From Writer to Author

November 18 marked a new accomplishment in my life: I’ve self-published a book, AI Primer For Business Leaders. I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing1, and had penciled onto my bucket list “publish something one day.” I figured that with the right topic and work/life expertise, I could compile enough thoughts to complete a small work. With the explosion of generative AI, I saw a topic that I felt suited to write about that also had a sparce collection of books published about it. Before, whenever I wanted to research something, I was able to find definitive books that provided valuable insights.

As I started collecting whitepapers and articles, I thought that I could address a niche at the intersection of business leadership and technical acumen—which, ironically, was an early business objective on my resume (when those were in vogue). I took this rough idea of a series of blog posts on the topic2 and wrote around 10k words in one weekend. I felt like with a little more work, I could make a small primer on everything I’ve observed in the AI marketplace over the past year. Like many things e-commercialized, the basic building blocks of self-publication can be purchased online; a set of 10 ISBNs can be yours for the low price of $295. Assign some metadata, a title, and boom—you’re on your way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Rest of the Story

Even after completing what I’ve learned to call my “manuscript,” there’s so much more that goes into a book: title research, cover art, author bio, front matter, back matter, copyright page, layout, formatting—how about copyright management? And on and on the list goes. If publishing short thoughts on this blog is a manifestation of quickly typed-out ideas, then writing AI Primer for Business Leaders was the backwoods illicit process of turning mash into whiskey. Did my efforts result in white lightning? Well I sure had fun making it.

Having reached the finish line and reflecting on my self-publication3 journey, there are a few things that I wish I had known before starting. As my contribution to the world wide web thoughts on the matter, here are the things that I would tell anyone who might ask.

Timeline

Whatever I was thinking it would take to write and publish a book, I was wrong. I think I had initially thought I would start writing in May and publish in June. A few weeks to write the content and gosh, how long could it take to upload some files to get the book online? After all, in college, I had spent many a term writing 8–12-page papers without any generative AI at all. How hard could writing a book be? I suppose if you take the direct approach of doing everything yourself, self-publishing could be accomplished in a month, but how good would the final product be? Would it look like a book and blend in among its peers?

The other thing is, I wanted feedback from my peers and friends. The world of generative AI was moving so quickly in 2023/2024—new models were released almost weekly; it was tough to keep my examples relevant and my text up to date. I decided to back away from some of the nuanced analysis of model behavior that I felt was well covered by whitepapers4 and instead focus on building a baseline understanding for my readers of how the coming wave of Generative AI worked. I replaced statistical analysis with metaphor-building and moved much of the conversation examples to an appendix.

Then there was the back and forth of each of these exchanges and reviews. Even at the very short 18k words that the final manuscript ended up being, every read through took me at least 45-90 min depending on what I was reviewing, and generally, it would take a friend or reader or editing review roughly a week to turn around new revisions. As the writer and coordinator, I had to prioritize feedback loops such that any one reviewer wasn’t reading a restructured book.

Ultimately, after spending about three months writing and editing in the summer, I ended up publishing in mid-November. The additional timeline encompassed all of the new things I learned about book publishing including title pages, copyright law, copyright pages, ISBN/barcodes, layout design, and cover design.

All the Bells and Whistles

In hindsight, it would become apparent to me that I dove into the core writing aspect of the book too quickly. I had neglected one of the best lessons from a great writing coach: an outline. In early drafts, the first set of chapters read just as a series of blog posts, wholly independent and sharing only the theme of my personal experience with generative AIs like ChatGPT. There was no guiding thread through the book nor foundational information established for anyone not familiar with the industry.

In addition to breaking away from the “fun” part of writing about the intersection of generative AI and business leadership were all the supplemental materials needed to go along with the book. There was the book description, the book summary, back jacket summary, author bio. Oh, better have a website, and what is your plan for promoting and surfacing the book? Should I add it to LinkedIn? What about every publishing site that allows for an author page? And even a headshot! Which book categories would this title fit into? There were a ton of decisions to be made that I had no clue about whatsoever.

Fortunately, I partnered with Judy of SkillBites, who helped me navigate many of these questions and more. It was important to me that my book feel like a “real book” with all the components of a published work. Everything from the trim size to the little flourishes on the chapter pages were thanks to her and her team.

Expectations

Honestly, I knew at the beginning that this would truly be a journey for myself, a self-adventure to match a self-publication. I am not expecting more than handful of sales, but I wanted to see if I would enjoy the process and if I would do another one. Yes—I will.

Also, I would be lying if I omitted the role of my own ego in the mix. So much of our digital world fades and expires within years. Even my own domain, this content, would cease on one missed domain renewal. GitHub, where this source material is hosted, might have a much longer lifespan, but by making a printed book, copyrighting it, adding metadata to Bowker and IngramSpark, and sending my copies to a few libraries, I’ve kicked my name a little further into the future.

Perhaps an AI model in the future will be able to answer for my kids, “Who was James Rowe, my father, writer, and engineer?”

I guess here is a glimpse into the future: I’ve been using ChatGPT for almost 1.5 years and its memory feature is pretty good even if it suffers from recency bias.

James: Who is James Rowe and what has he done?

ChatGPT: James Rowe is a software engineering manager based in upstate New York, leading REST API and frontend/mobile teams. He’s writing AI Primer for Business Leaders and exploring side projects like an iPhone skiing game. A hands-on DIY enthusiast, James is active in community work, values sustainability, and prioritizes family life as a devoted father of four.

Author’s Note

I really like the advice for authors that Seth put together.

There were many sources of inspiration for this project, but of particular note, I thank Will for the inspiration of including QR codes in books and his posts on publishing and thoughts on writing.

I think my biggest regret in this project is not writing more. I got so focused on writing a “primer,” which I felt meant it needed to be really short. I guess the consolation prize is that for a brief moment I was the “#1 New release” in Amazon’s “Two-Hour Computers & Technology Short Reads” category.

picture of my listing on amazon.com #1

Significant Revisions

tags: 2024, book, self-publishing

  • Nov 22nd, 2024 Originally published on https://www.jsrowe.com with uid 44EC4119-0A57-4B89-8B56-A09315A3B0F5
  • Aug 24th, 2024 Draft created

EOF/Footnotes

  1. When I think about this blog, I realize the major influences are http://lethain.com/ and http://martinfowler.com/. But deep down, this blog is inspired by the hundreds of small text-based websites published by engineers all over the world who saw a problem without a solution until they posted one. It’s these unsung heroes on whom generative AI builds its success, and it’s them whom I salute. I can only hope that one day I can be as famous as DenverCoder09 in “Wisdom of the Ancients.” ↩

  2. Some of my initial posts to this site strictly explored the novel UI interaction of ChatGPT and other models and how one could interact with them while understanding the limits of their training data. ↩

  3. I did reach out to a couple of publishing houses, but their first question was, “How many followers do you have on social media?” This took me aback; it felt clear that the publisher route favored established brands/authors. And why wouldn’t it? Less risk to take on a known commodity. I did take the time to submit a book proposal to Kogan Page and didn’t hear back at all. I can’t say I’m surprised—who am I, after all? And my meager sales weren’t their target audience. ↩

  4. Many of which I started collecting in my github account. ↩