How to write books about fast-changing technology

Books take a while to write and publish. Technology changes quickly. You can still publish a book-length perspective on fast-changing technology, but you’ll need to make wise choices about your publishing model — and should consider an annually updated edition.

This topic is top-of-mind now as many business authors are writing about artificial intelligence, a technology that’s evolving at dizzying speed. You can, of course, write articles, blog posts, substack posts, podcasts, or the like and update them every time something changes. But big trends like AI demand a more comprehensive perspective, one that might take you multiple chapters and tens of thousands of words to explain. That’s a book.

Here’s how to write books that resist obsolescence.

Write about strategy, not about features

Technology change often demands major shifts in strategy. Crucially, if you plan those strategy shifts carefully, they won’t be bouncing around every time OpenAI or Google announces a new release. So don’t write about features, write about planning, positioning, management, governance, organization, hiring, and training: topics that will remain relevant even as the technology details shift. A strategy book about technology change probably has a shelf-life of about three years. That’s far from evergreen, but it’s a lot better than a how-to book about product features whose usefulness is measured in months.

Self-publish or use a hybrid publisher

Traditional publishing moves slowly — it’s typically 15 to 18 months between when you sign the deal and when the book appears. By then, you’ve lost a big chunk of your window of relevance. Worse, you’ll probably spend much of that time watching competing authors’ books appear and muddy your market.

The fastest path to publishing is self-publishing, using print-on-demand technology from Amazon or Ingram Spark. Many author-services companies can help you produce the book quickly. I’ve seen prolific authors go from zero to published book in 3 months.

Self-published books tend to have a lesser impact, so you may want to consider hybrid publishing. Hybrid publishers take on much of the task of professional editing and book production, allowing you to concentrate on content and promotion. They’ll cost more –typically at least $20,000, compared to only $5,000 for some self-publishing services — but you’ll get a more professional result. Some hybrid publishers are now using print-on-demand technology as well. A hybrid published book is likely to take 4 to 7 months, with the shorter cycles for print-on-demand options.

Keep it short

Every word you write adds time: time to write, time to review, time to edit and fact-check, and time to produce a paginated book and ebook. Your target is 25,000 to 40,000 words. This is shorter than most business books, but is more appropriate for a book being produced at this pace.

Go paperback and don’t forget the ebook

Hardbacks generally take longer to manufacture. Given the ephemeral nature of technology-focused content, a paperback book makes more sense.

While the fastest way to get into print is to produce an ebook, ebooks don’t have nearly the influence or printed books. It’s better to produce a paperback edition with an ebook version — and, optionally, an audiobook as well.

Work with a few fast-moving partners

The more people involved with your book, the more challenging it is to produce it quickly. Things will go quicker with one author rather than coauthors or a ghostwriter. You probably need an editor, but work with one (like me) who works quickly. Get a single book production partner — either an author-services organization for self-publishing or a hybrid publisher — and tap them to manage cover design, production, ebook formatting, manufacturing, and distribution. You want to spend your time writing and promoting, not coordinating the work of partners.

Consider an annual update

One way to deal with rapidly changing technology is to update your book, preferably annually. You’ll have a built-in audience as previous buyers line up to buy each new year’s edition. Annually updated editions give you the ability to make changes based on new market players, technologies, and features based on your existing ideas and framework.

A great example of the regular-update strategy is David Meerman Scott’s book series The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The first edition was published in 2007. The 9th edition appeared this year. That’s 9 editions in 17 years, more than one every other year. Because New Rules covers tactics like social media, video, and podcasting, regular updates allow Meerman Scott to prevent the recommendations from becoming stale. It includes a chapter on AI tools, which certainly didn’t appear in the earlier editions.

Meerman Scott works with a traditional publisher, Wiley, which no doubt made the timing of this production more complex. But his first book sold well, which goes a long way towards making the publishing open to updated editions.

Self-published books can be updated more easily — in fact, if you’re using print-on-demand and ebooks, you can even sneak small updates into your current edition.

But for the annual more fully updated edition, it’s usually easiest to maintain the existing content and frameworks, updating only the portions that need changing, like references to new product features. And remember also to delete and replace sections that refer to tools that may have gone off the market or become obsolete.

As a rule of thumb, I’d estimate that an updated edition is one-fourth to one-half of the work of the original edition. You keep the main idea and the book’s organization. You can use the same partners for editing, book production, publishing, and book promotion; everyone will know their roles based on past experience. This eases the task of producing a book quickly.

Will this strategy work?

If your book is in a space where everyone needs answers because the tech is evolving so fast, you have a unique opportunity. The first edition might find its audience quickly. But even if it doesn’t, you have a chance to build your audience with annual updates. The series approach gives you more opportunities to succeed — and ride the wave of expertise in a rapidly-changing market.