Reflections on publishing The Software Engineer’s Guidebook two years ago, which has sold around 40,000 copies. Also: an unexpected trip to Mongolia to visit the startup which translated it
Great article - thanks! I found some really high quality editors & cover designers on Fiverr for a decently low price point. I'd recommend that as a tool for folks in the self-publishing process.
thanks, Matt! Just updated this part: unexpectedly, my wife stepped in and knocked the design cover out of the park! I do love Fiverr for these kinds of creative tasks, when you're someone (like me!) who is just not good at something like cover design.
Reading your experience with a traditional tech-book publisher reminded me of my time 30 years ago as a development editor for one. We really did try to force authors into our predefined series with their predefined templates. It made it easier for us to market the books. We published so many titles each year that this efficiency was necessary. A book that didn't resemble any of the others just didn't fit our system.
Jim: it felt just like that, actually! At the time Grokking Algorithms was Manning's best seller, and several suggestions seemed to push me to mimic the style of the book.
And their templates were very opinionated. I assume running such a large publisher is tricky business, and like you said, perhaps a solid way to scale up production? And I can see it being helpful for authors who do not have strong opinions about their writing (or not yet!)
I think your sale of 40k copies is evidence that you were right about what your book needed to be. When I was an editor, most of our titles got a 10k printing and we usually didn't sell through.
Almost done with Mastering Behavioral Interviews, making the final push for the end of November deadline. A lot of this resonates with me, especially the bursty progress---for me, integrating book writing with my family's other activities and our primary business was challenging.
I turned to some motivational hacks to keep me moving, like completing parts of the writing process out of order (cover, layout, website before final draft). I even ordered a pre-print to see what progress felt like in my hand. All of that kept the wind in my sails.
Great article - thanks! I found some really high quality editors & cover designers on Fiverr for a decently low price point. I'd recommend that as a tool for folks in the self-publishing process.
thanks, Matt! Just updated this part: unexpectedly, my wife stepped in and knocked the design cover out of the park! I do love Fiverr for these kinds of creative tasks, when you're someone (like me!) who is just not good at something like cover design.
Ditto - I'm horrible at the design/artwork side of things and it made it a breeze.
Reading your experience with a traditional tech-book publisher reminded me of my time 30 years ago as a development editor for one. We really did try to force authors into our predefined series with their predefined templates. It made it easier for us to market the books. We published so many titles each year that this efficiency was necessary. A book that didn't resemble any of the others just didn't fit our system.
Jim: it felt just like that, actually! At the time Grokking Algorithms was Manning's best seller, and several suggestions seemed to push me to mimic the style of the book.
And their templates were very opinionated. I assume running such a large publisher is tricky business, and like you said, perhaps a solid way to scale up production? And I can see it being helpful for authors who do not have strong opinions about their writing (or not yet!)
I think your sale of 40k copies is evidence that you were right about what your book needed to be. When I was an editor, most of our titles got a 10k printing and we usually didn't sell through.
Almost done with Mastering Behavioral Interviews, making the final push for the end of November deadline. A lot of this resonates with me, especially the bursty progress---for me, integrating book writing with my family's other activities and our primary business was challenging.
I turned to some motivational hacks to keep me moving, like completing parts of the writing process out of order (cover, layout, website before final draft). I even ordered a pre-print to see what progress felt like in my hand. All of that kept the wind in my sails.