On writing and publishing my first ebook

This post was published on November 16, 2016

Sometimes, some of the most interesting things in life happen when you least expect them. Just over half a year ago now (I looked it up, it was on May 11th of this year, to be exact) I received an email from Brian at O’Reilly Media, asking if I was interested in writing a short book on service virtualization. I didn’t have to think long about an answer and replied ‘yes’ the same day. After almost six months, lots of writing, reviewing and editing, many, many emails and a couple of video calls I am very proud to present to you my first ever ebook:

In this post, I’d like to tell you a little more about the book and about the process of writing and editing such a piece. Even though the book is relatively short (HPE, who’s sponsoring the book, set an upper limit of 25 pages of actual content), we went through much the same process as a full-length book would require, from proposal to production and everything in between.

The book
So, first, let’s take a look at the most important part: the end result. What we were aiming for was to give an overview of the current state of the service virtualization field and how this technique plays a role (or at least can play a role) in current and future IT trends. I won’t summarize the whole book here (it’s short enough so you can read it in about an hour) but if you want to know how service virtualization and Continuous Delivery can work together, or how you can leverage service virtualization when testing Internet of Things-applications, you’re cordially invited to read this book. It’s available free of charge from the HPE website, so why not take a look?

The writing process
After that initial email I received back in May, a lot has been taking place. Writing a piece like this starts with writing a proposal summarizing the prospective book outline, the reason why this book should be written, who is the target audience, and why the person writing the book proposal (i.e., me) thinks he or she is the right person for the job. This proposal is used to convince the sponsor (as I said, HPE, in this case) that they’re investing their money and effort wisely.

When the proposal is accepted, the actual writing starts. This is what takes up most of the time, but I think that goes without saying. We set two deadlines from the start: one date where a draft version of around 50% of the book should be delivered (to gauge whether the writer is on the right track and to keep things moving) and of course a deadline date for the first full draft.

As anybody who has ever written a book knows, once the first full draft is delivered, you’re not there yet. Not even close! An extensive reviewing and editing process has taken place to remove any spelling and grammatical errors, to improve the flow of the book and to make sure that all contents matched the expectations of HPE, of O’Reilly and last but not least of myself. This took a little longer than I initially thought it would, but then again, the end result is so much better than I could have produced on my own, so it has been very well worth the effort.

Thoughts
Would I do it again? You bet I would! I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of proposing, writing, reviewing and editing this book, even though at times it has been hard to review the same piece of text for the umpteenth time. Also, the guys and girls from O’Reilly, who have worked just as hard as I have myself (if not harder) to get this book out there, have been nothing less than fantastic to work with. So, Brian, Virginia, thanks so much, it was awesome working with you and I look forward to doing this again in some way, shape or form in the future. I also learned quite a few interesting things on the English language and editing standards. Since I’m a guy who’s always looking to improve his English skills, this has been quite invaluable too.

So if you’re ever in the position where you’re asked to write a book, or if you’ve ever thought about writing one yourself, I can wholeheartedly recommend going for it. Not only will you have something that you can be proud of once you’re finished, but you’ll learn so many things in the process.

Oh, and again, if you’re interested in a quick read on the current state of service virtualization, you can download the book for free from here. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

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