I have written a textbook. Now what?

15 points

14 years ago

For the past 25 years or so I have been writing books on various aspects of programming in my spare time. My first book was about compiler construction and I sold a few spiral-bound copies of it in the early 1990's. I am passionate about writing, but pretty much clueless about marketing.

In the past months I have created a compiler construction primer with strong emphasis on the practical side and published it at Lulu.com. The book homepage is here:

http://www.t3x.org/reload/

I have received quite encouraging feedback about my works, but most people who buy my books stumbled across them by accident. Some of them have asked me why they had not heard about me earlier, given the fact that they found my books quite illuminating.

So here is my question: how do I make my books known? I have announced the latest one on Usenet and on reddit. On reddit the posting disappeared after a few hours, most probably because some folks thought it was "spam". Up to that point, comments were very positive.

That's pretty much it. I have run out of ideas, so any thoughts you might to share with me on the topic of book marketing would be highly appreciated!

EDIT: sorry about the messy formatting. I obviously have no clue how this web 2.0 stuff works. :-/

17 comments

17 comments