Publishing a book to build a business?

The backstory is this: We got an email from a major publisher yesterday asking whether we'd be interested in writing a book based on the content that we've created on our website and social media pages. This is actually something we had already thought about, but always put on the back burner, partly because we don't have any experience with this kind of thing, but mostly just because we haven't really had the time to explore the idea.

On the face of it, it seems like a no brainer. We write a book; it hopefully sells; we make some money. But, of course, it's not that easy. Even though we already have a base of content to draw upon, reworking it for a print medium would take a lot of time and energy -- and we're already stretched pretty thin as it is. So what I'm trying to decide is whether it's something we should put on the "To Do" list for 2015 or whether we might hold off until 2016, later or perhaps never at all.

When I envision the book that would likely result, I'm realistic enough to know that it won't likely appear on any best seller list. It won't win a Pulitzer, a National Book Award or be made into a movie. Still, it could be a reasonable seller for a niche audience and -- perhaps more importantly -- it could potentially introduce a whole new audience to our business.

As an example, I could imagine building a mini-site for the book that would be used to introduce people to our work and (more importantly) try to capture emails and social media followers, which we could then use in our marketing efforts. Something like this mini-site might even be effective for people who didn't buy the book if we were able to use the book as a publicity vehicle. People who read about us, heard us on the radio or saw us on TV (assuming we could get some media hits -- which I'm 99.9% sure we could) might well sign up for our lists even if they didn't buy the book. In the past we've had mixed success from our media hits; but these were mostly ad hoc responses to individual reporters' stories and I feel we would probably do much better if we were running a concerted media campaign.

So I guess what I'm asking is for help thinking this through. Really I'm more interested in brainstorming ideas than advice about what you think I should do.

Do you have experience using books as away to garner publicity and/or capture customers? If so, how did that work for you and what lessons did you learn that would be good to know before deciding to undertake a project such as this? Obviously, I'd be interested in experiences from anyone whose been published, but I imagine self-published authors could also have a lot of valuable thoughts to share. Publishers, after all, are generally interested in selling books, not using books to build businesses, which I imagine would be more likely the case for the self-published.

Are there any other ways we might be able to leverage a book deal such as this to grow our lists, our sales and ultimately our company?

Are there any other considerations aside from the time and effort involved that might make this be something we want to reconsider before plunging into something like this?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have!