Write Your Book in Under 30 Days: "How Can a 30 Day Book Not be Junk?"

The Value of Writing a Book in 30 Days

After completing the book Write the Future, I wanted to share how to write a book in under 30 days with my 140,000+ followers on Linked. And I wanted to share how to do it in real time with my followers. So, if you'll be following along with me while I write another book in under 30 days, then the official push to write your book should begin tomorrow on July 1st!

As you get ready to write, you may have questions about the process. And this will be explained in the articles out in the month to come.

One of the questions I've already received in the comments to an article out this week was:

"How can a 30 day book not be junk?"

It is certainly a question worth answering.

But I must also admit that as the author of books that have been written in under 30 days, I found this to be almost impolite. Not impolite - but almost.

I want to encourage discourse during this project, so I think it is important to address what I see as the underlying concerns of the question, which could fall into a few buckets of concern:

• Will it be worth it?
• Will I be happy with the outcome?
• Will I be proud of the final results?

You, too, may wonder what kind of content you could generate in under 30 days.

And I think you will surprise yourself if you push!

But no matter what you produce, if you follow the process that is being last out in the lengthy articles I am sharing (as well as in the book Write the Future), I believe you will be happy with the results. I certainly have.

If you have something good to say and you follow the process, you will find value in producing your book. The questions that you really need to focus on are:

• What do you intend to write?
• What will you share?
• Who is your audience?

I believe many people have books in them. But it's really a matter of just grinding it out.

The biggest secret of most books is that a good book is a done book.

Worse Than Imperfect is Incomplete

Worse than writing an imperfect or flawed book is going years or decades thinking and talking about a book, without actually trying to bring it to fruition.

Another way to think of this is that "perfect is the enemy of done." I will be releasing a longer article about this in July that will help put this in perspective.

Examples of Value

What you should expect for value from this process will depend a lot on what you write and share, whether the topic resonates with your target audience, and what you expect to get out of writing your book. Reasonable expectations are important, and I'll share more about that in a future article.

As to whether a book that's written in 30 days can be more than "junk"?

To answer the almost impolite question about how good a book someone writes in 30 days could be, I must respond with a question: Are SXSW, the Pentagon, Bloomberg, and MIT sufficient arbiters of quality content?

To wit, I wanted to share how some of the books I've written in under 30 days have been received and performed. Now, these have been my experiences and yours may be different. But I will discuss this further in this article series as I also do in Write the Future.

1. The Future After COVID  —  www.FutureAfterCovid.com

I wrote this book in March 2020, and it was released in early April. I completed this book in under 30 days, and it has since been licensed in Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. A licensing agreement in China is also underway. It is currently the No.2 bestselling book in Korea.

The section on supply chain after COVID-19 became part of a report from the Pentagon. I've discussed this book on Bloomberg Radio and on Korean Radio.

Here is a link to the Pentagon Report. It is online here - Global Futures Report

Check out pages 22-26. They include content directly from The Future After COVID.

2. The Promise of Blockchain  —  www.PromiseOfBlockchain.com

The book I wrote about blockchain in under 30 days became a bestseller and I gave an official book reading for it at SXSW 2019. Plus, it's been licensed and printed overseas as well. I also just love the artwork and imagery of this cover. It's been the touchstone for numerous thought-provoking presentations and talks I've given since this book came out.

This book was also ranked one of the top 10 books to read by SXSW speakers in 2019. https://www.sxsw.com/news/2019/10-books-to-read-in-2019-by-sxsw-2019-speakers/

2. Quantum: Computing Nouveau  —  www.QuantumComputingBook.com

My bestselling book about business, industry, and national security use cases for quantum has been ranked highly in Quantum Computing book lists. It's on this list  —  https://bookauthority.org/books/new-quantum-computing-ebooks

As someone who knew little about quantum physics when I started writing this book, I am very excited that it came together the way it did. And, most importantly, now I can make jokes about decoherence or Fed policy and the future quantum state of the economy while actually knowing what that means.

4. The Future of Finance is Now  —  FinTech Book

My FinTech book was written in under 30 days and it became a bestseller. It has also been licensed overseas, and it was ranked a top FinTech book to read during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown — https://fintechnews.ch/fintech/8-new-fintech-ebooks-to-read-while-in-covid-19-quarantine/34091/

5. Futureproof Supply Chain - www.FutureproofSupplyChain.com

After writing this bestselling book, I received an invite from MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics to speak on the subject as part of an official MIT CTL supply chain conference "Crossroads 2019." https://ctl.mit.edu/events/tue-04232019-0800/crossroads-2019-enabling-new-supply-chain-designs

A Book That Failed

It's tough to tell what kind of impact a book will have. Some of my books have not done as well as I liked, including my book Spikes: Growth Hacking Leadership. It got almost no traction, did not become a bestseller, and it did not turn into any speeches or foreign licensing deals.

It was a complete dud!

If you asked me why it was a dud, I would probably tell you that it wasn't ideally suited for my target audience. You see, my target audience isn't normally people trying to build their brands or move up the corporate ladder.

My target audience is usually senior leaders looking for visions of the future. They struggle to find a way forward in an endless sea of technological innovation and disruption. And there's endless jargon and technobabble that makes it even more challenging.

Spikes just wasn't that kind of book. I liked it a lot. And the cover was just so cool.

But my target audience wasn't interested.

Implications For Your Book

All of these experiences bring me back to the questions I asked about your audience at the beginning of this article.

The questions that you really need to focus on to hopefully get the best value out of your book are:

• What do you intend to write?
• What will you share?
• Who is your audience?

Honestly, if you get the audience right, that will help tremendously. That was also the discussion of yesterday's article here - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/write-your-book-under-30-days-identifying-audience-jason-schenker/

Another article will be out later today about The Audience of One, and how just one person can change the course of your career — or life!

Write the Future

This article draws on content from Jason Schenker's book Write the Future, which was released on 24 June 2020.

Write the Future is online here: www.WriteTheFutureBook.com

Jason Schenker is one of the world's leading futurists. He is the Chairman of The Futurist Institute and the President of Prestige Economics.

He is also an instructor for LinkedIn Learning.

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