Episode 3: Writing a Book

Audio Only:

I personally am super excited about this week’s Stuff You Need For because this week we’re covering a topic I’ve always wondered about – writing a book! Now since I haven’t written one myself, I invited Adam Nathan and Ryan Roemer, authors of technical computing books covering Microsoft programming technologies and testing a JavaScript programming framework respectively. To give a different perspective, Robin Chin Roemer co-author of Meaningful Metrics an academic work joins us as well. Watch as these authors discuss the rewards and travails of authorship, negotiating contracts and working with a publisher, the various editors who help you along your way, the mechanics of getting your text into a publishing ready format, tracking your book’s success using library and Amazon stats, and in Robin’s case, how she used an Ikea Poäng footstool to imprison herself for long hours of putting cursor to screen. A huge thanks to each author for sharing both their time and their expertise.

You can find Adam’s work on Amazon (along with a portrait by yours truly :)) or follow the author on twitter @adamnathan.

Meaningful Metrics can be found at your local academic library or for purchase at Amazon or ALA. Robin can also be found on twitter as @robinlibrarian. You can learn more about the NISO Altmetrics Initiative here.

Ryan’s book, Backbone.js Testing can be found at Amazon and you can follow Ryan (@ryan_roemer) at his blog loose-bits.com.

As usual, products purchased through Amazon links on this page produce a small amount of referral income for this site.