Writing Your Business Book: Fast Or Slow?

When you set out to write a business book, you have a couple of options.

Option One: Bang It Out Fast.

Option Two: Take your time.

Your choice reveals what you believe about your target reader and yourself.

Belief System One: Bang It Out Fast

You are brimming with profound, original ideas, so why fiddle with structure and grammar? Don’t screw around, just let your thoughts gush out onto the page.

After all, your readers are a starving crowd, eager for content only you can provide. They will ignore typos, dangling modifiers, and clumsy structure as they painstakingly parse your meaning like historians pondering ancient runes.

Belief System Two: Take Your Time

Your ideas are so thoroughly integrated that they have become second nature and must be coaxed from deep within you.

Your readers have options other than you, so you must not only deliver great business ideas but also woo readers with an enjoyable experience.

Upside Of Each

The Bang It Out Fast approach delivers your business ideas to the world without delay. And because your fingers fly, you can deliver more content.

The Take Your Time approach may attract a better audience by delivering refined ideas and a great reading experience.

Downside Of Each

But Take Your Time can be a cover for procrastination. You risk creating bad content polished to perfection — a shiny car with a puny engine.

Or with Bang It Out Fast, you may come across like a spoiled child, convinced by doting parents of the wondrous splendor of every splash of your finger paint.

The Trade-Off

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of presenting your ideas clearly and persuasively. As in most things, there’s a trade-off between speed and quality.

If speed is your top priority, you may have to settle for quality that is OK at best, especially if your writing skills aren’t fully developed.

And if quality is your priority, your book must take as long as it takes, as long as you’re getting it right and not just fiddling with commas.

NOTE: Traditional “Big Five” publishers have zero tolerance for a leisurely delivery schedule. Experienced writers (and professional editors) find a workable compromise between quality and speed.

The Right Choice For You

Before diving too deeply into the writing, decide what you want your book to accomplish for the reader. Are you writing your business book to transform the reader in some way? or only to make the reader aware of your name?

Next, think about the book’s value to you. If you succeed in writing the business book you want to write, will it attract high-quality speaking engagements? bring you more clients? add credibility to your sales and marketing? establish you as a market leader?

Finally, think realistically about your resources. If you have plenty of time and skill, you can choose the do-it-yourself route. If you have more money than time or skill, you may decide to hire professional help in areas where you need help.

The Legacy Perspective

A good business writer organizes ideas into a readable narrative that clarifies principles, provides context, and reveals a path readers can follow with confidence.

So when it’s time to trade your business suits for leisurewear, what kind of book do you want to leave behind with your name on it?

The right book can live past your lifetime. The wrong book will skulk away to oblivion in front of your eyes.

I urge you to write a business book you will be proud of.