Let’s write and expand your Drupal books from your local community!

This is my session slides at DrupalCon Singapore 2024
https://events.drupal.org/singapore2024/session/lets-write-and-expand-your-drupal-books-your-local-community

Transcript

1. Let’s write and expand your Drupal books from your local community! Takahiro Komatsu
2. Please feel free to take pictures 📷 and share them on your social media
3. - Takahiro Komatsu (Taka) / 小松 高廣 - Based in Kariya, Aichi, Japan - Drupal Meetup Toyota co-organizer - Work at Acquia (Technical Account Manager) - My favorites: Retro video games (NES and SNES)👾, Computing💻, Horse race watching🐴 My Profile
4. Let’s go to Japan !
6. Drupal Meetup Toyota - Toyota city is located in Aichi, Japan - Our meetup started in May 2018 - Holding online/onsite since April 2020 - About once every 3-4 months - Small meetups attended by about 3-10 people
7. Our Books
8. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
9. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
10. Background - In Japan, a subculture thrives around self-created works in various genres, such as comics, technical books, and accessories - Dedicated events for selling these self-published creations are also popular
11. A Scene from a Self-Published Books Event
12. Are there any self-published Drupal book at the event?
13. The Answer was NO…😞
14. Challenges for Drupal Beginners - Challenges After Installing Drupal - Environment Setup Issues - Lack of Knowledge About Popular Modules in Japan
15. Need for More Drupal Books in Japanese
16. If It Doesn’t Exist, Create It!
17. This is the Maker’s Mind!
18. Our First Goal - Writing and Finalizing the e-Book! - Releasing it at the Tech Book Fest 10 (24 days to go!!) - https://techbookfest.org/event/tbf10 - Only online - The event dates: from 2020-12-26 to 2021-01-06
19. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
20. How We Collaborated - Authors - Managing schedule and tasks - What kind of book to write - Gathering and reviewing drafts - Designing a cover
21. Authors - We invited people who are participating in Drupal Meetup Toyota and other Drupal Meetups - Condition: People who can spare time to write drafts - The project started with 8 members!
22. Managing Schedule and Tasks - Planning the schedule backward from the event date 🗓 - Always include a buffer time! - Hold weekly online meetings to stay aligned - Hold regular “Mokumoku-kai” sessions to encourage questions and dedicate time for writing (preferably on weekends, such as Saturday or Sunday)
23. Schedule up to the First Event Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 30 Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Release 🎉 Applied for the event Register at sales platform Decide contents Peer Review Meetup Toyota Meetup Tokyo Sync Zoom Sync Zoom Sync Zoom Finish drafts Start writing
24. What Kind of Book to Write - Target readers and contents - Book title - Only e-book or both e-book and physical book - Number of pages - Sales Price - Target Drupal version and operating environment
25. Gathering and Reviewing Drafts - The final artifact is a PDF/HTML - A typesetting system for making books - A shared system for gathering each draft - A managing system for review tasks
26. The Technologies We Used Technologies Description URL Visual Studio Code Text editor https://code.visualstudio.com/ Re:VIEW Typesetting software https://reviewml.org Re:VIEW Starter Forked tool from Re:VIEW 2.x https://kauplan.org/reviewstarter/ Docker Containerization platform https://www.docker.com GitHub Version control system https://github.com GitHub Actions Continuous Integration service https://docs.github.com/en/actions GitHub Project Planning and task tracking system https://docs.github.com/en/issues/p lanning-and-tracking-with-projects Google Docs Online documentation https://workspace.google.com/intl/e n/products/docs/ Schedule up to the first event
27. Re:VIEW from https://github.com/kmuto/review/
28. Writing Workflow Overview A. Writing a draft (each member) B. Merge drafts (repository maintainer) C. Peer Review D. Finish!
29. Workflow - Writing a Draft (Each Author) A1. Setup your local environment for writing A2. Pull from a shared repository and checkout your branch A3. Write and build your draft A4. Check the artifact (PDF or HTML) and commit your draft A5. Push to your branch on the shared repository A6. Create a Pull Request
30. Check Build Push GitHub 📃 Pull Write PDF / HTML Build 📃 📃 📃 📃 Artifact Workflow - Writing a Draft (Each Member)
31. Workflow - Writing Draft (Repo Maintainer) B1. Setup shared Git remote repository B2. Check the Pull Requests and artifacts B3. Merge them to main branch
32. Writing Books are the Same as Software Dev. - Manage drafts with Git for continuous integration - If a draft is pushed to the repository, a build process runs and then an artifact (PDF / HTML) is generated
33. Designing a Cover - Decorative title showing Drupal 9 book - Eye-catching with its simple and large area with a single bright blue color that evokes the image of Drupal - Included a cat-like character to make it more friendly
34. Our First Book is Completed! 🎉 - “Drupal 9 - A thin book for getting started with web development” - Target readers are who interested in Drupal - The contents are omnibus style - Only e-book and 179 pages - 800 JPY (approx. 5 USD)
35. The Chapter Titles of the First Book Chap. 1 What is Drupal? Chap. 2 Try building a Drupal site Chap. 3 Building a Drupal 9 environment using CentOS 8 Chap. 4 Operating Drupal via a command line Chap. 5 Configuration Management in Drupal
36. The Chapter Titles of the First Book Chap. 6 A couple's experience of passing the Site Builder certification Chap. 7 Achieves Google login Chap. 8 Make the admin page more convenient! Select 3 modules Chap. 9 Introduction to Migrate Chap. 10 How to walk around Drupal.org
37. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
38. What We Did Before and After Publishing Before - Registration of the Books at Sales Platform - Promotion of the Books After - Analyzing how our books are selling
39. Sales Platform Sales platform Pre-publication review Physical books can be sold Sales commission fees Tech Book Fest Online Market Yes Yes 20% *1 Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Yes No (self-published) 65% *2 BOOTH No Yes 5.6% + 22 JPY *1 Free of charge for cumulative sales of 50,000 JPY or less *2 There are conditions under which the 30% can be applied
40. Printing of Physical Books - Typical parameters for physical books: - The number of copies and pages - Size (B5, A5, B6 or pocket paperback) - Black and white or full-color printing - Paper type - Shipping date - Please be sure to start with a small number! (30-50)
41. Promotion of the Books - Social media (X, Facebook, Instagram) - Authors’ Blogs - Events (Drupal Meetups and Open Source Conference) - Don’t forget to include images of cover and table of contents
42. Promotion of the Books - Onsite Event If an event is onsite, it is very important to let people know in advance - When and where is the event - Our booth number and name - Where our booth is at the event ( approx. 200 booths at the venue!!) - The title and price of the book
43. Promotion of the Books - 4-Panel Comics Promotion of the book
44. Analyzing How Our Books are Selling - Amazon Kindle generated the most sales - The most books were sold at the start of the Tech Book Fest event, but several copies are consistently selling each month
45. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
46. What We Learned and Gained - Once we have written a book, our psychological hurdle was greatly lowered - It was a bit difficult to setup the writing environment - A benefit of co-authorship, we could divide up the tasks and the amount of writing was small - We could get various feedbacks
47. After releasing, we got an offer for a commercial publication!
48. From Self-published to Commercial
49. Our Release Chart - Omnibus Style Books 2020-12 2021-04 2021-07 2021-12 2022-01 2022-06 2022-09
50. Be Flexible Towards Changes - Members changes - Goals change - 1st : Completing the book - 2nd : We write what we want to write - 3rd : For wider people learning Drupal for the first time
51. From Omnibus Style to Story Style - The target readers are new to Drupal - A story style with dialogue - Use the Drupal GUI only - Building a site with only core modules - Prepared a special distribution (install profile)
52. Characters
53. World View
54. Introduction with Manga
55. Our Release Chart - Story Style Books 2023-05 2023-10 2023-11 2024-08
56. Today’s Agenda - The reasons why we wrote the books - How we collaborated - What we did before and after publishing - What we learned and gained - What we plan to do in the future
57. What We Plan to Do in the Future - Writing a book in English - Writing a book about Drupal CMS - Collaboration with community members abroad - Participate in a self-published books event abroad
58. “ “ There are always people in your community who need the books you will write
59. Let’s start writing your book from your local community!
60. Special Thanks for Co-Authors - Hikaru Maruyama - Mutsuko Komatsu - Yasushi Osonoi - Takayuki Hagihara - Kenji Shirane - Kazuko Murata - Tomotsugu Kaneko - Akira Iwasaki
61. References - Drupal Meetup Toyota https://drupal-meetup-toyota.connpass.com/ - Tech Book Fest (技術書典) https://techbookfest.org - Re:VIEW https://reviewml.org - Nyankotsu distribution https://github.com/bkenro/nyankotsu
62. Thank you !!