All content, that is! Do you remember the post from Shelley Sessoms about the topics that are especially high on our wish list for publishing through SAS Press? That post generated a lot of response and questions. It’s always so gratifying to see the SAS User Community spring into action to help other SAS users. Thank you, all!

Posts like those also generate a lot of questions from would-be authors.

One of those questions often asked is “How long does my book have to be?” Although some publishers prescribe a certain page count for books, we tend to be somewhat flexible and want your content to drive the length. As more and more content goes online and is delivered in different formats, “page count” and how to deliver the content has become even more flexible.

• If you’re thinking about writing a “book,” we do want to offer a few tips to guide your thinking as you plan the content. Short and sweet can be just what your audience needs. Gone are the days where a certain page count is “required” to give a book the requisite “shelf presence” in a brick and mortar store. If you have a topic that is more the length of a traditional article than a book, please don’t shy away from contacting us with your idea! We have ways to market and distribute this content just as we would a full-length book. Your fellow SAS users may find your article or “booklet” just what they need to answer a specific question.
• Think modular. SAS Press is in the planning stages to offer chapters of SAS Press books for individual sale, and quite possibly as a book is being developed. Over time, our goal is to be able to allow SAS users to combine these chapters to develop their own custom books. The better a chapter stands alone, the better the chance that your content can be marketed and sold in different ways.
• Consider how your full-length book might be developed in stages. Here’s what we mean. Write some chapters and send them to us. While we’re reviewing and editing the chapters, you can work on your next set of chapters. Rather than taking a linear approach to developing the content, we overlap the work so that the schedule is more compact and the content is “finished” in a shorter timeframe. This could be especially important for new SAS technology or topics that address new developments in the market. If chapters are more modular and the content is developed in stages, SAS Press and you serve the SAS user community even better by making the content available even sooner.
• Longer books are not always optimal. A book does not have to address anything and everything in the first edition. As you plan your content, consider the most important topics to publish first. Then, what topics would you add next? Are there topics that are nice to have but not required? Perhaps these could be blog posts or articles. One of your main goals as a SAS author, we know, is to support the SAS user community. Sometimes, publishing a shorter book in a shorter timeframe is the best approach to take.
• Content doesn’t always have to be in book form. Maybe some of your content could be delivered as a blog post or a podcast, or a webinar, or an article. All of these content delivery methods support each other and further promote you as a subject matter expert and thought leader. However, the content doesn’t have to be in written form.

What do you have in mind? Contact us and we’ll see what we can do!