New book alert: Why Restaurants Fail

I am currently busy working on some follow up books to Technical Anxiety. However, I took some time off over the holidays to write a different book. This one is called Why Restaurants Fail – And What To Do About It. It’s a fun read. Unless you are a restaurant owner, in which case it probably isn’t.

The premise is simple: people start restaurants thinking their excellent food is enough. It’s not. In fact, the food is not even that important. Time and time again we saw our favourite independent restaurants go under because they thought they were in the restaurant business. They’re not: they’re in the money business. And the only way to win is to put aside your ego and your snobbery and learn from the best (typically fast food joints).

This book is an experiment. At just under 11,000 words, it is only 42 pages long. Super-short for a book, But as Sean D’Souza and Michael Hyatt both pointed out, people like short books. Here are the stats Michael Hyatt provided in a webinar last month:

  • 60% of readers finish a book of 100 pages or less
  • 20% of readers finish a book of 200 pages or so
  • More than 200 pages, 3% readers finish

Will customers feel cheated because the book is only 11,000 words long? Or will they actually enjoy the book more? I am interested to find out.

It is also an experiment in applying MVP (minimal viable product) development to books. When Sean D’Souza first published The Brain Audit it was half the length it is now. Similarly, Why Restaurants Fail may grow much longer over time. But right now, I have said everything I want to say, without diluting the content.

With eBooks, I can even push out these updates for free. This is what we have done for all five editions of the Leeds Restaurant Guide. If you bought the first edition as an eBook, you received all of the updated editions free of charge.

I do not have a fixed release date yet, but I expect it to arrive in the next 30 days.

Timeline

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2017 at 10:38 am and is filed under Books, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.