Thrive – Surviving in a Corporate Jungle
What can I say... The easy stuff is done, the book has been written, edited, illustrated and finally it is now published 🙂
I love the final look, as expected, Greg has managed to bring everything to life and I am genuinely proud of what we have managed to achieve.
So now I have the joys of learning all about marketing and promoting 🙁 I suspect this is 10x more difficult than creating the book and only gives 10% of the fun I had in the creation process...
Anyway, attached are a couple of images of the final book should you wish a bit of light entertainment for your summer holidays...
The book is available on Amazon UK, Amazon US and the various european equivalents.
Genuinely Excited – A New Chapter
I'm getting genuinely excited... i.Line Design is now officially a publishing company, ready for the publication of my first book - Thrive. And yes, you can still get it free until I hit the publish button on amazon...
I have been amazed yet again at the quality of the artwork by LordArt (Greg Clifton) and I was particularly pleased by the fantastic editing job performed by Bryony Sutherland.
Sending the manuscript off for professional editing was of course extremely daunting, but the feedback was extremely positive and what originally started as just a bit of personal fun has grown into something I am now quite proud of. What I found the most surprising is just how challenging it can be to take lots of very specific, detailed examples and distil them down to something generic. Add to this the challenge of then applying the jungle metaphor and my brain has been ready to explode on numerous occasions.
There were numerous chapters I wrote, or started writing that never made the final cut. I could have easily doubled the size of the book, but the cost would be spoon feeding the audience and there was also a huge risk of repetition. By shedding these additional chapters, the reader is therefore free to explore their own metaphors and recreate the missing chapters from their own circumstances.
I would of course urge everyone to buy my book, but since it still isn't published I'll continue to give it away free on leanpub until it is officially available on amazon. Leanpub won't allow me to use the full page illustrations that Greg is creating for the published/printed version of the book, which is a real shame as I have so enjoyed using leanpub and would love the version on leanpub to be as high quality as the printed version.
When I left an international bank that I shall not name, I had no idea I would spend quite so much time on my book, or indeed delve quite so deeply in to the world of publishing. I'm currently getting daily updates from Greg of the final artwork for the book and during the day I am preparing the launch of a new company. I'm not sure I would ever have planned it this way, in fact I'm sure I would have probably thought it is all too costly, too difficult, too unknown. But, step, by little step, it has all been coming together and my planned release date of 1st June will slip, but it will slip because quality is non-negotiable and the current velocity is telling me it'll slip 😉
Thrive – Surviving In A Corporate Jungle
Thrive - My First Book 🙂
I've decided to write a book 🙂
It's a bit of an experiment on my part at publishing something light... The book is more for me than it is for anyone else, providing me with an opportunity to write generically about the things I've seen within the various corporations I've worked.
Applying all my agile principles, I've opted to get the initial drafts out there and therefore I'm using LeanPub. Please feel free to take a look at the free sample and let me know what you think. I have several more chapters completed but which I am cleaning up, and lots of ideas for the later chapters in the book.
If you have any ideas, please feel free to let me know. Although I have not dedicated the book to specific people, any contributions will be attributed.
As I am writing the book, I find myself identifying with the animal behaviours I'm writing about. I've been the consultant, parroting what the paying customer wants to hear so the consultancy can keep the contract. I've been the dutiful employee, fighting off the lions, bears and ignoring the elephants. I've even been the elephant on a couple of occasions...
You can find the book at http://leanpub.com/thrive.
Dusting off Rework
My current contract ends in a few more days so I'm taking the opportunity to dust off my worn copy of Rework by 37 signals. I have to make a long overdue thanks to Craig Davidson, an outstanding agile developer I encountered in a previous engagement.
It's not a traditional agile book by any means, but the facts that are presented within the book resonate strongly with my agile values and I find it has helped me immensely to keep grounding myself between contracts. I am now constantly surprised just how many paper-cuts I have personally accepted at each engagement and am equally surprised at my own personal level of intolerance now. I'm actually thinking of requesting a discount from the authors since I now use this book as a gift I give almost routinely...
I challenge anyone not to find the book invaluable at challenging their own current view of the world.
So, once more, and I must apologise profusely for the tardiness, thank you so much Craig...