[00:00:00] Katherine: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality 2.0. I'm Katherine Druckman. Doc Searls and I are talking to Kyle Rankin today about writing tech books because who among us, especially those of us who work in tech, has not thought about writing a tech book.

But had no idea where to start. Okay. Do I sound like an infomercial? Anyway, thank you Kyle for joining us. I understand you've written a book to help us all out

[00:00:26] Doc: Mm-hmm.

[00:00:27] Katherine: with the struggle that is writing a tech book. You're getting, getting the idea from our head to paper, which is, you know, half the battle. So Doc, you've written a bunch of books.

Kyle, you've written ton of books. I, I have not, it's not necessarily on my, uh, bucket list, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people who are listening have that item definitely, uh, at least at, at least on that list, somewhere to do, to do at some point in their career or lifetime. So let, let's, let's just get into it.

Tell us, tell us about the book that should be out. About now, possibly today when this, whenever this episode goes live,

[00:01:04] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, so it's. The whole idea behind the book started when I was writing my, uh, my most recent pre-book before this, uh, which was a collection of Linux Journal articles, um, in, into one big book. And it was my first sort of foray into self-publishing and everything. And I,

[00:01:23] Katherine: on a previous episode, which I will 

[00:01:25] Kyle Rankin: yeah. And I ended up giving myself a crash course in LaTeX and a crash course in all these different things.

Um, in addition to, you know, All of the things you normally do when you write a tech book plus all of this extra stuff to publish it yourself. And I had a number of people when I was just sort of talking about being excited about doing this book, the my previous book, they said, well, are you gonna write an article or something about how all the stuff you learned when you publish this book?

And after like three people asked me about that in the same day, I realized, you know, there's probably a book in this, you know, not, not specifically just self-publishing, but just how to write a, a technical book in general. Because I, I've run into a number of people who, uh, All like experience in some, some aspect of technology and have aspirations maybe to write a book someday about it, but they have no idea where to start.

And, and so I decided, well, I mean I've, I've written a lot of different books for a lot of different publishers and each one's a little different. Like each publisher's different, uh, and they, the approach is different. But I could probably sort of condense all of that into a how-to guide essentially. And that's, and so I start after IPU published that, the previous book, the Nice, immediately started working on this.

And just most of it is written is aimed toward traditional publishing. Because in my mind, if you are someone who has never written a book before, uh, but you have a lot of technical expertise that I think, and I advocate in the book, I have a whole section on this that I, that you should start with a traditional publisher for a lot of different reasons, but among them is just, There's, it's already quite a bit of a learning curve to write for, uh, to write a technical book anyway.

And having a traditional publisher just sort of helps guide you through that. But, um, yeah, I mean this is, so in summary, I mean, we can talk about a lot of the stuff, uh, sort of focus on each of these individual things, but in summary, it's basically walks you through step-by-step why technical books are different, like what's different about them and all of the unique things about that, starting from having an idea.

About something you'd like to write about and gauging, whether you know, how it helps you. I have a section on vetting the idea all the way through the editing, getting a publisher, writing and editing it, formatting it, uh, including formatting it with law tech if you want to, all the way to public, you know, getting promotion to even second revisions to the, like, the full lifecycle of the book.

[00:03:53] Katherine: So I, I have, uh, so many questions, but I, I would like to point out, like, so Kyle, you sent us a advanced P D F copy, which I appreciate. Uh, I, I did go through, I have not read it. Cover to cover, but I did read through a few sections and, and I went through the table of contents, and kudos to having it incredibly well organized because I found myself looking at the table of contents and going, well, if I, you know, how, how would I think about this?

Well, I, at first I wonder this, and, oh, okay, there's a heading for that. And I'm like, but then what about, oh, there's a heading for that too. Like sort of like answering all of my questions that I was thinking in my head as I'm scanning the, the list. But, um, but you know, the thing you just said actually was obvious.

Probably the first thing is vetting the idea, but I would think that, and probably both of y'all can answer this, but, in the case of going with a traditional publisher, I mean, vetting the idea is, is something that you do with them, right? But what is the difference between the, the process of pitching that, but also just deciding what to pitch?

[00:04:52] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, so I mean, there's a, I, I separate those two for a reason. One, you know, the, you want to have enough confidence in your own idea there. There's a lot of effort that goes into pitching a publisher. I. 

[00:05:04] Katherine: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:05] Kyle Rankin: there's a, there's a lot of work on your own side, creating an outline, plotting through the entire book, uh, in an outline form, creating a book proposal, all of that sort of thing.

But before you get to that, you, you, you know, there's a number of different ideas you might have for a book based on your expertise and different angles, and I think the best process to start with is just to vet it yourself. Uh, based on your experience with the topic and then whether it's there, there's a lot of different things to that that go into it, which is why it took a whole chapter to talk about.

But basically, and also by the way, uh, this chapter that about the idea is the one that I've chosen for my sample chapter. So this is something that everybody can read, can, you download and read through. And, and, but among the things to consider is one, uh, Your own expertise. You know, the one question is, how, how experienced or how knowledgeable do you have to be?

Do I have to be an expert to write a book on a, on a topic? And the answer is no. You don't have to be. I've written plenty of books where I wasn't exactly an expert on it. Definitely not when I started the book. Now, after you write a book on a subject, you, tend to. Become an expert in it, in the process.

But there's this balance between, uh, knowing enough about a topic that you, you are experienced in something, you've done something more than one time or something. You, you have deep knowledge so you can explain it to a beginner. Uh, Without necessarily having full expertise in everything. Like there's, there's examples where, there are a number of books I've written where I, there there's always like one chapter or one facet or something in a book where I've never actually done that particular thing before, but I'm well experienced in the rest knowing that I.

In the process of writing this book, I will then, you know, sort of level up and, and get those skills in this particular thing to write about it as well. 'cause there's al, it's, it's very rare that if you want, especially when you work with a publisher, all of the different aspects you want to write that the topic can cover, there's always something that they want you to cover that you maybe just because you're, you didn't need to do it as part of your job or whatever you don't, that you don't do.

So you have, part of it's that, the other thing to consider is timeliness. So beyond, let's, let's say that you've decided, you know, I have. The right balance of expertise in this topic. But also, you know, there's this weird balance, and this is something unique about technical publishing. I think particularly while, while a lot of other nonfiction books, uh, topics have some level of trend like cookbooks, you know, they tend to follow some level of trend, but technical books are special in that there's like this combination of, it needs to be very cutting edge, but not so cutting edge that there isn't a market for it.

Like if I'm writing about a cutting edge technology that only 10 people use right then I'm selling 10 books right at at most. So you have to find this, this almost like this curve of emerging technology is one of the areas for ideas where you're working on something that's pretty cutting edge but is not yet a hundred percent mainstream, but is on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

Like it's starting to get a little bit of mainstream attention. Uh, that's. Often a good idea because publishers maybe don't have a book about it yet. Uh, and maybe they're even looking for someone to write a book on that topic. The, the other end of it is something that has a lot of mainstream attention and interest, but maybe you have a unique spin on it, or, you know, a unique take on using a technology, uh, mainstream technology for a specific new purpose.

Like, for example, you know, like right now it would be X for ai, 

[00:08:27] Katherine: For ai. I was about to say, it's about ai, right?

[00:08:29] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, so if you have, you know, use, use an existing established technology for machine learning or ai, that's a book, you know, that's a great book idea right now.

[00:08:39] Doc: It occurs to me that I, in 24 years of writing for Linux Journal, I was not an expert on any of the things I wrote about, maybe a little bit on a couple things. Yeah. If I wrote about radio or if I wrote about a little bit for a while on copyright and open source and broadcasting, that kind of thing. But the rest of it, you know, not really.

[00:09:01] Katherine: Well, I think we were, we were all making it up as we go along to an extent.

I mean, that, but that's the nature of technology. That's, uh, at some point you have, you just. After so many years of it, you grow to accept that we're all, it's cha it changes too, too quickly. We're all making it up as we go along.

We're, we're laying the runway as we're, as we're taking off. Right? 

[00:09:19] Doc: So, so you, so you self-published this, right? This is, this is self-published or.

[00:09:24] Kyle Rankin: Yeah. Yeah. So this one, my, my previous book that was self-published was almost like the prototype, you know, to try this out. I had the material, I wanted to try out the process and see if I liked it, liked the result, uh, and all of that. And so this is with, this is also using the Lulu imprint, like my last one did.

I mean it. In a way it's, it would be, it's better beyond all of that, just beyond the fact that I'm, I'm just sort of still testing out the self-publishing waters with this. Uh, also I think having it be self-published is pretty useful because I'm, it allows me more leeway to take a platform agnostic approach to explaining to people how to write a book.

Because imagine if I'm writing for a. Under a particular publisher. And then I'm talking about how to, how to vet your publishers or how to, you know, how to pick a publisher. It, I don't know how open some publishers would be for me to talk about all the other publishers that they're competing directly against, you know, um, and, and links to how to pitch them, you know?

Yeah.

[00:10:23] Doc: So, so, so you published with the Switzer through the Switzerland of Publishers sort of, I mean, you didn't, was Lulu a publisher here or a formatter? What?

[00:10:32] Kyle Rankin: They're, they're, they would technically be classified as an imprint. So I did all of the writing and I've, you know, all of all the responsibilities for writing, editing, formatting, uh, creating a print proof, all of that is a hundred percent on me. They are providing the print on demand service, and they're providing a e-commerce platform.

To sell the book and allow the book to, uh, be distributed to say, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all of that. So that's their part of it. And it, because I bought an is I got a, a free I S B N through them. Then they're listed as the

[00:11:07] Doc: what is your eyes being through

[00:11:09] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, so they provided the I S P N. If you do that, then they're listed as the imprint.

So it's, so it's Lulu's the imprint on the book, but, uh, yeah, if I had bought a, a, a batch of ISBNs, this is something that's covered in the book too, but if I bought a batch of ISBNs, I could have applied one to this, and then it would've been, I would've been listed as the publisher. If I created a clever name for my, you know, my imprint, then it would've been me, you know?

[00:11:32] Doc: What, what does I S B N stand for? I, I should know, but I don't. Um, except there it is. Yeah.

[00:11:37] Kyle Rankin: International serial book number or something like that. I, I,

[00:11:41] Doc: Yeah,

[00:11:42] Kyle Rankin: yeah.

[00:11:42] Doc: all 

[00:11:43] Katherine: pretty. That's, I'm convinced. That

[00:11:44] Doc: All the books on your shelves have an I S P N number

[00:11:47] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, all of the ones if you, yeah, if you sell them, there's a convention through bookstores that if you want to sell a book in a bookstore, it needs to have an I S P N. Now, technically on, if you sell it strictly through Lulu, your book doesn't have to have an I S P N. But if you want to, if you want to sell through, say, Amazon, Barnes and Noble or anyone else, then it's a requirement allows everyone to just sort of, to have a, a number that they can use to know which book is which.

And so every type of the book also needs to have a different I S P N for instance. So, um, if you, if you have a, a hardcover version and a soft cover version, for instance, then that would be a different I S P N or an ebook. The ebook has a different I S P N.

[00:12:27] Doc: So I, I'm, I've been told, and I may be, this may be wrong, that all the big publishers actually do something like print on demand. In other words, they, the old thing where it says, oh, this is the first and second, third and fourth printing of a, something that this is less relevant than it used to be, because they're all capable of doing that, and I don't even know if that's true or not.

[00:12:48] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. I mean, what I, at least my experience the last time that I was publishing through a traditional tech publisher, at least was I got the sense, and a lot of this they don't necessarily share with you the author on that side. You know, that's just so, that's something that they're handling.

I. I've gotten, because I've had in the past, uh, books sell out of a print run and there has been discussions of new print runs that I get the sense that it's not a hundred percent on demand that they're doing some amount of printing in mass because it does take you, you do. I mean, there's a difference in quality.

I've seen. While print on demand is getting much, much better and the quality is, is good when it's good be if you're doing one off, like. Printing one book at a time. You, you're not going to, for example, print the book once ahead of time and do a QA test. You know what I mean? Like, if you're printing a thousand of them or a hundred of them even, you will, you know, you will do one and get it and get everything dialed in before you do the rest.

So there is a, a little bit of a difference. There's a little bit of inconsistency. I guess. It's all within, you know, the, all that stuff is within certain specs and there are, there's quality control and everything, but it is different. Um, I still think that in some cases, Uh, I could be wrong, but at least some publishers definitely do a batch because they have a, they know that they have a certain built-in demand whenever they release a new book that X these bookstores are each, are going to want X number of copies.

Uh, so they, you know, provide a certain amount, at least.

[00:14:18] Katherine: So back to the, you know, something that I, I kind of forgot to ask about, vetting an idea, but when you do the self go, the self-publishing route, um, You kind of have to do your own market research, I suppose, you know, again, to, to decide what's, what's worth the time Now, to be fair, and I feel like our reader, our readers, our listeners should understand that you're, you make it look easy writing a book.

I mean, so you know what, what might take another person an entire year to get through? I think you, it doesn't take you quite so long. So maybe the, the. The cost is a, a little bit more reasonable. But if, if I'm gonna spend a year doing something, let's say writing a book, I want to know, you know, I, I guess I'd like to know that there's some demand for it.

And how, how do you figure that out?

[00:15:05] Kyle Rankin: Well, and honestly a couple things. Well, one, that is why I, for a new author, I do strongly recommend you go through a tech publisher, or at least start by pitching all of the tech publishers. With your idea, with your book pitch, one thing you need to come up, you need to go through the process regardless of come creating an outline.

That's a strong outline that you can use to guide the rest of the book and, and, and structure your ideas, your thoughts about the book, you know, into some sort of good format. Also, have the a pitch ready, which is the outline's part of. I think it's very important for a, a new writer to try traditional publishers first because there's just, it's so much work already to write the book if they're doing their part of it, and it's even, it's so much more if you're doing it all by yourself.

Plus it is just, I can't understate the importance of having a good editor. Especially when you're brand, a brand new writer, trying this for the very first time, having the editor on that side that help, that will help you not just with grammar and all of that stuff, but just sort of walk you through the project like a project manager.

In many ways it's just absolutely critical. And so having the, having publishers vet the ideas because they have tools that a self publisher. Doesn't have. So for example, you know, if you want to gauge popularity of a topic, uh, under the self-publishing umbrella, what you would do is the, the best you have is sort of like am Amazon's sales rank page rank for thing, you know, so you go to a book and see how it ranks in various categories, and also just sort of search for what books are exist on the topic.

I did that for this one, for instance, and I saw that there actually, at least from what I could find, were no books about how to write a technical book. Uh, the closest was there's some, um, guides for technical writing in general, like articles and things or books on nonfiction, self-publishing, but nothing really about technical books and technical books are a hundred percent different.

Beast, you know, there's imprints and publishers that strictly do computer and technical books for a reason. But yeah, so to answer your question, I think all you have really is that sort of thing. Amazon rankings as a individual, but booksellers, or sorry, publishers have a whole other set of tools. In particular, they have subscriptions to a service called BookScan.

And what BookScan gives them access to is what books are actually selling. Over the counter, you know, so they get data on which books, how books sold whenever they're, they're purchased. And so they use that in addition to all the other metrics they, they can get. So they know how well a book is selling.

So if you pitch, for example, a publisher, an idea, and their competitor already has a book on the subject, but they don't yet. They can look at that competitor and say, oh yeah, that book is doing really well and we should probably get in on that. You know, we should have a book on the same topic so that you know, even though a book may already exist on the topic, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't pitch other publishers with a book on a similar topic with a different approach.

[00:18:03] Katherine: So here's a question and, and again, this is kind of for both of you. Um, but you've, you've written, you've co-authored books with other people,

[00:18:12] Kyle Rankin: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:13] Katherine: correct? I mean, both of you have. I'm wondering what. How does the experience differ? Like if, again, if you're thinking about, okay, what, what do I have to, to write about?

But, but really you're, you're thinking of it, uh, thinking of it in terms of a, a group presentation, let's say. Um, how does the experience differ when you're, when you're writing, when you're co-authoring, you know, a lot of books that, you know, I've seen books that, that have five different authors because they all take a different section.

How does that experience differ?

[00:18:38] Kyle Rankin: Well, so a couple things. One, sometimes when a book is has five authors, it's because it's in multiple editions and the previous auth authors chose not to. Contribute to the next edition. Uh, other times, yeah. If you have a collaboration. So I've, I have two different books in particular where I collaborated.

So the first one was Ubuntu Hacks, where I wrote that with Jonathan Oxford and Bill Childers. And, uh, what we did there, because it was a hacks book, it was essentially divide and conquer. So each of us, uh, We came, all came up with hacks that we wanted to write, you know? And so, uh, just in case reader, the listeners haven't read a hacks book before.

Basically, uh, it's a collection of a hundred tips or tricks. Um, it's almost like small articles in their own right. And so we took the topic of Ubuntu and then split it up into a hundred sort of tips. And each of us said, well, I can take that, I will take that sort of thing. And each of us independently did it, and we each contributed a certain percentage.

And then, The book deal was distributed royalties, essentially based on the percentage and the same for the title. So for example, Jonathan er wrote, uh, more hacks, uh, than I did. So he had first billing I wrote the second most, so I had second billing, stuff like that. And also royalties went the same way for the official Ubuntu server book.

Um, I wrote the majority of it. And then there were a couple of chapters, so I wrote most of the chapters and then the remaining chapters, uh, Benjamin Mako Hill wrote. 

[00:20:05] Katherine: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:06] Kyle Rankin: And so that was, in both cases, a lot of it was, was very similar to writing a regular book in that you're still independently writing the sections you're writing.

It's just near the end that you are doing more collaborative work. Where you have other, the other authors are submitting their work and you're sort of reviewing it, you know, and you're, you have some level of consensus on who's doing what.

[00:20:29] Katherine: Yeah. So I feel like people listening are, are gonna wanna know the same thing from Doc. So how, so you've written the intention economy. And

[00:20:37] Doc: well, the intention economy is. Yeah,

[00:20:40] Katherine: Klu Train and, and all of these other things. How,

[00:20:43] Doc: well, Cluetrain, uh, both of them were kind of special breeds of the, of their own, um, with Cluetrain. Um, we, we knew an agent. The website was a big hit. Um, and this is way before social media is 1999. Um, but there was a lot of mojo around that and there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal about it and, and, Basically publishers came calling and we got an agent, and the agent agent actually was our first editor.

He was the one who went through all of all of our stuff and I mean, we, I remember, I mean, we each, each submitted like a bunch of chapters or a bunch of stuff and, and he told us what was good, what wasn't, what goes where, um, and really brought coherency to it. So, I don't even, don't even remember who the final editor was.

We did not have an editor on that one. As far as I know, I think he was the guy, um, again, named David Miller with uh, Germond, which is the agency. They're still there. They're still very good. Um, in the case of, so that's my one experience with collaboration there. Um, and we've met twice. The four of us met twice.

There were only four of us in that case. Uh, But we had a lot of talks on the phone with, with the intention economy. Uh, um, I was basically after giving a talk about title, the Intention Economy, um, um, somebody in the audience, it was a small group, um, came up to me and it was from Harvard Business Review Press, and said, you wanna make that into a book?

And I said, damn, straight. And as soon as he said yes, I, I went to the same agent I went to David. Garman and he, he took care of the rest. And I would love to say that I earned out the advance, but I have not. It is a, a kind of a worse seller. Did I tell you this? The Tim Lease story?

[00:22:47] Katherine: Yes, actually. But tell it again. Tell

it for the people who haven't heard it.

[00:22:51] Doc: briefly.

I, I, I, Timley was at a thing that I was also at and I didn't wanna bother him. I was, I asked him a question about Hi High energy physics and he interrupted me to say, uh oh, the Intention Economy. Wonderful book. Great book. And then later at another thing he led on that, that inspired solid, this project that he's working on.

And. If the book had only one reader, that's the guy to get, you know, I mean, that, that, that was extraordinarily cool. Uh, and that kind of made my weak, you know. But, um, and actually what it did was it energized me to write some more. I've, I've got several book ideas sitting around right now that I'm thinking about, so I'll, I'll read your book.

Kyle and then, and decide which way to go with it, because actually, Harvard Business Review has kind of like first refusal on my next book. But considering that I haven't earned out much of the, uh, advance, I don't know how that's gonna go, but we'll see. I, I loved them. I loved working with 'em, so we'll see what happens.

[00:23:53] Kyle Rankin: Yeah.

[00:23:55] Katherine: Yeah, that's a, that's a, yeah. Interesting. You bring that point. 'cause that's, that's the very traditional model, right? You get in advance and,

[00:24:02] Doc: Well, here's a, here's a 

[00:24:03] Katherine: hope you sell enough to justify it.

[00:24:05] Doc: Here's a weird circumstance. What I found over the last, well, really since, well, first with the successive blogging and then the crash of blogging, and then the. The, the success of social media and social media kind of shunts, um, one's energies to ground. I mean, oh, I'm already writing.

I wrote a thing, I, I, I said something. I, I'm writing a lot of emails during the day, and I think with, with Twitter kind of blowing up and. Social media in general, being in a kind of a limbo state. Um, well, everybody in our cohort say, let's all go to Federated and let's all go to like self, back to self-publishing in other ways.

Um, I think it's actually a good time to write books. I think it, it may be, um, I mean, I'm finding that even though we have successfully migrated my blog from the Harvard server to my own, um, Uh, to searls.com and nothing Got 4 0 4 in the midst, which is just freaking awesome. Um, that, uh, it's still hard. I, I'm, I'm feeling a real urge to write books.

[00:25:21] Kyle Rankin: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:21] Doc: It's, it's just a weird thing. This's just come on me like, yeah, I think I'm better buckle down and write some books and it's, I don't know. Did are you you seeing that in the water, Kyle, at all?

[00:25:32] Kyle Rankin: I mean, first, I guess what I'm seeing is, is people, the first level migration is people migrating in some from social media back to blogging a little bit, because they wanted something that was under more their control, and that's more tangible. Right? But I think. It's almost like seeing the move.

Everyone took a shift away from urban environments to one step a closer to living in the woods. You know? So people that were living in the city maybe are living in the suburbs now, people in the suburbs maybe got some property somewhere and then people that had some property are now like homesteading.

So, you know, like everyone took a shift over and I think we're seeing a similar thing. We're gonna start seeing a similar thing here where people that strictly were just doing social media. Uh, for little one-liners or things like, or they're not even a one-liner, basically a blog post that's a 23 thread tweet or whatever, uh, are now going to blogs.

And I think some people that already sort of had a blog are starting, or, you know, are starting to see these other things like newsletters or podcasts. Um, and books are part of it. And because now there's a lot more accessibility to a lot of the tools you need to write a book. And that I, I, I do think that you're, that.

Some more people are, are looking into that as a form. I mean, especially self-publishing, but, uh, because there's, there's a lot of tools out there to make it easy to, to take a book that maybe got rejected by a, you know, you went, you, you farmed it out or you tried to pitch it to a lot of people and they don't see your vision or whatever you, or you want full creative control.

The same reason that a lot of people move to their own blogs is they want their own platform. And so some people feel the same way about their writing, although again, it's much more beneficial if you're self-publishing, if you already have a platform and already have the background and the experience.

You know, like for example, U Doc would be a great candidate to just completely, you know, run all of this yourself if you wanted, if you want had the interest because you already have a platform, you already have readership and that sort of thing.

[00:27:30] Katherine: So, speaking of a platform, so the thing you, as Doc mentioned, you've got Twitter imploding and people are kind of, we're in a, a bit of a social media confusion. So how do you, how do you promote a book today?

[00:27:42] Kyle Rankin: I mean, what's, what's interesting about it is that, you know, and I noticed that this thre sort of this change throughout all of the different books that I published, I. Over the last couple of decades, publishers have, have sort, sort of shifted more and more of the promotional burden onto the author. And this isn't just strictly in tech publishing.

I've, I've noticed this in, you know, I have my, my wife is also a writer and, but she's like a, a legit professional writer. And I've seen that,

[00:28:10] Katherine: are you,

but she's a fiction

[00:28:12] Kyle Rankin: I know I, I mean, I guess I think of that as super legit, but, 

[00:28:15] Katherine: writing. yeah. I, I, I get it.

[00:28:17] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, but you know, I mean, for instance, you know, like in, in traditional writing, and this is something unique with technical writing, is that you don't necessarily have to have an agent, like I don't have an agent.

Uh, a lot of times there's a direct relationship, and this is, I believe this is relatively unique with technical publishing for the. And many, maybe some nonfiction publishings like this too, uh, outside of tech, but you don't necessarily have to have an agent. Uh, a lot of times the relationship is directly between you and a publisher, so you might pitch a publisher directly, whereas in other markets, you have to like the a, they, the agent has to be there to sit between you and the publisher.

They're the ones that liaise with a, with a publisher. Uh, and the publisher won't pay attention to an individual for the most part. Um, but yeah. Uh, how do you promote it? Part of it is, you know, having it help us if you have an existing platform. But, but even with a publisher nowadays, a lot of times publishers are looking at what platforms that an author already has, and a lot of the promotional work that they do ends up being, uh, things like, you know, Making sure that they have, they have a suite of reviewers that they already have relationships with that already are well placed on, say, Amazon or other places.

And that they will send a, a review copy to and they know they can get reviews that way. Uh, the other thing that they might do it, they might have relationships with bookstores where they can get the book on an end cap. Or preferred placement somewhere potentially, if they believe in the book and they, and they need in in particular, if they have put a significant advance behind the book and they wanna recoup that, then they are willing to spend more marketing dollars for your average tech book.

It's more like, um, if you go to a conference, for example, I'm, uh, everyone listening to this around the time you're listening to it, I'm gonna be heading to Defcon and. And at, at Defcon for instance, no starch traditionally has a big booth in the expo, like the vendor area. And so if you publish with no starch, uh, then you know that, uh, and you have a recent book, you know that you can get promoted there because you can go to the booth and they will do author signings and things like that.

So all of those are things that sort of publishers do. And then as an individual, whether you have. Like, even with traditional publishers, you're expected to use whatever social media platform you have in friends and family to get the word out, you know, and to do, for example, additional articles. So for, for this book, for instance, um, I'm going to be pitching articles on the unique aspects of writing technical books compared to other books, to a couple of, uh, to a couple things in the industry.

Um, podcasts like this are a great way. If you have, um, if you either have relationships with existing podcasts or there are other podcasts within the market for your book, then that's a great way to get the word out. So, because for example, for this book, the Market is Anyone, uh, involved a technology. If you bought a tech technical book at some point to learn a skill and you have some level of experience in something technical, then you're part of the market, right?

There's, there's a good chance you might have, you might wanna write a book yourself.

[00:31:19] Katherine: Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. So speaking of Defcon, if you're going to be at Defcon, say hi, um, I have stickers,

[00:31:27] Kyle Rankin: And I have books I will be handing out. I will be, you know, uh, we haven't figured out exactly how the promotion might work, but I'm gonna have a lot of copies for you, for people to at least thumb through. Or if you find me and mention this, you know, and I have an extra book in my backpack, I might just hand it over to you.

So,

[00:31:43] Katherine: Oh, that's pretty cool. It's a little Easter egg. Um, yeah, I will also be, uh, doing some interviews, so if that appeals to anybody out there, if you have an a story to tell, please get in touch. Um, but yeah, doc, I think you were about to say something. I.

[00:32:00] Doc: No, I just think I, again, I just think it's a really, it's a really cool time and I hope you guys make stuff happen there, you know, between promotion and everything. I'll be really curious to see how it goes.

[00:32:13] Katherine: Yeah, I, you know, this is a whole other topic of conversation and not to completely derail us. But, but the whole ti the whole subject of conferences, of course, you know, the last several years have been weird and I think conferences are slowly trying to get back to normal, but they're not quite there yet.

I will be interested to see just how big Defcon is having, you know, the, the only other time I've been was. 2019 just before all of this, you know, happened. Um, so I'm kind of curious to com to compare just in terms of attendees and size and sprawl and again, the only year I I've been, it was, you know, massive and overwhelming and crowded and, and so many different areas and so many things to learn and people to talk to.

And I, I guess it'll be the same, but

[00:33:01] Kyle Rankin: I suspect it will. I also haven't been since, uh, since Covid. Uh, but yeah, I suspect it'll be, you know, it's, it's always just a crazy, you know, and I'm, I'm sure it'll,

[00:33:13] Katherine: People are desperate for that level of fun again.

[00:33:15] Kyle Rankin: I mean, it's always been crowded and crazy even, you know, I mean, maybe there, even if it's not peak attendance compared to whenever that peak was, it's been crowded and crazy forever.

You know? So maybe this means you can actually walk down the hallway a little bit sometimes, you know. Great. Uh, but it's 

[00:33:30] Katherine: maybe get into one of those parties that instead of standing in

[00:33:33] Kyle Rankin: Or maybe attend a talk. Yeah, maybe actually be able to go to a talk, you know, that you want to go to, stuff like that. But

[00:33:38] Katherine: your hotel

[00:33:39] Kyle Rankin: I mean that's something that, I do think that's something that, not specifically Defcon, but 'cause they have sort of had this going for a while, but a lot of other conferences during sort of like, uh, offices that didn't have a work from home plan or didn't have work from home infrastructure before Covid.

Had to, by necessity develop it. And then now there's hybrid work or there, you know, they have the infrastructure in place so people are able to do it. Conferences, I think if they wanted to, to stick around, they had to do something similar and have some sort of remote, uh, infrastructure in place so people could attend remotely or they could give the conference remotely.

And I think even if they're doing in-person conferences, a lot of that infrastructure isn't necessarily going away. And so it means as an attendee you have all of these extra options you maybe didn't have for some conferences before, like watching live streams of the thing as it's going in some cases or, um, or participating remotely.

Some, I mean, some conferences are still offering sort of a hybrid environment where you can go in person, but you can also participate remotely. You know, some of the conferences I've been to recently, they had, they had remote streaming and then had people sending questions remotely, uh, to the, the speaker, you know, which is kind of interesting.

[00:34:48] Katherine: Again, not to completely 180 the, uh, the topic, but. Um, I, again, something popped up, popped into my head, one of my burning questions about, about writing any book earlier, but a tech book. Um, can we talk just a little bit about self-discipline

[00:35:06] Kyle Rankin: Yeah.

[00:35:06] Katherine: and as this, this applies to, to any field, frankly, any, at any time of creation or, well, frankly, any type of work, but how do you.

Structure your writing time. I think this is a struggle for everybody. This is why, why, uh, nano Rmo or whatever exists, right? Force people to say, okay, I want to write something I'm going to write every day. Right? How, how do you do that? And what do you, you know, what, what do you tell people who've never written a book

[00:35:32] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, I mean that's, that's sort of like the key initial part of the, of the writing chapter in the book is. Not, you know, in general writing tips, but more like how to structure your time. It's the most critical part of beginning to write is figuring out the time. Because realistically, anyone writing a tech book in particular already has a full-time job and that's what is inspired, you know, giving them the expertise to write a book to begin with.

Right? And so you sort of start with this understanding that most people are going to have to figure out how to do this other thing that could be a full-time job. At least while you're working on it, uh, while you also have a full-time job. And so, you know, time management's critical and. So I give a lot of different advice because it's different for different people and it's also different if you are single, if you are living with someone else or you have a full family with young children, you know, time management's completely different in all of those cases.

So, and I've noticed that personally, you know, like when, when it was just myself and my wife and we were both working on books, we would just, you know, weekends, uh, she would go work on her book and I would go work on my book if I was in the middle of it. But in some cases you don't have that freedom to do that.

And also, so, so let me back up a little bit. The, the first thing is to understand your personal schedule and, and figure out how much time you need to set aside every week. And I, you, I recommend working on it every week, uh, to get the book complete. And so at the beginning, you won't know how long it takes you to do something and how much time you need, but.

As part of pitching the book, generally speaking, you will need to have written at least one chapter in the book to submit to the, the publisher, and you can use your experience on writing that sample chapter to get a sense of how long did it take you to write 500 words, a thousand words, 2000 words. And, and you can use that as an estimate for how long it will take you to, to write the rest of the book in general.

And then it's a divide and conquer thing, which again, it, it sounds like. This huge, enormous task, which is why you have to just parcel it up. I mean, one of the recurring themes in my book is to divide and conquer, is to split it up into whatever the smallest chunk that's not overwhelming and intimidating is, and then do that.

So if you are talking about time management, then, um, if you have time outside of, uh, like during the week outside of work to devote an hour, Then do that. However, what's what's important to note about writing a book is that there's, in particular, when you're doing the writing part of it, there, um, there's sort of like this upfront ramp up time that most people need to get into the mindset and to get into the focus.

That might take up to like say a half an hour to get into that frame of mind where you're actually doing productive writing. And if you're only budgeting an hour, let's say you're doing an hour a day. It takes half of that time just to get into that mode of thinking. Then you only get a half an hour of writing done.

So I recommend most people try to at least once a week map out, um, a block of time. And for a lot of people, that might be the weekends, uh, that you can do focused. Distraction free work where you can take that half an hour if it takes that long to get into that mindset of writing and organized, and get all of the distraction dialed out of the way, you know, close all of the apps, um, get your coffee or tea or whatever, get everything ready and then sit down with just a blank page and start writing because there's, there's a lot of it where it's just a matter of having a block of time.

And then of course, there's other aspects of it. Editing, um, doing what I call lab work that may or may not take large blocks of time. So lab work, whenever you're writing a technical book, and this is somewhat unique to technical books, although cookbooks are similar too, where you have to actually test out the things you're saying.

Even if you've done it a million times, you need to open a, create a fresh lab environment that's like what, what the reader would have and test all of your steps yourself personally. And that takes time. You know, you have to budget that, whatever it is. And any, you know, I've noticed any chapter that I have extens extensive instructions that need extensive lab work, take longer to write because I have to budget the time to build the lab, test the thing, and you know, so,

[00:39:43] Katherine: Just like, yeah, you have to test recipes for a cookbook. It's the same thing. Yeah.

[00:39:47] Kyle Rankin: Yeah. So for example, if you're a morning person, then maybe it makes sense to wake up a little early and every day, knock out a little bit of the work if you can. If again, if it, if you find the ramp up, time to get focused doesn't take too long. But I say I, I think for most people it probably comes down to during the time where you're working on the book, uh, As assume you're going to take at least one day out of the weekend, um, if not both, if you need to, to at least half, halfway through a day to work on work, focus on the book full time, uh, on the weekends, just to have the time because again, most of us have, will have a day job during the week that we can't write during then.

[00:40:25] Doc: Setting out a time is important. I mean, it's just, I, it was almost impossible for me, but I did it. It was really hard. Because, uh, I'm not very disciplined and, uh, but it helps. It really, really helps.

[00:40:39] Katherine: Yeah. I mean it's, it's hard to get, keep getting podcasts out, like it's

[00:40:43] Doc: Yeah.

[00:40:44] Katherine: frankly, so, yeah.

[00:40:46] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, you just have to have a scheduled time because, and then the other thing is you get a scheduled time. You get, you get, and ideally, uh, you map out, uh, milestones. So let's say you have a, a, you know, 10 chapter book then, and you have a due date. Usually when you're working with a publisher, you have to estimate when's this book going to be done?

And then you take that. You get a calendar in front of yourself and you say, okay, well if I'm going to complete this 10 chapter book by this date, let's say it's 10 months from now, then on average I need to complete a, a chapter a month. Right? And then you take, well, okay, I need to complete a chapter a month.

Then how long, uh, how long? How much time do I need the budget? Per month to complete a chapter, how long will it take? And you just, you break it down into those chunks. Also understanding that life gets in the way sometimes and you will, you know, something will take longer than it. And all of that sort of, that happens and delays happen in books all the time.

But I mean, that's the only way to really approach it, is to look at, um, how, when you've committed to finishing it and then dividing it across the time you have between now and then, just in setting the time, if you know that the only way I will get a chapter or a month done is if I work on it. Six hours, uh, every weekend.

Then make sure you allow that six hours every weekend and then, um, and then have a little bit of wiggle room, understanding that every now and then that weekend you won't be able to work on it.

[00:42:12] Katherine: Hmm. Yep. Always the battle with everything in life.

[00:42:16] Kyle Rankin: Yeah. Well, 

[00:42:17] Katherine: the time. 

[00:42:17] Kyle Rankin: It's easy. Again, it's easier if you're single and your time is, you know, a hundred percent. However you decide. It's more difficult if you're, if you are living with somebody else where you're, you need to, you know, it's, it's rude to just squirrel yourself away for hours and work on 

[00:42:33] Katherine: Oh, is it?

[00:42:34] Kyle Rankin: And, and if you have a child that's even more so, you know, it's, I noticed a com a, a big difference in my, how quickly I could write a book and how much, how productive I was before and after I have a kid, just because I can't just sequester myself away all weekend in an office and, and just sort of work hardcore all day long on a book.

When you have a kid. Because you know, you don't want to just ignore the kid. Well, and, and not e not even just that. You wanna make sure that the kid for emotional development, everything has your attention. But, but also just the fact that if you're doing that, then you're, then somebody else has to watch the kid during that time.

And you have to, if you're, if that's your plan to write the book, is that every weekend between now and when I publish the book, I'm gone. And not taking care of the kid, you need to make sure that whoever is taking care of the kid's okay with that. Um, and you know, and how do you balance all of that? Yeah.

It's all, it's all consideration. So, um, yeah, so that's, I that part of the chapter. I go over a lot of these different scenarios because it's going to be different for each person. You have to, you have to, I just basically have some general tips and guidelines, uh, that you can apply to whatever your situation is.

[00:43:42] Katherine: Okay, so basically setting realistic expectations is probably up there on the list of, of how to approach it. So, is there, what have we missed?

What have

[00:43:51] Doc: actually, I'm, I'm, I'm like scanning through his book actually while I'm 

[00:43:55] Katherine: Ah, okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I'm wondering what we've missed in the conversation about, about how to write a textbook because frankly I think this has been really useful so far. I, this is, I, I think gonna be like a go-to podcast episode for people looking to write a tech book or, so I hope anyway.

[00:44:11] Doc: what was the weirdest or the hardest part of it to write?

[00:44:13] Kyle Rankin: Um, so, and this actually goes to the one thing that we haven't really talked about much yet, which is formatting. This is something that is unique to tech books that you don't see a lot in pretty much all the other authors I've spoken with who writes something other than computer and technology books don't run into this in the same way where, you know, traditionally if you're writing a novel, you think about, okay, that's a paragraph I might use italics in bold.

Sometimes I might underline something, maybe. Um, but that's about it. You know, that as far as formatting goes,

[00:44:44] Katherine: Yeah, nobody's formatting blocks of code and unless it's a certain types of science fiction,

[00:44:49] Kyle Rankin: And, and, but text writing sort of straddles something between a traditional nonfiction book and academic writing where there are these very specific formatting styles that are unique to tech publishing that you don't really see anywhere else where it takes a significant amount of time and there's a significant learning curve the first time you do it.

And that you don't even really realize that when you're reading a, when you're reading, uh, a tech book and you go through and you see a code block. And it's formatted a certain way. I think most people see that and they don't really think about, uh, what went into making it look that way and the fact that there's all these design cues that your brain sees, even if you don't see it.

So, for instance, the, the best example is if you are writing, um, a tech book and you're talking about typing something in a command line, a command line command that has output. All right. There's, uh, textbooks have code blocks, which are in Monospace font and usually sometimes have lines that separate them from the rest of the text.

So you can see that it's code. But if you're typing in the command line, in addition to setting something as a code block, you also, whatever you're typing is traditionally bold. Um, on top of that, if you're, whatever you're typing, if it's an argument that's a, that's variable, which means what I type in the book, whatever you type as the reader will be different based on your circumstance.

You don't explicitly type verbatim what I'm saying. It's bold and italicized, and then the output is neither bold nor italicized. And these are all just things that you wouldn't realize if you're a reader necessarily, but your brain does. Because after you get through a technical book, you get toward the end and you see something, you realize, oh wait, I realized that that's the thing.

I type in to the command line. And the rest of it, I don't type in, I. All the, this output is not something I verbatim type in. It's just output. Right. Uh, all of that is something that's unique to tech writing, that it takes a significant learning curve. I mean, it's so much, so I devoted an entire chapter to it because it's, it takes, you know, it's a.

If you have not been exposed to it, it's a big thing to learn. Um, so that's even just if you have a traditional publisher, because each of them has their own set of special tools to help an author format text, even though they're not formatting a print-ready proof, they are creating, usually it's a Word doc these days with special templates that each publisher spent tons of time developing where you can.

Even things like, uh, headers. Not just headers like first and second and third level headers, but also things like bulleted lists. Sometimes there's special things that you do to bulleted lists in a tech book for certain publishers so that they get design cues for their designer to do special things when it's being printed.

All of that's a whole field. Of its own. And so I think the most challenging thing for me for this book was not just talking about the formatting styles, which was, was not that challenging, but I have a whole section of it, um, from the self-publishing angle because what I learned when I was writing my previous book, Was how to not just format something using these formatting styles, but also how to do it for a print-ready proof, which is a whole other ball game that I never had to do before.

And in my case, I did it using law tech. So I have a whole section of the book that's specifically how to, if you're self-publishing, how to use a law tech book template that I use for this book. Um, and how to format everything using law tech so that it looks really professional when you're done.

[00:48:14] Doc: So, so tell us about law tech because, uh, I'm, I'm, I've not written with it. What is it

[00:48:19] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, so law tech is a markup language similar to, let's say, H T M L or markdown or things like that. Um, it's pretty similar to H T M L in the sense that there's these weird symbols sometimes that you use in words that say what a particular piece of text is. So like an H T M L, you would have an H one tag that you would wrap around something that's a header.

A first level header in the document, and you might have a p tag for a paragraph in H T M L in law tech. Uh, instead of H one, there's a, a, you basically have a tag kind of in front of it that says this is a section, and then there's a subsection and a sub subsection, but you basically just say that and then wrap things in curly braces instead.

It, the syntax is different, but the thought is the same where you have text and then you add markup to tell, uh, the program. What type of text it's going to be. And then after you finish doing that, you then, the difference between that and H T M L is that you run this, uh, command to compile that into A P D F essentially at the end, uh, that is properly formatted, it handles all this heavy lifting for you.

So for instance, uh, in my book I said that things are chapters with the title of the chapter. I, I said that there were sections, subsections, et cetera, but I didn't number them. I. I didn't create a table of contents. Law tech did all of that for me because when it read the document, it knew, okay, that's a chapter.

Okay. If that's the first one, it's chapter one. If it's the second one, it's chapter two, et cetera. Um, and it saw the sections underneath and knew, okay, that section belongs to this chapter. So it was able to build the table of contents for me, uh, because of that. So, but all of that is something I had to do a crash course in when I wrote my previous book.

Uh, and so I have a whole section about all of that. Basically give you a crash course in. Formatting something with law tech like I did. Uh, the most challenging part of this book was the appendix. So in the appendix, I thought the, the easiest way to understand law tech is to see actual law tech code yourself. So I have an appendix that shows the entire first section of chapter five, which is the formatting chapter, the raw code. For it. All right. So having the raw code wasn't the hard part. It was escaping all the raw code in law tech, so that could format it in law tech as code without it, it interpreting it itself.

Um, that was pretty tricky.

[00:50:44] Katherine: Yeah, I, I actually wondered when I looked at it and having had similar experiences, you answered that one for me. So I, I think we've covered it, man. I think, uh,

[00:50:53] Doc: Yeah, there's a lot there.

[00:50:55] Katherine: this is great. I think I. Anyone who needs to, wants to write a tech book. This, this is so much good information.

And then part two is buy the book.

I don't, don't mind the shameless plug. can do it

for you. 

[00:51:06] Doc: need tech books. We need tech books for people. So yeah.

[00:51:10] Kyle Rankin: and when we need tech books from like, people that have fresh expertise on something, you know, there's all kinds of emerging technology and just, and new, new authors out there and people who have a great idea but just didn't know what to do. Uh, don't know what to what, how to make a book out of it, you know?

[00:51:26] Katherine: the accessibility of self-publishing, right? From people who might have a voice that is, that is not, that doesn't have an outlet. And again, all the only barrier to entry is, is time. And I think that's true of, of other media as well. But, but I think it's important to the, the idea that anybody could write a book given the Free time, which is not necessarily an easy thing to have, but I I, I do appreciate that angle.

I think, um, yeah. Anyway, I would like, I would like to see what other information people can share out there in book forum as a result.

[00:51:59] Kyle Rankin: Yeah. And, and while the book is aimed at traditional publishers, because I do think a new author gets a lot of benefit from that infrastructure, uh, every section also talks about how the same topic applies to self-publishing. I. So, you know, when I talk about how to, you know, even create an outline, you create an outline, not just to pre prepare a book pitch for a publisher, but for yourself.

You know, in writing the book, when I talk about how to, how to what the publishing process is like with a traditional publisher, I also talk step by step through how to publish a book on Lulu, uh, which is the one I have the most familiarity with. So I use that as an example, but, um, you know how to do that if you want to go the self-publishing route.

[00:52:41] Katherine: Yep. I like it. 

[00:52:42] Doc: A historic item is that, uh, Lulu was started by Bob Young who started Red Hat, and before that was the. A first editor of Linux Journal, 

[00:52:50] Kyle Rankin: and it's a great platform. Yeah, I mean, I've, I've really enjoyed using it so far. I mean, I've, I've looked at a couple of different platforms, what I liked about it. I make a big point in the book to not necessarily promote or pitch any particular imprint or publisher or anything. Um, but for my constraints, I found what I liked about Lulu as an imprint for my books is that they did all the things that I didn't necessarily want to do myself.

And it, it was really easy to do. So the things I didn't necessarily wanna do myself was figure out print on demand. I didn't want to set up an e-commerce storefront for myself. Things like that. I wanted someone else to handle, okay, here's my, here's my ready to go formatted p d f book and here's how I would like, and they even have cover design tools and things.

So you can easily make a cover. Um, but then take that and you get it into Amazon and get it into Barnes and Noble or, and also create a storefront on Lulu, which is much preferred, uh, that you can, where someone can sell the book.

[00:53:50] Katherine: Well, cool. That's great. Well, I, I would love to know, you know, if any. Actually even starts the process of writing a textbook after listening to this. So, if you're listening and you, you start writing, let us know.

[00:54:02] Kyle Rankin: Yeah, please do. Please contact me.

[00:54:05] Katherine: Yeah. But we, we know a guy who can give you some great advice. So thank you everyone for listening.

This has been a really great. Episode if I don't say so. I mean, I can't really take any credit for it because it's all Kyle and Doc. But, um, I've enjoyed asking you the questions. May, maybe I'll add writing a, a tech book to my bucket list. Who knows? Um,

so thank I, I should, I mean maybe, maybe I know some stuff after all these years.

[00:54:30] Kyle Rankin: definitely.

[00:54:32] Katherine: So thank you everyone for listening and uh, we will talk to you next time. 

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