Ask HN: How did you publish your book? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you publish your book?

2 pointsbuf5 comments

I've written a book. It details my journey from growing up in a small Oklahoman town, going through prison, clawing my way to get to California, growing a billion dollar startup in San Francisco, and moving on to be a CTO at a startup in London.

It touches a lot on motivation, the value of hard work, luck, and the importance of friends/family while you are building your startup career.

It contains a few technical pieces of jargon, but the book itself is non-technical.

I would really like this to end up in the hands of young people looking for motivation and success story examples.

I have looked at Amazon, Leanpub, and traditional publishing companies as publishing choices. How did you publish your book? And why was it the best way for you?

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This is probably not the lean agile answer you're looking for.

I was approached by a publisher who had seen some of my writing elsewhere. I pitched a book idea at them that I wanted to write; they liked the idea but not the exact content. I ended up rethinking a few things, and pitching a similar but different idea to them, which they loved.

I got a contract and started writing, and honestly the editing they gave me was unbelievable. I thought my writing was on the 'ok' end of decent, but they gave me some really valuable insights. The quality of the book was much better for going through their process. (It's a book in the Smashing Magazine series, some of which isn't technically amazing, but there are some great books in that series and I like to think my book is good ;)

If I was going to write another book, I'd possibly think about doing it myself, but in all honesty I'd probably go the traditional publisher route again.

>I thought my writing was on the 'ok' end of decent, but they gave me some really valuable insights.

Do you think there was any other way to get this information?

At all?

I'm curious about this as well. I write a blog, and people compliment me on my writing there, but those people are my friends, so they are biased.

I personally haven't, but a friend of mine has recently. Fiction in her case, but I think the advice holds. Get an editor. Even if you are going to self-publish like my friend did. It makes a world of difference in polish.

She used Amazon Createspace by the way.

How well did she do with exposure in the market? Can she recommend the editor?

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