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Josef is a longtime Rails developer, freelancer, and author of Deployment from Scratch. Previously he was a small startup CTO, senior Rails engineer, and a Linux packager at Red Hat. He now spends most of his time building a Rails starter kit Business Class while regularly watching Gordon Ramsay cooking shows. He quit his job and went to write a book for 6 months. 2.5 years later he realized his book was not finished and he hadn't made any sales. But in the end, he made a book that brings in sales every month. Here's a story of ideating, starting, writing, finishing, marketing, promoting, and selling his book to 1000 sales as an independent author without a publisher.
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The video titled "Writing and Marketing 'Deployment from Scratch'" features Josef Strzibny, a seasoned Rails developer, freelancer, and author, sharing his journey in writing and successfully marketing his technical book. Josef reflects on his professional background, which began unexpectedly in Brno, Czech Republic, at Red Hat, a major employer known for its strong Ruby development team. During his talk, he addresses the primary theme of generating income through book royalties, emphasizing the realities and challenges of writing technical books. Key Points Discussed: - **Background and Motivation**: Josef shares insights into his career path, explaining how a decision to take a break from work due to health issues led him to write a book, initially expecting it would take about five months to finish. - **Book Writing Journey**: He narrates the ups and downs of his writing process, from initial inspiration to the reality of prolonged writing timelines and struggles with maintaining motivation, detailing an engagement strategy that included creating a character named Tiger to add humor to the technical content. - **Marketing Strategies**: Josef highlights the importance of validating demand for the material by gauging interest on platforms like Twitter and subreddit, which ultimately helped him build a mailing list of potential readers. - **Pre-sale Success**: Utilizing feedback from early subscribers, he successfully conducted a pre-sale campaign, selling 80 copies initially, which validated market interest and provided financial encouragement. - **Sales Performance**: He discusses the impressive gradual sales growth, culminating in approximately 1,100 copies sold since launch, and earning him around $900 per month through his ongoing marketing efforts and updates to subscribers. - **Technical Aspects of Publishing**: Josef explains his choice of tools like Gumroad for sales processing and discusses his publishing experiences using tools such as Pandoc and Asciidoctor to streamline the writing process. - **Personal Reflection**: He concludes with a reflection on the journey, noting how it has transformed his life, allowing him to prioritize his health while creating a sustainable income through his writing. Overall, Josef Strzibny’s experience showcases the complexities and rewards of writing and marketing a technical book, emphasizing that perseverance and strategic planning are crucial for success in self-publishing.
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