The 24PageBooks concept is simple: Instant Expertise on a specific topic, usually in an hour or less. So that first title, Facebook for your Small (or not so Small) Business, is 24 pages of content and links designed to get a busy business owner or manager up to speed on something that they have limited time to understand. The goal is help them make a decision regarding their company’s use of Facebook and to help them understand the value and the issues they may need to deal with. In many cases it may mean getting them to the point where they can delegate the process intelligently.

The important piece of that value proposition is the value of your time, as a reader and manager. Ten bucks is not a lot to acquire immediately useful knowledge. In fact, one executive who I discussed this with responded like this:

“If you can get it down to ten pages I’d pay $20!”

He gets it.

The other driver of this idea (and the business is really a very simple extension of a simple idea about the value of time) was our (my business partner Mike Johnson and I) work with small business owners. Without exception they simply don’t have the time to spend learning complex things that are peripheral to their business. They may understand that something like Facebook, and social media in general, are things they need to know about but they simply don’t have the bandwidth to read a Dummies book or search through Facebook’s various (and excellent) tutorials. With the 24PageBooks approach those links are found in the context of when you need them. If I’m writing about Groups, there are links right there to Facebook’s Groups help pages. Instant indeed.

Having written five titles in the last two months I think I have my proof of concept- most subjects can be covered in reasonable depth within the constraints of 24 pages. As a former writer, in the 90s, of how-to business guides, I know that publishers dictate the length of the books based on trade paperback shelving requirements- not the need for depth. As a result, many of these books are filler and repetition. Distillation is the metaphor. We’re removing excess water and concentrating the essence, the same way distilled spirits were invented to avoid transporting large quantities of wine. Distill it down, then add the water back in when you want a drink. Only people discovered they liked the distilled product as is…