I'm happy to announce I've written and released my first published book. I've been published in 2600 Hacker Quarterly twice, and this lovely micro-book adds another great notch of my written works! The book is available now at Packt Publishing's website and on Amazon.
About the Book:
This book is following the Packt Publishing - Getting started guide for programming languages and consists of 5 sections. Those sections are:
- What is RubyMotion?
- Installation
- Quick start
- Top features
- People and places
This book is geared towards Ruby developers who are looking to break into learning and trying out RubyMotion. It walks you through the classic "Hello World" with TDD, and ultimately gives you a healthy dose of a few common gems. It's far too rudimentary for any actual RM developer, who would benefit more from a more advanced book, but it makes a nice gift for fellow Ruby devs who have not tried out RubyMotion yet! So buy my book for your friends.
About Writing the Book:
This was my first time writing a book under a publishing authority. I steeled myself to the fact that I'd have to meet quick deadlines, but
Pros
Marketing: I learned that Packt thinks about marketing from step 0. It's really a great mind set to adopt. From should to could is all marketing. I was requested to write about 5 pages of material answering questions which served as a base of keywords for various marketing outlets.
Visibility: This might sounds like a "no duh" statement, but working with a publisher means greater visibility with little effort. Self-publishing authors have to learn the ins and outs of Amazon and simply learn an entirely new trade. Speaking from a company that has jumped through hoops to sell on amazon, and then had to learn another process to sell on amazon again. I know there's a great value in offloading this process, for Amazon alone (I still love you Amazon, prime members fo life).
Understanding: I wrote v1.0 of my book and the very next week, RubyMotion 2.0 came out. It changed a few things, and a good bit of phrasing. Fortunately, Packt was very understanding and pushed back timelines to facilitate the modifications.
Technical Proofreaders: Packt provided a few technical editors to proof the work. No one does a 100% infallible job, and finding editors who will give constructive feedback is hard. Fortunately, Packt was able to get a decent technical editor to seamlessly fit in the production process.
Cons
MS Word: Writing a book for Packt was a bit like learning a large CSS library, but you're not able to see it's results. I cannot express to you how impressed I was seeing the final product, when I was staring at a dead MS Word document, with obscure styles attached. Unfortunately, the day I find out what things look like, it's too late to change anything.
Interaction Carousel: During the short time of writing, I was passed around quite a bit. Sometimes passed to a person of invaluable feedback, and sometimes passed unnecessarily by someone who was taken off the project, and was asking for things that were already sent. I honestly don't know what the average churn rate is, but during my short interaction it seemed quite high.
Rigid Chapter System: I would not have dedicated an entire chapter to what RubyMotion is... because that's something you know when you buy the book. I also would not have spent an entire chapter on Installation, but the chapters were not negotiable. Packt believes they have a formula that works, and that they know what technical people want in a book. They may be right, but it's not my cup of tea (I'm more of a coffee person).
