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What I learned writing a lousy tech book

swizec
April 01, 2014
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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.

swizec

April 01, 2014
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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
  2. L E G A L R E Q U I

    R E M E N T
  3. A S T O RY I N T H R

    E E A C T S
  4. A C T I S E P T E M

    B E R 2 0 1 2
  5. “ 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
  6. * H A N D - WAV E A N

    O U T L I N E *
  7. “ $ $ $ ? ” D E C E

    M B E R 2 0 1 2
  8. A C T I I J A N U A

    RY 2 0 1 3
  9. W R I T I N G A B O

    O K I S E A S Y
  10. E AT, S L E E P, W R I

    T E , R E P E AT
  11. 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
  12. * R E W R I T E E V

    E RY T H I N G *
  13. 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
  14. “ L E T ’ S S TA R T

    T H E R E W R I T I N G ”
  15. 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
  16. A C T I V O C T O B

    E R 2 0 1 3
  17. 1 9 4 PA G E S , 1 2

    M O N T H S , 3 3 3 H R S
  18. $ $ $ ? … N O T M U

    C H M A R C H 2 0 1 4
  19. 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 :