“Byte-Sized” Book Project is Almost Here

It all started with a simple email in late 2018. We exchanged a couple of ideas, followed a by a phone call a few days later. Instantly we were both enthusiastic about the idea: ask various IT communities from all over the world to send us their personal Cloud-related design principles, architectural recommendations, tips, tricks, best and common practices (fun) quotes, and so on, so that we could turn it into a (free) book – a book for the community, by the community.

It’s amazing what we, and with we I mean my partner in crime Christiaan Brinkhoff, myself and all our contributors world-wide, accomplished in just six short months. From the moment we went live to the final submission date, the content kept coming in, an amazing and fun experience for sure.

We’ve said it many times before, but THANK YOU very much for all your help. Never mind if you’ve sent in five words, or 500, it’s all equally appreciated. I know I speak for Christiaan as well when I say that the final result has exceeded most, if not all of our expectations.

Get ready for the launch…

Getting everything ready was hard work (and still is). But the result is something to be very proud of, just wait and see. Next month, June 7^th to be precise, our book will be publicly launched during the E2EVC event in Berlin. It’s something we both look forward to, and I’m sure many of you do as well. I don’t want to give away too much… but the book will be well over 300 pages thick, containing more than 125 submissions, including some interesting survey results, quotes and more.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have some ground to cover. As I’m writing this blog post the manuscript is over at the copy editor, which is an impressive task on its own. From this point on we expect to have at least another 25 to 30 hours of work.

We need to go over the edited manuscript and accept, and/or decline any changes and suggestions made. Next to that, we also still have a ‘to do’ list of things to go over and change, or slightly edit.

We’re currently working on finalizing the cover and some other cool items surrounding the project, of which you’ll hopefully see more during E2EVC as well. To keep costs as low as possible we’re trying to do everything ourselves, or at least as much as possible. We make use of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing services, formerly also known as Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle. In other words, self-publishing.

This gives us more control and relatively low printing costs, but it also means we have to figure out everything on our own, from putting together a cover to figuring out the spin size, the interior design, and more. Luckily I have some experience in this field, which helped save some time here and there.

The book will be available in paperback as well as PDF. During the process we spoke to several people suggesting to support a good cause, a charity of some sort, something we both discussed as well. After a short meeting we decided to just go for it. Here’s what we’ll do…

Digital and paperback

The digital version of our book will be a 100% free of charge. The paperback version will cost a few Euro’s, Dollars, of whatever currency you are used to. But that’s only because books are not printed for free. There’s manual labor involved, paper, carton, ink, and so on. However, because we design and create everything ourselves costs will be low. Or at least as low as possible.

The good cause

The idea is to put 1, 5 or 2 Dollars/Euro’s on top of the final list-price, which we will donate to One Laptop Per Child – read more here. It goes without saying that we will personally donate a (certain) amount as well.

Hopefully, many of you are interested in ordering a paperback copy as well, next to the free digital version that will become available later on. The information shared in the book will be valuable to everyone working with Cloud solutions/services or is thinking about doing so.

Book give away

During the launch event at E2EVC Berlin we’ll be giving away a couple of copies. We are currently thinking about how to go about this, though we think Kahoot might be involved.  Furthermore, the book will be available through all Amazon online book stores. We don’t have a final list price just yet, but it won’t be more than 10 dollars/euros, or close to it.

The digital version will be released one to two months later, and will be a 100% free of charge. Once the paperback version is publicly available, we’ll start working on the digital version and keep everyone updated on our progress.

That’s about it. It has been an amazing ride so far, and still is. We are very much looking forward to getting it out there in June, to share with you, what you all shared with us! Last but most certainly not least, we would also like thank IGEL for being one of our book sponsors, this would have not been possible without your help.

Keep an eye on www.projectbytesized.com and make sure to follow us over at @ProByteSized on Twitter – we have a whole lot more in store going forward.

If you are planning on attending E2EVS Berlin on June 7^th, and I know IGEL is, be sure to come to our session and hopefully pick up a copy. See you there!

Cheers, Bas and Christiaan.