Breaking Down the 252 Tasks Involved in Writing a Business Book
Let's geek out with some data from a recent Racket project.
Many things separate first-time or would-be writers with experienced scribes. Perspective is a biggie. The former typically think of writing a book as one massive project and, as such, don't know where to begin. The single task seems overwhelming, causing more than a few to give up. Those of us who have done it a bunch of times know that the opposite is true: Penning a proper business text is actually oodles of individual tasks.
Authors need to complete some items in a sequential manner. Starting with personas is always wise. For example, one can't proofread a book before actually writing the damn thing. It's best to sign off on a template for the interior before laying the entire book out.
Other tasks they can do in parallel. Authors should think about marketing before they even start thinking about writing, not as the months-long project ends. (More on this later.) If you like, kick the tires on prospective audiobook narrators while you're noodling with titles and subtitles.
Looking at the Data
Tech is embedded in Racket's DNA, and proper project management tools like Notion allow for interesting analysis. This weekend, author Michelle Gitliz, the Racket team, and I neared completion of Reimagining Payments: The Business Case for Digital Currencies. Including the index, the book's length will be roughly 260 pages.
I was curious about how many tasks it took from idea to final product. The answer: 252. Here's a graph breaking them down into different buckets:
Note that all tasks count the same. That is, I didn't attempt to put hours behind any of them, and writing the book took far more than thrice the time needed to complete Amazon-related tasks. If you're interested in percentages, see the donut chart below:
