Quality or quantity?
Those of us on John Thornhill’s Masterclass are now at the product development stage.
Having been interested in marketing information products via the internet for some time I have bought a large number of ebooks in the past. One of the things I have found most disappointing about these documents is the amount of repetition, ‘packing out’, fluff and mumbo jumbo some people put into their product to make the document appear bigger than it actually is. If you take all of that out you would still have a 20 page document of good quality information but the whole ‘packing out’ process detracts from the quality material contained within it.
I have just put out a first draft of my product to a few fellow students to comment on and have been encouraged by the feedback about the lack of ‘mumbo jumbo’ and ‘packing out’. I simply don’t see the point of it. Surely we are better to produce a quality document of a smaller size than to overwhelm our audience with an elephantine narrative that is simply repetitive and confusing.
So, quality or quantity? For me, definately quality. I’d rather have 20 pages of absolute gold content than 60 pages of fluff. For James Garvin, definately quality, see his latest post here. For an example of a great post that is quality not quantity check this out here.
What do you want?
I totaly agree it is better to provide a smaller book with quailty content rather than a large book with the quality content buried amongst a load of fluff.
Keep up the good work
Paul
Thanks for the confirmation, Paul. Nice to know we’re on the same wavelength. There’s too much ‘fluff’ out there already!
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Hi Mandy,
Quality is the way to go ALWAYS. How else would you have repeat customers? Short concise writing is always best. This also worked for me when I was in the US Government vying for $$. In the technical field it was easy to write over the politicians heads, but putting the information out in a way they understood without the fluff always got me the money. So write to the level of a 5 year old nice and clear, then your customers will comprehend the information and come back for more.
Jay
Exactly my point, Jay, thanks for the supporting statement.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
The world is in super fast past now a day, we just don’t have time for mumbo jumbo type of ebook. Definitely quality come first.
Albert Lee
http://www.1albertlee.com
Thank you, Albert. And the whole point of a book can be lost in between the ‘mumbo jumbo’.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Hello Mandy,
Great post and I agree, definitely quality over quantity, no point in people reading rehashed fluff, and will just put them off buying anything else. I also want to thank you for the link to James Garvin’s post, very useful.
Best regards
Dave
Glad you liked the link, Dave. I haven’t had a chance to read the ebook but liked the fact that ‘it is neatly set out, easy to follow, written without hype and not littered with annoying links’, in James’ words.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Hi Mandy –
Quality is essential. However, I don’t see that quality and quantity are mutually exclusive. It depends on the subject matter.
For me personally, I find it very difficult to take in and digest an ebook that’s “bang, bang, bang” with facts to the extent that my head’s spinning by the time I’ve got to the bottom of page 4 (after an hour’s reading because it’s so dense with facts). Sometimes it’s necessary to lighten the load and let the reader “move along” and have time to digest the concepts whilst still being engaged with the book.
An ebook should be as long as it has to be to say what you want to say, no longer but no shorter either.
I am ALL for minimising the timewasting part of the reader. If an ebook is longer than, say 20-30 pages, it annoys me to death to have to scroll through countless pages to get to the part I want. A well detailed Table of Contents ****with Hyperlinks*** is an absolute “must” in long, quality packed ebooks.
OK, hands up, who thinks my ebook will be longer than Mandy’s?
Congrats on the first draft BTW! Still WIP my end.
Cheers!
Susan
Thank you for that, Susan. I totally agree that it should be the right length, no longer, no shorter. I guess what I was trying to say is so many products I have bought have been pages of repetitive packing which detracted from any quality content contained within. I will have to word my posts more carefully in future so my meaning is not lost in the ‘fluff’! Thanks for the feedback, it will help me to write a better product – I hope!
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Hello Mandy,
My vote is definitely for short and concise. My current eBook has a quantative total of precisely zero! Hopefully what I eventually do produce wil be quality.
Well done for completing this project so quickly.
You deserve success.
John
Dont be too impressed, John! I joined masterclass because I already had this product written and wanted to get some ideas about marketing it. It has been so useful getting other student’s feedback on it too. I can improve it loads because they have been frank and honest about the content. Great guys.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
Spot on Mandy!
I must admit everytime I buy an ebook I get so down hearted when I see that it is excess of 100 pages long. I much prefer a short ebook 20-30 pages long full of informative facts and opinions. There is so much rubbish and fluff in most ebooks these days and half of them take you completely off the track of what you were originally reading about.
Short and sweet always gets my vote!
Best regards,
Steve.
http://www.steve-wilkins.com
Tell me about it, Steve. Thanks for the comments.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
I personally hate it when I buy a product & have to wade through pages of unnecessary text or video run time, just to get the information you paid for. I especially find this in some ‘how-to’ books, I’d much prefer a step-by-step straight to the point approach with much fewer pages & text/video lengh to go through.
The way I see it is, if the information is not necessary, why include it in your ebook? Because all you are doing is risking losing future custom, because you’ve wasted peoples time with unnecessary content that they didn’t want to know.
Hi Paul, thanks for visiting. I totally agree with you on that one.
Enjoy the journey.
Mandy
[...] I just wanted to let you all know that next week I shall be passing over the responsibility of post writing to my good friend Mandy Allen. In fact she has kindly agreed to write a post at least once a month for my blog so not only do I get a day off but you also get to read a post every month from this very talented, gifted writer and Internet Marketer. If you want a sneak look at some of Mandy’s work I would recommend taking a look at : http://mandyallen.com/quality-or-quantity/ [...]