I Wrote a Book (And You Can Too, But Bring Coffee)

The Unvarnished Truth About Self-Publishing: A DevOps Founder’s “Hello World”

There is a romantic notion about writing a book. We imagine ourselves sitting in a sun-drenched room, perhaps wearing a chunky knit sweater, sipping an artisan espresso while the words flow effortlessly from our fingertips.

Here is the reality: You are sitting in your underwear at 2 AM, your eyes are burning and you have been staring at a blinking cursor for forty-five minutes, trying to decide if the word “wood” appears too many times in a paragraph about trees.

I’m a DevOps founder by trade. My day job is all about pipelines, automation and efficiency. But my passions? Woodworking, whiskey and coffee.

I recently published my first eBook on Amazon (paperback and hardback coming soon!). While I love woodworking, let’s be honest: this book was also a strategic move. It was my way of “pipe cleaning” the writing and publishing process. Before I tackle my future tomes on the nuances of peat-smoked whiskey, the science of the perfect pour-over or the chaos of DevOps, I needed to run a test deployment.

If you are thinking about taking the plunge into self-publishing, consider this my “Post-Incident Review.”

The Conception: The “Proof of Concept”

Every good project needs a scope. For me, the goal was to capture the shift from the noise of power tools to the quiet of hand tools. But the meta-goal was to figure out how to ship a physical product without crashing the server.

Having an idea is easy. Filling 200 blank pages is hard.

The first draft is simply data dump. You are shoveling sand into a box. You write everything. You go on tangents. You use fifty words when five would do.

Then comes the “Refactoring” (or editing). This is where you determine what stays and what goes. It is a brutal process. You will write sentences you think are pure poetry, only to realize they are the literary equivalent of spaghetti code. You have to cut them. As the saying goes, you must “kill your darlings.”

The Bureaucracy: ISBNs and the UK Maze

Once the book is written, you enter the unsexy world of metadata.

Let’s talk about the ISBN (International Standard Book Number). It’s that barcode on the back of every book.

• For eBooks: Good news—you generally don’t need one. Amazon assigns you an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) for free.
• For Paperbacks/Hardbacks: You need one.

UK Specifics: In the UK, Nielsen BookData is the gatekeeper. You can buy a block of ISBNs (which makes you look like a serious publisher) or you can use the free one Amazon KDP provides.

• The Catch: If you use Amazon’s free ISBN, Amazon is listed as the publisher. If you want your own publishing imprint name on the spine, you need to buy your own from Nielsen. It involves filling out forms and waiting, but it feels incredibly official.

Formatting: The Liquid vs. The Solid

This was the biggest learning curve.

The eBook: An eBook is like a containerized app; it is liquid. It pours itself into whatever device it is in (phone, Kindle, iPad). You cannot force line breaks or specific page layouts because the user can change the font size. You have to learn to let go of control.

The Physical Book: This is hard-coded architecture. You have to worry about “bleed” (images going to the edge of the page) and the “gutter” (the inner margin where the pages are glued). If your gutter is too small, your readers will have to break the spine just to read the ends of the sentences.

Formatting for Amazon KDP is a dark art involving PDF measurements, embedded fonts and praying to the print-preview gods that your headers align.

The Great Fallacy: “If You Ship It, They Will Click”

There is a lie we tell ourselves: “I will write a brilliant book, upload it to Amazon and the traffic will scale automatically.”

Spoiler Alert: It won’t.

When you hit “Publish,” the internet does not applaud. It is mostly silent. You are a needle in a haystack made of needles.

You suddenly realize that you are no longer just a writer; you are a marketer. You have to learn about keywords, categories and cover design. You have to tell people about your book without becoming “that guy” at the party who only talks about his book. (I am trying very hard not to be that guy. Buy my book.)

The “Bug” and The Buzz

But then, it happens.

You refresh your KDP dashboard and the graph has moved. Someone—someone who isn’t your mother—has bought a copy.

The feeling is electric. It’s better than a successful deployment on a Friday afternoon. A stranger decided your thoughts were worth their money.

And in that moment, you catch the bug. The “self-publishing itch.”

You forget the formatting headaches. You forget the 2 AM staring contests with the cursor. You look at that single sale and your brain immediately whispers:

“The pipeline is working. We can ship another one.”

So, here is my advice: If you have a book in you, write it. Use the first one to debug the process. The admin is annoying and the marketing is a grind. But the thrill of seeing your name on a cover?

That is worth every drop of coffee (and perhaps a celebratory whiskey).

My book, The Quiet Craft, is available now on Amazon. It’s about finding peace in woodworking, but really, it’s the foundation for my upcoming works on Whiskey, Coffee and the Art of DevOps. Watch this space.