Member-only story
How to Self-publish a Programming Book
What I learned from writing three Python books in a year
Over the past year or so, I have written three e-books on various topics in Python programming. Although I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on self-publishing, I have learned a bit in this time, so I will share it here. I hope you might find it useful.
This article covers four stages:
- Choosing and researching the topic.
- Writing the manuscript.
- Making it available for sale.
- Generating sales.
I have found the whole process takes me about 3 months, if I put most of my hobby time into it.
But first, why do it?
Why self-publish an e-book?
In my case, I have been writing technical posts on various websites for quite a few years (I created my first website in 1995), mainly as a way of learning new topics for my own benefit. I have thought about writing a book from time to time, but I never got around to it for a couple of reasons. I wasn’t convinced that anyone really wanted books any more, and I didn’t want to invest a huge amount of effort in proving it.
But my current website, pythoninformer.com, was starting to generate a bit more traffic…
