I've finished with my book, in a bad way

In my mid twenties I wrote my first, and only, fictional sci-fi novel. It was about a Kenyan boy discovering a hidden superhuman-alien hybrid race on Earth who were fed up with protecting it in secret and were ready to rule in public.

I worked on it every day on my phone on my commute to work. The whole thing took roughly 4 years to finish and I loved the process, from world building to character creation, and story development.

I pitched it to multiple UK-based publishers but none were interested. So I took the only sensible route and self-published on Amazon. After a few months, it sold a measly five copies. Most of which were to friends and family.

As much as I enjoyed the process, I would have loved for more people to read it and enjoy my story, but they didn't.

From then on I vowed to never write a fiction book again, even though I have lots of ideas for them. Why did it fail? Short answer: I don't know. Long answer: no one was interested, and no one knew who I was.

I came up with an idea, thought that people cared about it as much as I do, and they didn't. Not everyone is the same as me, which makes sense. To be fair, the five people who did read it told me the book was really good, but good doesn't pay the bills.

So I've come up with a new way of doing books. A new way for me, an old way for many experienced writers.

The new, better way#

Think of an idea, find out if people are actually interested in it before doing any work. This could be through tweeting ideas, polls or surveys, reading popular articles and Reddit posts to see if people like similar ideas, and things along those lines.

If it's not popular or interesting to others, move on to the next idea. If it is, work on that idea. This leads nicely to my first non-fiction book, 60 seconds to millions.

There are a lot of tech companies who are new to creating regular video content to grow their product. Many of these companies would never even think about using short-form videos, so why not create a book that shares how to do it well, and what I've learnt about the process.

I didn't want to spend another 4 years writing something that no one wanted. So I made a website, created a marketing page and added a sign-up form. I even wrote a few chapters and gave them away for free if people signed up.

I placed the site URL in my Twitter bio, and made an effort to tweet every day with the occasional tweet mentioning the site.

The results#

Five months later, zero signups. An argument could be made that I should have focused on LinkedIn instead of Twitter because that's where businesses are. Or Threads because that's where creators are. I honestly don't think that would have made much of a difference. My conclusion: that tech businesses don't want to learn about making short-form content from a book.

Social media algorithms change so quickly that by the time I'd finished writing it, the methods in it won't work as well. But also, people are most likely to consume educational content from a video than a book. People are busy, or like to think they are.

If I asked someone to choose between reading a book, reading a short article, watching a video or watching a short video, I'm pretty sure they'll choose to watch the short video first, then move on to the video, then if they really enjoy it, make time to read the book.

I listened to a podcast where an ex Google developer was struggling to find a job. He believed people didn't have time to read resumes, so he made a short video to showcase his skills, a sizzle reel, and that got way more attention than anything he tried before.

People have changed, and I firmly believe we're in the age of short, quick information that gets straight to the point, especially if it's from someone you trust.

This has always been the way but social media and influencers have put it on a wider scale. Every book or film I've read from an unknown author or director has been because of a recommendation: a friend, a family member, an online review.

So where does this all lead?

Next steps#

In short: I'm going to stop writing my book on short-form videos.

I might open source all six draft chapters for anyone interested, but I'm going to slightly tweak my tactics.

Wes Bos, a popular course creator said, if you're a nobody, and you put out an online course, it's not going to do well. Make sure you're known in the industry as the go-to person for a thing before you create a course on it.

I am not the go-to person on making short-form technical content. In fact I don't know who is. But the next step for me is to figure out how to become the person for x.

It could be creating AI agents in Neovim, it could be the person who makes games with Haxe. Once I do, then I'll find the pain points with said thing and then create content around it.

How would I know when I'm the person people come to for something?

Or how will I know when it's the right time to create content around it? I don't know. As you can tell from this article, I'm very much figuring this out.

But if you'd like to follow this journey, let's connect on X or Bluesky. If you want, I'd also appreciate a DM to get your thoughts on if I'm doing the right thing.

Until next time. Happy coding.