Having written a half dozen 24PageBooks in the past few months in preparation for our launch, I’ve come to realize that sometimes even 24 pages can be too many. Which then leads to the realization that almost all how-to, business and lifestyle titles are way too long. Our Writer’s Guidelines suggest that a writer proposing a book to us write down 24 ‘mini-chapter’ titles that can each be explained in a page or less of text and links. For many subjects this may be too many pages but the general model is working so far for the types of subjects we’re starting with, including business and lifestyles. Other things like software manuals are probably not well served by the 24PageBooks model, though I think one could argue that a really well done 24 page manual could cover 90% of typical usage for most applications. I would really like to see someone try it.

As I think this through I realize that with my first title, Facebook For Your Small (or not so small) Business, I actually did write a kind of software manual for setting up Business Pages on Facebook. The fact that it looks at the business model for using Facebook makes it somewhat different than a straightforward manual. That’s because I wrote the book for people who have no time or inclination to become Facebook experts though they understand the need to get involved with it as a business promotion tool. They just need to know enough to delegate the task in most cases.

It comes down to the value of one’s time. If I am restaurant manager my time is best managing the restaurant, not digging around trying to learn about Facebook. If we can save that person a few hours we’ve done our job. If our information helps them meet interesting people, reach out to customers or teach their employees to sell (all forthcoming subjects), the value is much higher. That’s the goal.