{"id":889,"date":"2012-08-02T17:16:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T11:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.pothi.com\/?p=889"},"modified":"2012-08-02T17:16:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T11:46:32","slug":"five-questions-to-answer-when-self-publishing-a-technical-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/five-questions-to-answer-when-self-publishing-a-technical-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions to Answer When Self-Publishing a Technical Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

We asked Gayle Laakmann McDowell<\/a>, author of Cracking the Coding Interview<\/a>, a bestselling book for technical interview preparation, for some advice for technical self publishers. Here she outlines the five essential\u00a0<\/em>questions one needs to consider when self publishing a technical book. We believe this is useful even for other non-fiction writers and self publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n

The best advice for authors of a similar genre (anything in the business \/ technical type) is to think about your book as a business. Writers are<\/em> entrepreneurs, and writing a book is <\/em>a business. The same concepts apply to both.<\/p>\n

Building a great product is important, but it\u2019s not everything. You need to think about the following questions:<\/p>\n

\n
Is there a big market?<\/strong><\/dt>\n
How many people want your book? Your book won\u2019t sell well if it\u2019s too \u201cniche.\u201d<\/dd>\n
Is there good demand in your market?<\/strong><\/dt>\n
Just because people need<\/em> your book\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0mean they actually want<\/em> it. Is your book useful to your market? How useful? Are they already looking for something like yours?<\/dd>\n
There is a tradeoff between the size of the market and demand; the bigger your market, the less \u201cperfectly suited\u201d it is for any one person. My book, for instance, is only for software engineers and would be considered very \u201cniche.\u201d However, because it\u2019s a small and focused market, it outsells any of the \u201cgeneral purpose\u201d interview books out there.<\/dd>\n
How much competition is there?<\/strong><\/dt>\n
You should be aware of the existing competition for your book. If there are a ton of other books out there, you need to hope that\u00a0you’ve\u00a0written a really, really good book (and that\u2019s hard!).<\/dd>\n
Remember though that just as too much competition is bad, too little competition is bad too. There\u2019s often a reason that there\u00a0isn’t\u00a0competition, and it may mean that there\u00a0isn’t\u00a0actually a big market out there.<\/dd>\n
How will you market \/ promote your book?<\/strong><\/dt>\n
You\u00a0can’t\u00a0expect to just write a great book and suddenly have people desperate to buy it. You need to think about how you are going to promote it. Do you have a popular and<\/em> relevant website or blog? Do you train people? There are many ways to promote a book or product, and you need to find one that works well for you and your market.<\/dd>\n
What is the minimal viable product?<\/strong><\/dt>\n
In start-ups, there\u2019s a concept of the \u201cminimal viable product,\u201d which is the quickest product that you can build that basically solves the customer\u2019s needs. It might not be fully functional and do everything that they want, but it fulfills their most pressing demands. If you release with that first, it will help you get customers and to understand what customers really<\/em> want.<\/dd>\n
The same concept applies to non-fiction \/ business \/ technical \/ reference books. The 5th edition of Cracking the Coding Interview is a 500 page paperback book. The 4th edition was \u201conly\u201d 300 pages. The first version? It was a 20 page PDF.<\/dd>\n
The first edition was the \u201cminimal viable product.\u201d It\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0perfect \u2013 in fact, it was far<\/em> from perfect \u2013 but it was enough to establish that there was a good demand, a good market, and a good reason to continue to develop the book.<\/dd>\n
The wonderful thing about print-on-demand services like Pothi.com is that you don\u2019t have to spend a lot of time writing the \u201cperfect\u201d book so that you can print 3000 copies of it. You can write the \u201cminimal viable book,\u201d and then write a bigger and better version once you figure out that lots of people want to read it.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Note 1:\u00a0Read the interview with Gayle about her experiences of self-publishing and her book “Cracking the Coding Interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Note 2: We have extended the deadline for\u00a0Tech Publishing Festival<\/a> to August 5, 2012. If you are looking to self publish a technical title, make sure to submit your manuscript before the deadline to avail free design and distribution services.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We asked Gayle Laakmann McDowell, author of Cracking the Coding Interview, a bestselling book for technical interview preparation, for some advice for technical self publishers. Here she outlines the five essential\u00a0questions one needs to consider when self publishing a technical book. We believe this is useful even for other non-fiction writers and self publishers. The … Continue reading “Five Questions to Answer When Self-Publishing a Technical Book”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,6,18],"tags":[115,167],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7vAZr-el","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pothi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}