I Am Now Officially Writing a Book

I’ve been working on writing a book for some time now. It’s been through many stages, conversations, outlines, contracts, etc., etc. But for some reason, it never felt real, until now.

Oddly enough, the thing that made it feel real was that I found out the book has been issued an ISBN number. I’m not exactly sure why that made such a difference - maybe it’s all the years I’ve spent writing applications for which the unique ID in the database was the de-facto proof of existence. But in any case, it feels real now. I’m no longer worried that it’s going to fall through or that by announcing it I might be setting myself up for failure.

So there it is, I’m writing a book for Addison-Wesley Professional called App Accomplished: Strategies for App Development Success. The book has its own companion blog as well.

Although I’m a developer by trade and have spent my last few years as an iOS developer for hire, it’s not a programming book. It’s a book for a group I call App Creators: people that have an idea for an app that they want to have built, and are willing to take responsibility for making sure it ends up in the app store. Sure, some of them are coders, but many, if not most, are entrepreneurs or managers that don’t program. This book is for them.

I’m writing it because I’ve seen too many projects that failed because of a lack of knowledge or understanding. I’ve seen too many apps that could have been so much better if only requirements had been clearer, or features communicated better or decisions had been made earlier in the process.

I hope that, through it, I can keep some projects from failing that otherwise would have, and I can contribute to making some apps better that otherwise would have been worse.

There’s a lot of work between where I am (having just turned in my second of fourteen chapters) and the book being completed and published. But I’m very excited to go through that process, and I’m grateful to the folks at Addison-Wesley Professional for giving me the chance and helping me make the book a better one that what I could have written by myself.