What I learned writing a lousy tech book

Last year I pounced on a chance to write a book about d3.js. Yes! My first book deal! This is going to be the greatest technical book the world has ever seen. It’s going to sell so many copies and I will be rich and famous and everyone is going to learn so very much!

But I soon found out that stuffing EVERYTHING into 120 pages is ... hard. Editors get in the way and publishers have deadlines and by the time the book came out I hated it. It’s too fast paced, people can’t learn from it, and all the examples I was so proud of are kind of lame.

Turns out there’s a reason why so many technical books are bad. In this talk I’m going to explain why I don’t like mine and how you can do better.

Transcript

1. W H AT I L E A R N E D W R I T I N G A L O U S Y T E C H B O O K S W I Z E C T E L L E R
3. L E G A L R E Q U I R E M E N T
4. A S T O RY I N T H R E E A C T S
5. A C T I S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 2
7. “ H I , W R I T E A B O O K M AY B E ? ” O C T O B E R 2 0 1 2
8. W H O , M E ?
9. * H A N D - WAV E A N O U T L I N E *
10. “ $ $ $ ? ” D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 2
11. A C T I I J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3
12. W R I T I N G A B O O K I S E A S Y
13. 1 . T H I N K I T
14. 2 . L E A R N I T
15. 3 . C O D E I T
16. 4 . W R I T E I T
17. E AT, S L E E P, W R I T E , R E P E AT
18. 1 7 9 PA G E S , 6 6 D AY S , 1 7 1 H O U R S M A R C H 2 0 1 3
19. A C T I I I A P R I L 2 0 1 3
20. “ W E L O V E I T ! ”
21. “ B U T N O T R E A L LY ”
22. * R E W R I T E E V E RY T H I N G *
25. T W I C E . J U N E 2 0 1 3
26. A C T I I I … A N D A H A L F S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
27. “ L E T ’ S S TA R T T H E R E W R I T I N G ”
28. U W O T M 8 ?
29. T H I S I S N ’ T I N T R O D U C E D I D O N ’ T U N D E R S TA N D Y O U A R E N ’ T C L E A R E X A M P L E D O E S N ’ T F I T Y O U ’ R E J U S T W R O N G D O E S N ’ T F O L L O W S TA N D A R D S G R A M M E R ! Y O U S O U N D R U S S I A N I C A N ’ T R E A D T H I S C O D E
30. * D O N O T R E W R I T E *
31. A C T I V O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
32. D O N E .
33. 1 9 4 PA G E S , 1 2 M O N T H S , 3 3 3 H R S
35. $ $ $ ? … N O T M U C H M A R C H 2 0 1 4
36. T H E B E S T WAY T O L E A R N A S L O G N O T H A R D H U M B L I N G W R I T I N G A B O O K I S :
37. C H E E R S @ S W I Z E C