Why writing a book in more than 90 days is not an option

Mack dropped by this blog today and made a comment about Stephen Jagger and I writing our book in 90 days. We felt is was critical that we published this new book on how social media and social networking as soon as possible.

Number one Sociable! and it’s principles are needed right now by most of our collective clients.  If we waited a year to release it, and went the traditional book publisher route we would be hypocrites for saying “the rules of business have changed but we are going to write, distribute, market and roll-out our book basically the same it has been done for years.”  So we broke a bunch of rules, and we also set some big aggressive goals that are going to create some real momentum.

Here’s what Mack had to say:

Undoubtebdly you guys are both experts, but a book in 90 days? As a consumer I am a lot less interested in the book as it seems like something rushed. For you to write three books in a year is a great achievement but as a reader I would prefer one Excellent book in a year instead of three that were quickly banged out.  Maybe my assessment is wrong, I’d love to hear why. (Original comment here)

I would side with Seth Godin on this when he said:

Blogs have eliminated the reason for most business books to exist. If you can say it in three blog posts and reach more people, then waiting a year and putting in all that effort seems sort of pointless. The chances that your effort will be rewarded with income in proportion to the time you put in are pretty low. (See the full post at Seth Godin’s Blog)

In order to create ROI for the writer and be relevant to the reader the way books are written, marketed and revised must change. Here’s my full response via video (please weigh in and add comments, I really want to know what my readers feel about this subject):