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Did you create the illustrations yourself or the publisher managed to do them for you?
I did them myself. Back to the "social proof" thing, the book is the outgrowth of a fairly successful webcomic I've done off and on for a few years [0], which was attractive to the publisher. [0] https://faasandfurious.com
After authoring over a dozen books, I'm making an end-to-end authoring course[0] for those interested in self-publishing. I interview a dozen authoring folks that are known around these parts to get their wisdom as well.
Having recently released a "technical" book with a large traditional publisher (Wiley) [0], here are a few of my learnings: - Expect nothing from the publisher in terms of marketing support. In fact, a good nonfiction book proposal is going to spend most of its length explaining to the publisher how you will sell the book for them through your connections and credibility - not the other way around. It's all on you. -…
People have various reasons for publishing. Will a publisher get you in front of the most eyes? Maybe, I've talked to a few self-published authors (some who have sold $1Mil+) of their book. Arguably some books do better as self-published works for both distribution and $.
Admittedly, there is social proof for having a book with an animal on the cover.
Congrats again on your work! I love innovative creations. (Have thought about making a Python book for toddlers...)
I am also now writing my first book ( https://efficientdeveloper.com/ ) and it is really difficult, especially during Covid times (my original idea of writing this book was writing it on a transatlantic cruise... ) What you realise when writing a book is that every sentence gets rewritten 3 times, even before you start caring about proofreading. With all the research and decision making, publishing etc. it takes much…
This is great and really useful to me! I am also, like others here, in the process of writing my first "book": https://redis.pjam.me/ . Mainly inspired by https://shop.jcoglan.com/building-git/ , rebuilding Redis, instead of git, in Ruby. > For my first few sections I wrote the code as I wrote the sections, but then Lak made the suggestion that it would probably be easier to write the code first and then write the ch…
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I've been working on my first book with Manning (should be out in the next few months). Without the structure a publisher provides it's likely I would not have come even vaguely close to finishing. The marketing is icing, really.
Deadlines are definitely a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can be really inconvenient if something takes longer, other priorities pop up, you just feel you need to release a chapter even though you're not really happy with it, etc. On the other hand, in the absence of deadlines, it's easy to put things to the side for a "week" that turns into a month or two.
Another thing I did was plot my word count per commit. Once per week I would post it to an internal channel at work and add a sentence or two summarising my week. The most interesting thing is that while my output could fluctuate a lot per week, the overall trend was fairly stable.
I am also now writing my first book ( https://efficientdeveloper.com/ ) and it is really difficult, especially during Covid times (my original idea of writing this book was writing it on a transatlantic cruise... ) What you realise when writing a book is that every sentence gets rewritten 3 times, even before you start caring about proofreading. With all the research and decision making, publishing etc. it takes much…
> It took an hour to read, I thought it would take an hour to write.
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I've been working on my first book with Manning (should be out in the next few months). Without the structure a publisher provides it's likely I would not have come even vaguely close to finishing. The marketing is icing, really.
Even though I wouldn't want the publisher to make the outline of my book for me, I have to say that Manning books were some of my favourites. Their structure is pretty good.
I didn't feel like I was being made to follow a template. In fact the TOC changed a lot over the course of writing.
Having recently released a "technical" book with a large traditional publisher (Wiley) [0], here are a few of my learnings: - Expect nothing from the publisher in terms of marketing support. In fact, a good nonfiction book proposal is going to spend most of its length explaining to the publisher how you will sell the book for them through your connections and credibility - not the other way around. It's all on you. -…
For the second edition, which I'm working on now, I had serious second thoughts about going with O'Reilly again. Ultimately, I decided that I would, mostly because I knew O'Reilly would be able to spread the word a lot further than I would. I've got a decent network, but not an amazing one.
The reasoning was that I'm a consultant, and the cachet, reach, and resulting leads I'll get from publishing through a known publisher are much more valuable than the theoretical profits I'm missing out on. That was certainly true for the first edition.
Having made that decision, I'm glad that I did. O'Reilly's provided a lot more support with the second edition than they did with the first. My production editor has been fantastic; heavily involved with reviewing draft chapters and very supportive. I also managed to swing a better royalty deal (but still far less than minimum wage) and we've had some great conversations about co-marketing the book.
[1] The Art of Agile Development (2007). I'm writing the second edition in the open; you can find it here: https://www.jamesshore.com/v2/books/aoad2