Jess Haberman: Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of the Tech Podcast, a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to write and publish a technical book. So I'm your host, Jess Haberman, literary agent, publishing consultant, and former acquisitions editor with nearly 20 years of experience publishing books. Today I am thrilled to welcome Dave Langer to the podcast. Hello, Dave. Wanna share a brief introduction.
Dave Langer: Hi, my name's Dave Langer. I am a technology professional with approaching thirty years of experience. I'm a Microsoft Excel MVP and I am the author of a technical book not surprisingly based on the nature of this podcast.
Jess Haberman: Yeah, you did it. So congratulations on publishing your first book, Python and Excel, step by step. ⁓ you wanna tell us more about the project? What got you started on this adventure?
Dave Langer: Well, let's be completely honest with the folks at home. My book is solely responsible because of Jess, to be absolutely honest. Jess saw me on another podcast and 2023 invited me to get a sneak peek at what became Python in Excel. And once I saw that I was absolutely hooked because I've been doing analytics for like fourteen years, very passionate about teaching everybody how to do analytics, not just IT folks, but business folks as well. And the fact that Microsoft was putting Python directly inside of Excel Workbooks to do analytics was like it was right up my alley. So I partnered with Jess and her work at ⁓ on that particular project to build a online course and teach it. But then of course inevitably Jess was like, Hey man, you want to write a book about this? And I said, Yes, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Can you help me? Here we are. What is it? Year year and a half later now, I think?
Jess Haberman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ yeah, ⁓ during my work I I'm a con you know, content director at Anaconda, you know, full time and ⁓ the we were we were involved in in sort of that work and getting Python and Excel in Microsoft. So it was really like just I knew I knew Dave was such a pro in this area. So, you know, it made total sense to to work with him on coursework and blogs and things like that around that launch. It was real really successful. And ⁓ it was such good timing because I knew no one else knew as much about Python and Excel as Dave or had the kind of like self promotion skills that ⁓ that would really take this over over the top. And I mean that in a good way. That is a total compliment. No, no, no, no. It but it it's a unique skill. Like na you know, a lot of authors it does not come naturally to talk about yourself. ⁓ to, you know,
Dave Langer: Whoa. We just lost half the audience right there.
Jess Haberman: To promote your own work and yet it's so crucial and it's so valued, you know. like I it's not it's not like I ever hear pushback of people saying, like, ⁓ that author will not shut up about their book. Like, of course you're supposed to talk about your book all the time. You spent so much time and energy. So, like, let's get into that a little bit. Like, you know, what was the process for, you know, like you had already kind of been involved in sort of understanding how Python and Excel worked. So how did you decide, like, what you wanted to integrate into a book. What did how did you decide what the audience really needed to know at that stage?
Dave Langer: Yeah. So that's a great question. ⁓ not to self promote, but like I said, I've been in analytics for a long time, like fourteen years. ⁓ and for the past five years I've been an independent consultant and trainer. So that gives me a lot of insight into what people have problems with when they move to Python, whether that's from another language, like ⁓ C sharp, let's say, or Java or something like that. Or if they're just Excel users, which is really the target audience for this book. It's not really for IT people. It's not really for technology people. It's really for business people, though, because that's the dyed in the wool ⁓ cadre of Excel users. And having worked with lots of folks who were trying to get into analytics and learn this stuff ⁓ through my years of being a trainer, I kind of knew the kinds of stumbling blocks. And that allowed me to say allowed me to do two things, which I think were super important for the book. One, define the scope. Because Python is so big that there's no way unless my page was book was like eight hundred pages long that I was gonna able to cover any of that. And my publisher Wiley, they're not a big fan of eight hundred page books anymore, just so you guys know. And I think that's probably true for other publishers as well. Jess could probably attest to that. So it's like you gotta shrink the book down, right? You're not writing war and peace in terms of Python anymore. You're writing something a little bit more tractable. So scoping that down
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: ⁓ and then focusing on okay, what does that scope look like? And it was gonna be like, look, what are the Python essentials? What are the Python foundations that you need to do analytics? Because Python is your tool, so you need to be able to swing that hammer and screw that screwdriver and that sort of thing, at least at base, before you can build anything. So that was the scope. And then secondarily, the most important thing was how to teach it. So I have a computer science degree. I've got a master's in computer science, but I do not write my book and teach Python in Excel. the way I learned how to do programming in computer science classes because that doesn't not gonna resonate with the audience. So I use things like, hey, are you familiar with the table? Well guess what? A table in Python is a pandas data frame and they have rows and columns and column names and all this kind of stuff. So taking what people know about Excel and then mapping it to Python within the constraints of like it being a 250 page book and my experience is what allowed me to do that. Without it it would have been kind of a crapshoot. Who knows what the book would have turned out to be at that point.
Jess Haberman: Right. Yeah, and I recall when we first started talking about the like the technology itself. You were pretty skeptical that like this was gonna be a super valuable like integration, you know, like in that you know, I think there's a real difference between, you know, Python users and Excel users. And then I think, you know, like you had then you found like where there was that overlap in the Venn diagram. Like how did you how did like you come along sort of on that journey and sort of How did that help you like understand who really needed this information?
Dave Langer: Right. It's a great c great great question. And to provide some context, I am a Microsoft Excel ⁓ VP, but I became an Excel MVP because of my work with Python and Excel. That's super important because I'm not necessarily ⁓ a big fan of like the traditional way people use Excel, where they write these monstrous formulas and things like that, which I as a f former software engineer, I'm like, no, that's that's not a great way to do it. So The reason why I bring that up is because part of the reason why I was skeptical in the beginning is because programming languages in Excel is nothing new. V VBA, Visual Basic for Applications, has been in Excel for ever. Twenty years, something like that, I'm not quite sure, but a long, long time. And then there are languages like DAX, and there is ⁓ or the Power Query programming language. So those things have been in Excel for a long time. And the reason why I was skeptical is because skeptical is because Languages in Excel were nothing new and simultaneously they are not usually very broadly adopted. Because if you think about anywhere from seven hundred million to one billion people use Excel regularly, what fraction of people actually like use Power Query, for example? And that's which is very sad because Power Query is awesome. But but it the adoption is very, very low. So that's why I was skeptical. What w what turned it around for me was essentially s looking at what
Jess Haberman: But
Dave Langer: Anaconda and Microsoft put into Python and Excel in terms of the libraries that were available. It's a very small list, relatively speaking, but it's all dedicated. It's for real world analytics. It's for people who want to use data to make business impact. And that's when I started to get super excited. I'm like, okay, this is going to be the route to getting people interested and excited about Python and Excel, which is they want to have impact at work using data and out of the box Excel features ain't going to do it for them. Quite frankly, they're just not going to be able to do And then Python and Excel becomes a nice easy path, right? For clients of mine that are in ex in Azure, for example, it's a very easy sign off from IT in the security department to say, yep, you can use Python and Excel. You don't have to install Python locally, blah, blah, blah. It works in a secu secure container in the cloud. Everything just works. So you can just focus on the analytics. You can just focus on the value proposition. Can you tell I'm excited about it? All right.
Jess Haberman: It is it is exciting. It is. Absolutely. This is why you're MVP. ⁓ in
Dave Langer: Yeah, well Okay.
Jess Haberman: And then when so you've been through kind of the the process of r of, you know, starting ⁓ with a book proposal, pitching the book to multiple publishers. You had multiple publishers interested in the book, ⁓ which is is exciting. ⁓ a lot of folks don't even pitch to ⁓ multiple publishers. They kind of ⁓ sometimes they're approached by a publisher and just kinda go with it. ⁓ so y you know, I think you you ⁓ with my humble guidance, we're we're able to I think get the best deal ⁓ possible from from a publisher on a on a tr on a trending topic. ⁓ and then been through the writing process, the editing process, the publishing, the marketing. you know, what do you know now that you maybe wish you knew earlier in the process?
Dave Langer: Okay, so first up, just so that folks at home are completely clear, all that was Jess is doing. All the goodness she just talked about, that was all because I I didn't know what I was doing. I'm like, Jess, help me. Kind of like Princess Leia with Obi Wan. You're my only hope. You are my Obi Wan. You're my Obi-Wan, Jess. Okay. ⁓ so I didn't know anything about that, right? Jess help me with all of the all of the proposals and the framing and all the kinds of stuff because she knows what acquisition editors are looking for, and I didn't.
Jess Haberman: I love that. Ha ha.
Dave Langer: Okay. So there's a couple things that that were really, really became really, really clear to me throughout this process. One was there is absolutely no substitute whatsoever for you having a built in audience before you pitch a tech book deal. Or te pitch a tech book. Period in story. I mean, as much as we like to ascribe purely altruistic motives to publishers because they're in the education business and that sort of thing in the tech space. They are businesses they need to make money. They need to sell books. So authors with built in audiences that can help market and promote and sell books is very, very attractive to them. So ⁓ that's where the shameless self promotion that Jess was mentioning, which you mentioned earlier coming comes into play. Cause I'd been do 'cause I've been doing that for years already, right? Building up a presence on social media. ⁓ so that was the first thing.
Jess Haberman: Does help. It does help a lot.
Dave Langer: I mean you kind of think about that in the abstract as being something you just kind of think in the back of your mind. But when you start talking to like an acquisition editor, it becomes very, very clear. Or you fill out the book proposal and they're l actually asking, Do you have an email list? What social media platforms are you on? Do you have a YouTube channel? Blah blah blah. They're asking all that for precisely that reason. So it's very, very important. So for anybody who's interested in writing a tech book, you need to ask yourself, how many how big of an audience do you actually have to buy the book? And if the answer is very, very small audience, it's gonna be a tough ride. Unless, of course, you're picking a really super hot topic, right? ⁓ a friend of mine, I'm not gonna mention by name, put published a relatively short book on a hot topic a few years ago, and now he travels the world. That didn't happen to me yet, but it can happen if you pick a hot topic. But there's also no substitute for having an audience. So that was the first thing. Second thing is The publishers don't really market your book. Not really. And that's not that's just and correct me if I'm wrong, Joseph, but that but that's just my understanding. They're not really gonna they're not gonna buy like digital ads for it. They're not gonna do anything necessarily for your book specifically on their social media accounts per se. Maybe they will, but maybe they won't, but they're not gonna do it regularly to drive consistent attention and traffic to your book. So ⁓ it's up to you to market. And As a corollary to that, as a follow on to that, it's really, really hard to market a tech book and get people to buy it. It really is. So that's the other thing too.
Jess Haberman: Yep, absolutely. You know, I think the power of a traditional publisher is not marketing, it's distribution. Because they're the ones who are gonna get you on, you know, ⁓ on any sort of digital ⁓ platform. They'll get your book on ⁓ into ebook digital formats, they'll get your book potentially into Barnes and Noble like Dave's is. ⁓ you know, they'll they they'll get, you know, ⁓ you know, they'll get into deals like Humble Bundle. ⁓ they'll f they they know kind of where to place the book. Like that's the most important thing about ⁓ working with the traditional publisher. Their marketing is basically and like this is why they ask you in the proposal is how like what are your touch points with your own audience? Who like who is your audience? How do you quantify it? And then how do you reach them? So even if so if you're listening and you're interested in writing a book and you're like, ⁓ no, I have maybe like four hundred people who ⁓ connected to on LinkedIn and that's it. You know, that's okay. Like, so you know, like, okay, LinkedIn is my biggest ⁓ channel for accessing my audience. So like hone in on that. You know, like there are ways to continue to tap that well and grow it so that like you like in in knowing like what channels are most authentic for you. Don't just go create YouTube shorts or, you know, Right on blue sky because ⁓ you you feel like you have to be everywhere. Like like find the channels that you feel are best for you and like lean in there. And like for d Dave, I mean, for you it's it's YouTube, it is and and it's it's LinkedIn. I think you've done a really good job, you know, ⁓ working those channels. Like, you know, what is what it what was your thought process in terms of like where you kind of developed ⁓ your communications with with your audience?
Dave Langer: Yeah. so I've been independent for about five years now, almost six years. So, you know, from certain perspective, this is actually easier for me than like if you were like a maybe a full time employee, for example. because, you know, for many, many years when I was a full time employee, I didn't really worry about growing an audience in any shape or form. But when you go independent, you don't really have much of a choice for that. So from that perspective, I had some channels already. LinkedIn is my biggest one by far. ⁓ Next up, if you want to think of it in terms of potential eyeballs, it would be YouTube, but YouTube is also kind of difficult as well, as is LinkedIn these days for various reasons from the algorithm and distribution perspective. And the single most important channel, which is old school, is my email list. Because you get to drop messages in people's inboxes. You know they're gonna get it. Do you know you're gonna they're gonna get it? Maybe they might not open it, but you know it's at least it's sitting in their inbox. So from that perspective, ⁓ there's no there's no substitute for email. Now, one thing that folks that I might mention to folks, just in case ⁓ they're not aware of this because you brought up the hypothetical person with 400 followers on LinkedIn or 400 connections on LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually has a newsletter feature. And the best thing about using LinkedIn newsletters isn't LinkedIn will actually promote your newsletter and then deliver it to people's email boxes. And in fact, my I have a LinkedIn newsletter and it's a far more reliable channel to get my message out than actually posting, even though I have a hundred and forty two thousand followers on LinkedIn. It's actually easier for me to get more eyeballs on my stuff using a newsletter. So ⁓ if you're really serious about writing a book, ⁓ a tech book, I would certainly build up a newsletter list somehow. Either as before you start pitching it, or even if you pitch it and you get the deal, certainly do it. while you're building or writing your book so you can build a list so you can prep people for the launch. And ⁓ yeah, nothing beats an email address.
Jess Haberman: That's that's for sure. ⁓ no, that's a great point. I I yeah, I haven't really gotten into the LinkedIn newsletters from an individual standpoint. I you know, I have on the kind of corporate side. ⁓ but yeah, they're they're really impressive. And then you get to see the metrics on, you know, how how are they compare to your posts? How do you you know, so you get a lot of data from that. So I think that's Totally worth a try and and see how that goes. But ⁓ it's a natural way, obviously, for networking and for growing your audience. ⁓ for sure.
Dave Langer: Right. So I mean that's something to also consider as well, by the way. if you're sp and I'm gonna speak specifically like the full time employee, the hypothetical full time employee, if you're working a full time job and you land a book deal, you also need to realize that you're not only gonna be writing the book during the process, but you're also gonna be trying to build up your audience. You're also gonna be like doing, you know, hints and teasers and talking about the book launch and all that kind of stuff all along, and that's work on top of it. So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.
Jess Haberman: It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. All the research, all the, you know, you're gonna be like yeah, it's it's every time you think you've sort of you've hit a milestone, there's another you know, another mountain behind it. ⁓ you know, you turn in a your first chapter and then you get your revisions back and then you, you know, you finally get to publication and then you've gotta promote it. So it's ⁓ it's always a longer process than you think it's gonna be. ⁓ and it's it and it takes like really different skill sets all along the way, which ⁓ you know, just I don't want to dissuade anyone from writing a book because it's an incredible process. But like let's talk about Dave, like kind of what were your goals in writing the book? What were your expectations? Like what ⁓ what did you hope that ⁓ publishing a book would do for you in your career and and how and like has it met those expectations?
Dave Langer: Yeah, so couple things, right? This is really super important. If you're writing a tech book, you need to make sure you're writing it for the right reason. You're not gonna make money like Stephen King if you write a tech book. That's just that's just not the way it works. I've got a friend who's written a very, very successful data story data storytelling book, and he sold twenty something thousand copies of it, which is a bestseller for a tech book. That's huge.
Jess Haberman: Cute.
Dave Langer: astronomically huge. That you're not going to make a lot of money off of that. Right? You're just not. Eve even if you sold all digital copies with better margins for the publisher so you get more royalty, you're you you're not going to make a living off of it. So making a living as a full time tech writer is it should never be your goal. 'Cause it's not going to happen. So there's two ways to think about it. One is it's personal branding. It nothing nothing establishes you
Jess Haberman: Yeah. It's true.
Dave Langer: Like an expert quicker than holding up a physical book that has been published by a well known imprint. It's it's it's immediate cachet, it's immediate gravitas for you and your personal brand. Period end of story. So that's why you do it. ⁓ it could potentially lead to business opportunities like consulting engagements and training and speaking and that sort of thing. Definitely, but that's all downstream, right? That's not you know, that's way beyond at the end of the book, right? After it actually being published. So that's that's one reason. You do it for personal branding and potential business opportunities. The second one is you do it because you just want to. For me, writing a book was on my bucket list. Right? Now when I was younger, I thought I was going to write the great American novel or a fantasy book or something like that. And then I got old. And then and then I'm like, well, I'll write a tag book, because that's actually probably more germane to what I'm doing in this stage of my life. And it was on my bucket list. So I I did it. and insofar as
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: I wanted to do it and I was passionate about the topic, goals achieved. I got the book written. I've gotten great feedback from people on LinkedIn. Sometimes they post with pictures of them holding the book and they say nice things about it, which is great. I mean, it makes my day when I see that. Every time I get an Amazon review also makes my day as well. ⁓ those sorts of things are really important, right? That's that's completely outside the financial aspect of writing a technical book whatsoever. Now going forward, we'll see if it leads to, you know, opportunities. And pers you know, from a personal branding perspective, it's certainly helped me achieve and maintain my Microsoft Excel and VP status, so that's good. ⁓ Microsoft loves that if you write a book about Excel. So from that perspective, ⁓ it's so far goals have been achieved, but mainly in the non professional realm, which is the satisfaction of writing the book, holding it, seeing people enjoying it and learning from it. That's been The biggest thing so far.
Jess Haberman: And what was ⁓ kind of the investment, what did that look like in terms of your time, energy, dollars spent, ⁓ into putting you know, putting all that into a book?
Dave Langer: ⁓ no real no real money spent per se. ⁓ that is one that's one benefit of writing a technical book, right? Is that usually ⁓ if you're writing a technical book like I wrote, where you're just doing screenshots and things like that, you don't need like art. There's usually no outlay from an author. Now I do know technical book authors who have actually spent their own money to make sure that they get high quality art to be put in the book because the publisher didn't provide that. So Keep that in mind depending on what kind of book you're gonna build. Like if you're gonna write. If you're gonna write a book on data visualizations, you know, you might have to spend some money depending on what you want to do with it, especially if you want color. My book was black and white, so it's no big deal, write screenshots. Looks great. It's great, great quality print, everything's looks awesome, but it is black and white, so it didn't really cost any money for me. ⁓ it was mostly time. And it is a lot of time. ⁓ you have to write. You have to revise, you then submit, as you as you said, Jess, and then you have to you know, actually there's multiple submissions, right? One's the technical reviewer, and then there's one to the copywriter, essentially, who fixes all your gratlars and stuff like that. and by the way, Grammarly's not one hundred percent correct, everybody, just case you know. I learned that the hard way. ⁓ Still need humans for those things. ⁓ Yeah, so it was it was a lot of work.
Jess Haberman: That's true. We still need humans for those things.
Dave Langer: But once again, I w it was easier for me because I'm an independent consultant. I could literally look at my schedule and say, look, I'm blocking out a Thursday and Friday to you know, 'cause my deadline's on Saturday and I gotta knock out a chapter or something. I can do I can do that. So if you're a full time employee and you're doing this on the side, just be aware that ⁓ it is a lot of work, it's a lot of effort. ⁓ it's a lot of sacrifice because you're probably gonna be doing on nights and weekends, you're gonna be missing out on lot of stuff. So Be kind to yourself and most importantly, and Jess can attest to this, don't be aggressive with your proposed timelines, because I tend to be pretty aggressive in my proposed timelines for my book. But I but but I'm but I'm a consultant so I can make that work.
Jess Haberman: Yes. Yeah. I mean I think it's safe to assume it y writing a book, especially if you've got a full time gig that it's gonna take you a year, you know, to write a full two fifty to three hundred pages. I think also to your point earlier, you know, no one no one wants to publish an eight hundred page book. Like four hundred plus is too much. ⁓ attention spans are lower than they've ever been. ⁓ so and and and people still do, you know buy print books. A lot like it's still the most popular way to read a book. It's still you know, it and that's across across all genres. You know, I mean, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say all genres, because I think there are some genres that where digital think romance does r much better in digital. ⁓ but across the majority of genres, print is still the most popular, ⁓ which means it's still very expensive for a publisher to print, especially in color. ⁓ but they literally put the books ⁓ they get printed in China most most often and they put the books on a ship and they, you know, s ship them out here. So so the it it's expensive and it's and it takes it takes a lot of time. So I think ⁓ folks don't often think about all the logistics involved there. but like tell me like maybe were there what was what was like the hardest part about about the process? ⁓ or or was there any point where you were like ⁓ my gosh, I quit. Like this is too much.
Dave Langer: No, no, I never I never got to that. ⁓ so the one thing the one thing that I will mention is is that if you want to make if you want to make this process as easy as possible, and it's gonna be hard. I mean this is not let's not kid ourselves here, it's gonna be hard. It's a lot of work. Write about something that you already know a lot about. Do not pick a research topic and pitch it. now that can be very tempting right now in the age of AI. try and find some sort of AI related topic and pitch that and the and the publisher will be like, ⁓ yeah, well, yeah, we want to need more AI stuff, for example. But if you actually, if you're like, you got to do all the research and you got to vet everything, it's just adding to the stress of actually writing the book because inevitably something might not work out the way you thought. And you're like, ⁓ my goodness, now I'm now my chapter outline is not right. So now I got to go talk to the editor about changing that. Blah, blah, blah. So write about something you know very, very well. That's gonna help you out a ton. ⁓ for me, Python and Excel was pretty pretty easy because I already built an online course for Anaconda. so I was already very, very familiar with it. I've been doing analytics for a long time. So that made things very much easier. And I've been a programmer for, I don't know, I've been programming for forty years, something like that. So So it made things a little bit easier. And that's simply because I picked a topic that I knew a lot about. So I would say that's the first thing. That really prevented me from being burned out. The hardest part was the imposter syndrome. And for folks that are on social media in I don't know, Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, imposter syndrome's everywhere, right? People are talking about it all the time. And it is a bit ⁓ even for me, somebody with all my experience and all the things that I had done, I'm like, I'm writing a book. This is like serious stuff, okay? So this is not like writing a LinkedIn post or an email newsletter or something like that this is a Book, man. ⁓ it's be in Barnes and Noble potentially. It's gotta be it's gotta be legit. So there was a certain amount of imposter syndrome for that. And though in the early chapter reviews, I did get I did get very anxious, I guess, for lack of a better word, with the technical reviews, because that's when the imposter syndrome flares up. You're like they point out something that you got wrong and you're like, ⁓ my god, I'm a failure. What am I doing? I this is you know, this is well beyond me. But then you're just like, wait a second. It's a 30-page chapter and they mention two or three things. It's not that bad. Ease up on the gas, Dave, relax, keep going. ⁓ so the hardest part for me was the imposter syndrome. But one way I would highly recommend avoid that is make sure that you write about something that you know very, very well, and then that will be extremely helpful.
Jess Haberman: Yeah, absolutely. And you will learn a lot as you write, you know, like you don't have to know front to back everything that you're gonna say because you're good you're good things are gonna change, most likely, because you're writing about tech. ⁓ and you're gonna have to research things. But I totally agree. Like you you're You're the expert on this topic. ⁓ you should be. Otherwise, ⁓ yeah, you're gonna have a hard time really standing out ⁓ against other experts in the field. So I think that's that's fair and having a special like kind of a special specialized topic that that you you're uniquely ⁓ an expert in is is a really good is a really good idea. ⁓ so like who should who should not write a book? Like, you know, should most people write one? Who's like who are gonna who's gonna have the hardest time writing a book?
Dave Langer: That's that's a lot of pressure. In t in tech books specifically. If you think you're gonna make a lot of money writing a tech book, then the then that's that's the first that's the first class of folks that should not get into this whatsoever. ⁓ because you're not. You're just not. ⁓ not from the book itself. Now potentially, like I said before, maybe it might lead to speaking and training and things like that. That's entirely possible. Absolutely possible. And you can't make good money doing that. But that's downstream. That's also gonna be
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: a direct result of what I'm gonna say next, which is realistically, if you absolutely hate marketing, if you're not like me and you're not a sh shameless self-promoter, then it might be really problematic for you as well to write a tech book because the publishers are really expecting you to mark to take the lion's share of the marketing. Yes, they will do good things like for example, my book is in a bunch of Barnes and Noble stores. There's no way I could have done that. Self-published. There's no way. ⁓ so they can do that sort of thing, but they're not actually like driving people into the Barnes and Noble. That's up to you to do. Like, I literally take pictures of myself in front of Barnes and Noble and put them on social media with my book. That's the kind of thing they if you hate that, if that like you find that morally reprehensible, then maybe being a tech writer is not for you. So I'm gonna stop there. I'm gonna stop there. Gold
Jess Haberman: Yeah. Good.
Dave Langer: Gold diggers, you know, gold diggers for lack of a way of describing it, right? I guess. ⁓ and people who don't want to sh be sh shameless self promoters. Those are the two folks that probably shouldn't write a tech book.
Jess Haberman: Yeah. Yeah. If you can't get yourself there to promote yourself, yeah, 'cause you're you're not gonna have a bestseller unless you're ready to to really promote. ⁓ like there's just no way. The only only the people who really can ⁓ can put it out there are really gonna succeed there, ⁓ in terms of best selling.
Dave Langer: Yeah, and well again if you're if you got the first mover advantage, like if you're like if you publish a book on a early book on a hot really super hot topic and you're riding the wave, that will help you out tremendously. ⁓ if you pick a topic like Python and Excel, it's gonna be a little bit more of a difficult road.
Jess Haberman: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ No, it's true. ⁓ yeah, and I think ⁓ the first mover advantage is is something, but ⁓ you know, I've always sought to not be first, but to be, you know, to be have a robot. Like 'cause you know, there's all ⁓ there are publishers who take that strategy as ⁓ we're gonna be first on this topic, ⁓ have the only book out there, so there's really no competition. ⁓ but you you tend to not have the full picture, you tend to not know if this is just a a a quick trend or if it's really got some longevity to it. ⁓ you ⁓ you know, you s y maybe an untested technology that, you know, you just don't know. So ⁓ so it is good to to be like you do wanna have especially this comes up when you write a book proposal, is like you do want a unique point of view. You wanna r to be able to really clear clearly ⁓ persuade ⁓ the publisher that your book will stand apart from the competition and why. and and that can be it can just be, hey, ⁓ listen, we're the last time anyone published on this topic was before the kind of Gen AI ⁓ era happened. So ⁓ right now it's a really good reason to ⁓ to revise and to publish a lot of new books. I think it's given rise to a lot of interesting content. ⁓ because that's a good reason w that like you need a new spin on so many technical topics because of Jen A I now. ⁓ but ⁓ but you do need to have a perspective on what makes your book different. ⁓
Dave Langer: Yeah. And one thing I would also mention too, if I may be so bold, is that if you have built up an audience and you're known for something, right? You're known for business intelligence or you're known for data science or you're known for Excel or whatever it might be, having having placing your book, positioning your book as part of the proposal saying, look, this aligns with my existing audience and also beyond that as well. I think that Correct me if I'm wrong, I think that would also resonate with the publishers as well, because they're like, Okay, we've got some built in sales to begin with, and then we can springboard from there.
Jess Haberman: Sure. Absolutely true. ⁓ so Dave, ⁓ what's next for you? What are what are you what are you working on?
Dave Langer: Book number two
Jess Haberman: Amazing. Amazing.
Dave Langer: And it's ⁓ s to continue a theme of the hard road the hard road to hoe is ⁓ the tough road to hoe is it's SQL for Excel users step by step. So kind of what you were mentioning before, Jess, there's like there's kind of ⁓ my publisher's Wiley, there's kind of they had a book in the past that was kind of similar to this, but the author didn't want to write a second edition, so they're like, Hey, we've got a hole in our lineup, we could use something fresh in that perspective. ⁓ something shorter than the previous book that we had in in that particular hole in our lineup. So ⁓ I'm writing a book to kind of dovetail with my other book, which is like, look if you're an Excel user, I'll teach you both SQL, SQL, and Python at the same time, right? From these two books. So that's what I'm working on right now, as opposed to all kinds of other shameless promotion that I do nonstop.
Jess Haberman: Wonderful. Yeah, so that book probably will be out next year. Is that right? Just trying to think of the
Dave Langer: Yeah, 'cause you told me that I was really aggressive with my proposal timeline, so yeah, it's supposed to be up next year. Early next year.
Jess Haberman: Next year. That's great. So stay tuned for that. ⁓ any other like ⁓ advice you wanna leave folks ⁓ who are thinking about writing a book?
Dave Langer: Talk to Jess. I'm shamelessly promoting you now. ⁓ well because she's she's my agent. She's awesome. ⁓ she's I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, to be quite frank. So I'd be one. ⁓ a literary agent, if you don't want to get into the whole business of book writing and publishing and all kinds of stuff, get an agent. It's totally just do it. It's it's worth it, trust me. ⁓ so I'd be one. and two, just you just gotta love to write.
Jess Haberman: Thank you.
Dave Langer: First and foremost, if you're gonna write a tech book, you you gotta be passionate about the subject and you have to love to write. Otherwise it is going to be just a slog, just a painful slog.
Jess Haberman: True. Yep. Good advice. ⁓ where can folks find you? Where where should they look for more information about you?
Dave Langer: ⁓ like I mentioned, I'm on the probably the best place is LinkedIn. ⁓ you just search my name, I'll come up. ⁓ I'm a LinkedIn top voice and I'm on there all the time. ⁓ so that's probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
Jess Haberman: Dave is not hard to find. Well, Dave, thank you so much for for being my first guest on the podcast. This is really great. It's been such a pleasure working with you. And ⁓ thanks for all your ⁓ kernels of of knowledge ⁓ that you've shared both here and in your writing. We really appreciate it.
Dave Langer: Okay, thanks for having me on, appreciate it.
Jess Haberman: Absolutely. Thanks guys.
Dave Langer: Hi, my name's Dave Langer. I am a technology professional with approaching thirty years of experience. I'm a Microsoft Excel MVP and I am the author of a technical book not surprisingly based on the nature of this podcast.
Jess Haberman: Yeah, you did it. So congratulations on publishing your first book, Python and Excel, step by step. ⁓ you wanna tell us more about the project? What got you started on this adventure?
Dave Langer: Well, let's be completely honest with the folks at home. My book is solely responsible because of Jess, to be absolutely honest. Jess saw me on another podcast and 2023 invited me to get a sneak peek at what became Python in Excel. And once I saw that I was absolutely hooked because I've been doing analytics for like fourteen years, very passionate about teaching everybody how to do analytics, not just IT folks, but business folks as well. And the fact that Microsoft was putting Python directly inside of Excel Workbooks to do analytics was like it was right up my alley. So I partnered with Jess and her work at ⁓ on that particular project to build a online course and teach it. But then of course inevitably Jess was like, Hey man, you want to write a book about this? And I said, Yes, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Can you help me? Here we are. What is it? Year year and a half later now, I think?
Jess Haberman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ yeah, ⁓ during my work I I'm a con you know, content director at Anaconda, you know, full time and ⁓ the we were we were involved in in sort of that work and getting Python and Excel in Microsoft. So it was really like just I knew I knew Dave was such a pro in this area. So, you know, it made total sense to to work with him on coursework and blogs and things like that around that launch. It was real really successful. And ⁓ it was such good timing because I knew no one else knew as much about Python and Excel as Dave or had the kind of like self promotion skills that ⁓ that would really take this over over the top. And I mean that in a good way. That is a total compliment. No, no, no, no. It but it it's a unique skill. Like na you know, a lot of authors it does not come naturally to talk about yourself. ⁓ to, you know,
Dave Langer: Whoa. We just lost half the audience right there.
Jess Haberman: To promote your own work and yet it's so crucial and it's so valued, you know. like I it's not it's not like I ever hear pushback of people saying, like, ⁓ that author will not shut up about their book. Like, of course you're supposed to talk about your book all the time. You spent so much time and energy. So, like, let's get into that a little bit. Like, you know, what was the process for, you know, like you had already kind of been involved in sort of understanding how Python and Excel worked. So how did you decide, like, what you wanted to integrate into a book. What did how did you decide what the audience really needed to know at that stage?
Dave Langer: Yeah. So that's a great question. ⁓ not to self promote, but like I said, I've been in analytics for a long time, like fourteen years. ⁓ and for the past five years I've been an independent consultant and trainer. So that gives me a lot of insight into what people have problems with when they move to Python, whether that's from another language, like ⁓ C sharp, let's say, or Java or something like that. Or if they're just Excel users, which is really the target audience for this book. It's not really for IT people. It's not really for technology people. It's really for business people, though, because that's the dyed in the wool ⁓ cadre of Excel users. And having worked with lots of folks who were trying to get into analytics and learn this stuff ⁓ through my years of being a trainer, I kind of knew the kinds of stumbling blocks. And that allowed me to say allowed me to do two things, which I think were super important for the book. One, define the scope. Because Python is so big that there's no way unless my page was book was like eight hundred pages long that I was gonna able to cover any of that. And my publisher Wiley, they're not a big fan of eight hundred page books anymore, just so you guys know. And I think that's probably true for other publishers as well. Jess could probably attest to that. So it's like you gotta shrink the book down, right? You're not writing war and peace in terms of Python anymore. You're writing something a little bit more tractable. So scoping that down
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: ⁓ and then focusing on okay, what does that scope look like? And it was gonna be like, look, what are the Python essentials? What are the Python foundations that you need to do analytics? Because Python is your tool, so you need to be able to swing that hammer and screw that screwdriver and that sort of thing, at least at base, before you can build anything. So that was the scope. And then secondarily, the most important thing was how to teach it. So I have a computer science degree. I've got a master's in computer science, but I do not write my book and teach Python in Excel. the way I learned how to do programming in computer science classes because that doesn't not gonna resonate with the audience. So I use things like, hey, are you familiar with the table? Well guess what? A table in Python is a pandas data frame and they have rows and columns and column names and all this kind of stuff. So taking what people know about Excel and then mapping it to Python within the constraints of like it being a 250 page book and my experience is what allowed me to do that. Without it it would have been kind of a crapshoot. Who knows what the book would have turned out to be at that point.
Jess Haberman: Right. Yeah, and I recall when we first started talking about the like the technology itself. You were pretty skeptical that like this was gonna be a super valuable like integration, you know, like in that you know, I think there's a real difference between, you know, Python users and Excel users. And then I think, you know, like you had then you found like where there was that overlap in the Venn diagram. Like how did you how did like you come along sort of on that journey and sort of How did that help you like understand who really needed this information?
Dave Langer: Right. It's a great c great great question. And to provide some context, I am a Microsoft Excel ⁓ VP, but I became an Excel MVP because of my work with Python and Excel. That's super important because I'm not necessarily ⁓ a big fan of like the traditional way people use Excel, where they write these monstrous formulas and things like that, which I as a f former software engineer, I'm like, no, that's that's not a great way to do it. So The reason why I bring that up is because part of the reason why I was skeptical in the beginning is because programming languages in Excel is nothing new. V VBA, Visual Basic for Applications, has been in Excel for ever. Twenty years, something like that, I'm not quite sure, but a long, long time. And then there are languages like DAX, and there is ⁓ or the Power Query programming language. So those things have been in Excel for a long time. And the reason why I was skeptical is because skeptical is because Languages in Excel were nothing new and simultaneously they are not usually very broadly adopted. Because if you think about anywhere from seven hundred million to one billion people use Excel regularly, what fraction of people actually like use Power Query, for example? And that's which is very sad because Power Query is awesome. But but it the adoption is very, very low. So that's why I was skeptical. What w what turned it around for me was essentially s looking at what
Jess Haberman: But
Dave Langer: Anaconda and Microsoft put into Python and Excel in terms of the libraries that were available. It's a very small list, relatively speaking, but it's all dedicated. It's for real world analytics. It's for people who want to use data to make business impact. And that's when I started to get super excited. I'm like, okay, this is going to be the route to getting people interested and excited about Python and Excel, which is they want to have impact at work using data and out of the box Excel features ain't going to do it for them. Quite frankly, they're just not going to be able to do And then Python and Excel becomes a nice easy path, right? For clients of mine that are in ex in Azure, for example, it's a very easy sign off from IT in the security department to say, yep, you can use Python and Excel. You don't have to install Python locally, blah, blah, blah. It works in a secu secure container in the cloud. Everything just works. So you can just focus on the analytics. You can just focus on the value proposition. Can you tell I'm excited about it? All right.
Jess Haberman: It is it is exciting. It is. Absolutely. This is why you're MVP. ⁓ in
Dave Langer: Yeah, well Okay.
Jess Haberman: And then when so you've been through kind of the the process of r of, you know, starting ⁓ with a book proposal, pitching the book to multiple publishers. You had multiple publishers interested in the book, ⁓ which is is exciting. ⁓ a lot of folks don't even pitch to ⁓ multiple publishers. They kind of ⁓ sometimes they're approached by a publisher and just kinda go with it. ⁓ so y you know, I think you you ⁓ with my humble guidance, we're we're able to I think get the best deal ⁓ possible from from a publisher on a on a tr on a trending topic. ⁓ and then been through the writing process, the editing process, the publishing, the marketing. you know, what do you know now that you maybe wish you knew earlier in the process?
Dave Langer: Okay, so first up, just so that folks at home are completely clear, all that was Jess is doing. All the goodness she just talked about, that was all because I I didn't know what I was doing. I'm like, Jess, help me. Kind of like Princess Leia with Obi Wan. You're my only hope. You are my Obi Wan. You're my Obi-Wan, Jess. Okay. ⁓ so I didn't know anything about that, right? Jess help me with all of the all of the proposals and the framing and all the kinds of stuff because she knows what acquisition editors are looking for, and I didn't.
Jess Haberman: I love that. Ha ha.
Dave Langer: Okay. So there's a couple things that that were really, really became really, really clear to me throughout this process. One was there is absolutely no substitute whatsoever for you having a built in audience before you pitch a tech book deal. Or te pitch a tech book. Period in story. I mean, as much as we like to ascribe purely altruistic motives to publishers because they're in the education business and that sort of thing in the tech space. They are businesses they need to make money. They need to sell books. So authors with built in audiences that can help market and promote and sell books is very, very attractive to them. So ⁓ that's where the shameless self promotion that Jess was mentioning, which you mentioned earlier coming comes into play. Cause I'd been do 'cause I've been doing that for years already, right? Building up a presence on social media. ⁓ so that was the first thing.
Jess Haberman: Does help. It does help a lot.
Dave Langer: I mean you kind of think about that in the abstract as being something you just kind of think in the back of your mind. But when you start talking to like an acquisition editor, it becomes very, very clear. Or you fill out the book proposal and they're l actually asking, Do you have an email list? What social media platforms are you on? Do you have a YouTube channel? Blah blah blah. They're asking all that for precisely that reason. So it's very, very important. So for anybody who's interested in writing a tech book, you need to ask yourself, how many how big of an audience do you actually have to buy the book? And if the answer is very, very small audience, it's gonna be a tough ride. Unless, of course, you're picking a really super hot topic, right? ⁓ a friend of mine, I'm not gonna mention by name, put published a relatively short book on a hot topic a few years ago, and now he travels the world. That didn't happen to me yet, but it can happen if you pick a hot topic. But there's also no substitute for having an audience. So that was the first thing. Second thing is The publishers don't really market your book. Not really. And that's not that's just and correct me if I'm wrong, Joseph, but that but that's just my understanding. They're not really gonna they're not gonna buy like digital ads for it. They're not gonna do anything necessarily for your book specifically on their social media accounts per se. Maybe they will, but maybe they won't, but they're not gonna do it regularly to drive consistent attention and traffic to your book. So ⁓ it's up to you to market. And As a corollary to that, as a follow on to that, it's really, really hard to market a tech book and get people to buy it. It really is. So that's the other thing too.
Jess Haberman: Yep, absolutely. You know, I think the power of a traditional publisher is not marketing, it's distribution. Because they're the ones who are gonna get you on, you know, ⁓ on any sort of digital ⁓ platform. They'll get your book on ⁓ into ebook digital formats, they'll get your book potentially into Barnes and Noble like Dave's is. ⁓ you know, they'll they they'll get, you know, ⁓ you know, they'll get into deals like Humble Bundle. ⁓ they'll f they they know kind of where to place the book. Like that's the most important thing about ⁓ working with the traditional publisher. Their marketing is basically and like this is why they ask you in the proposal is how like what are your touch points with your own audience? Who like who is your audience? How do you quantify it? And then how do you reach them? So even if so if you're listening and you're interested in writing a book and you're like, ⁓ no, I have maybe like four hundred people who ⁓ connected to on LinkedIn and that's it. You know, that's okay. Like, so you know, like, okay, LinkedIn is my biggest ⁓ channel for accessing my audience. So like hone in on that. You know, like there are ways to continue to tap that well and grow it so that like you like in in knowing like what channels are most authentic for you. Don't just go create YouTube shorts or, you know, Right on blue sky because ⁓ you you feel like you have to be everywhere. Like like find the channels that you feel are best for you and like lean in there. And like for d Dave, I mean, for you it's it's YouTube, it is and and it's it's LinkedIn. I think you've done a really good job, you know, ⁓ working those channels. Like, you know, what is what it what was your thought process in terms of like where you kind of developed ⁓ your communications with with your audience?
Dave Langer: Yeah. so I've been independent for about five years now, almost six years. So, you know, from certain perspective, this is actually easier for me than like if you were like a maybe a full time employee, for example. because, you know, for many, many years when I was a full time employee, I didn't really worry about growing an audience in any shape or form. But when you go independent, you don't really have much of a choice for that. So from that perspective, I had some channels already. LinkedIn is my biggest one by far. ⁓ Next up, if you want to think of it in terms of potential eyeballs, it would be YouTube, but YouTube is also kind of difficult as well, as is LinkedIn these days for various reasons from the algorithm and distribution perspective. And the single most important channel, which is old school, is my email list. Because you get to drop messages in people's inboxes. You know they're gonna get it. Do you know you're gonna they're gonna get it? Maybe they might not open it, but you know it's at least it's sitting in their inbox. So from that perspective, ⁓ there's no there's no substitute for email. Now, one thing that folks that I might mention to folks, just in case ⁓ they're not aware of this because you brought up the hypothetical person with 400 followers on LinkedIn or 400 connections on LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually has a newsletter feature. And the best thing about using LinkedIn newsletters isn't LinkedIn will actually promote your newsletter and then deliver it to people's email boxes. And in fact, my I have a LinkedIn newsletter and it's a far more reliable channel to get my message out than actually posting, even though I have a hundred and forty two thousand followers on LinkedIn. It's actually easier for me to get more eyeballs on my stuff using a newsletter. So ⁓ if you're really serious about writing a book, ⁓ a tech book, I would certainly build up a newsletter list somehow. Either as before you start pitching it, or even if you pitch it and you get the deal, certainly do it. while you're building or writing your book so you can build a list so you can prep people for the launch. And ⁓ yeah, nothing beats an email address.
Jess Haberman: That's that's for sure. ⁓ no, that's a great point. I I yeah, I haven't really gotten into the LinkedIn newsletters from an individual standpoint. I you know, I have on the kind of corporate side. ⁓ but yeah, they're they're really impressive. And then you get to see the metrics on, you know, how how are they compare to your posts? How do you you know, so you get a lot of data from that. So I think that's Totally worth a try and and see how that goes. But ⁓ it's a natural way, obviously, for networking and for growing your audience. ⁓ for sure.
Dave Langer: Right. So I mean that's something to also consider as well, by the way. if you're sp and I'm gonna speak specifically like the full time employee, the hypothetical full time employee, if you're working a full time job and you land a book deal, you also need to realize that you're not only gonna be writing the book during the process, but you're also gonna be trying to build up your audience. You're also gonna be like doing, you know, hints and teasers and talking about the book launch and all that kind of stuff all along, and that's work on top of it. So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.
Jess Haberman: It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. All the research, all the, you know, you're gonna be like yeah, it's it's every time you think you've sort of you've hit a milestone, there's another you know, another mountain behind it. ⁓ you know, you turn in a your first chapter and then you get your revisions back and then you, you know, you finally get to publication and then you've gotta promote it. So it's ⁓ it's always a longer process than you think it's gonna be. ⁓ and it's it and it takes like really different skill sets all along the way, which ⁓ you know, just I don't want to dissuade anyone from writing a book because it's an incredible process. But like let's talk about Dave, like kind of what were your goals in writing the book? What were your expectations? Like what ⁓ what did you hope that ⁓ publishing a book would do for you in your career and and how and like has it met those expectations?
Dave Langer: Yeah, so couple things, right? This is really super important. If you're writing a tech book, you need to make sure you're writing it for the right reason. You're not gonna make money like Stephen King if you write a tech book. That's just that's just not the way it works. I've got a friend who's written a very, very successful data story data storytelling book, and he sold twenty something thousand copies of it, which is a bestseller for a tech book. That's huge.
Jess Haberman: Cute.
Dave Langer: astronomically huge. That you're not going to make a lot of money off of that. Right? You're just not. Eve even if you sold all digital copies with better margins for the publisher so you get more royalty, you're you you're not going to make a living off of it. So making a living as a full time tech writer is it should never be your goal. 'Cause it's not going to happen. So there's two ways to think about it. One is it's personal branding. It nothing nothing establishes you
Jess Haberman: Yeah. It's true.
Dave Langer: Like an expert quicker than holding up a physical book that has been published by a well known imprint. It's it's it's immediate cachet, it's immediate gravitas for you and your personal brand. Period end of story. So that's why you do it. ⁓ it could potentially lead to business opportunities like consulting engagements and training and speaking and that sort of thing. Definitely, but that's all downstream, right? That's not you know, that's way beyond at the end of the book, right? After it actually being published. So that's that's one reason. You do it for personal branding and potential business opportunities. The second one is you do it because you just want to. For me, writing a book was on my bucket list. Right? Now when I was younger, I thought I was going to write the great American novel or a fantasy book or something like that. And then I got old. And then and then I'm like, well, I'll write a tag book, because that's actually probably more germane to what I'm doing in this stage of my life. And it was on my bucket list. So I I did it. and insofar as
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: I wanted to do it and I was passionate about the topic, goals achieved. I got the book written. I've gotten great feedback from people on LinkedIn. Sometimes they post with pictures of them holding the book and they say nice things about it, which is great. I mean, it makes my day when I see that. Every time I get an Amazon review also makes my day as well. ⁓ those sorts of things are really important, right? That's that's completely outside the financial aspect of writing a technical book whatsoever. Now going forward, we'll see if it leads to, you know, opportunities. And pers you know, from a personal branding perspective, it's certainly helped me achieve and maintain my Microsoft Excel and VP status, so that's good. ⁓ Microsoft loves that if you write a book about Excel. So from that perspective, ⁓ it's so far goals have been achieved, but mainly in the non professional realm, which is the satisfaction of writing the book, holding it, seeing people enjoying it and learning from it. That's been The biggest thing so far.
Jess Haberman: And what was ⁓ kind of the investment, what did that look like in terms of your time, energy, dollars spent, ⁓ into putting you know, putting all that into a book?
Dave Langer: ⁓ no real no real money spent per se. ⁓ that is one that's one benefit of writing a technical book, right? Is that usually ⁓ if you're writing a technical book like I wrote, where you're just doing screenshots and things like that, you don't need like art. There's usually no outlay from an author. Now I do know technical book authors who have actually spent their own money to make sure that they get high quality art to be put in the book because the publisher didn't provide that. So Keep that in mind depending on what kind of book you're gonna build. Like if you're gonna write. If you're gonna write a book on data visualizations, you know, you might have to spend some money depending on what you want to do with it, especially if you want color. My book was black and white, so it's no big deal, write screenshots. Looks great. It's great, great quality print, everything's looks awesome, but it is black and white, so it didn't really cost any money for me. ⁓ it was mostly time. And it is a lot of time. ⁓ you have to write. You have to revise, you then submit, as you as you said, Jess, and then you have to you know, actually there's multiple submissions, right? One's the technical reviewer, and then there's one to the copywriter, essentially, who fixes all your gratlars and stuff like that. and by the way, Grammarly's not one hundred percent correct, everybody, just case you know. I learned that the hard way. ⁓ Still need humans for those things. ⁓ Yeah, so it was it was a lot of work.
Jess Haberman: That's true. We still need humans for those things.
Dave Langer: But once again, I w it was easier for me because I'm an independent consultant. I could literally look at my schedule and say, look, I'm blocking out a Thursday and Friday to you know, 'cause my deadline's on Saturday and I gotta knock out a chapter or something. I can do I can do that. So if you're a full time employee and you're doing this on the side, just be aware that ⁓ it is a lot of work, it's a lot of effort. ⁓ it's a lot of sacrifice because you're probably gonna be doing on nights and weekends, you're gonna be missing out on lot of stuff. So Be kind to yourself and most importantly, and Jess can attest to this, don't be aggressive with your proposed timelines, because I tend to be pretty aggressive in my proposed timelines for my book. But I but but I'm but I'm a consultant so I can make that work.
Jess Haberman: Yes. Yeah. I mean I think it's safe to assume it y writing a book, especially if you've got a full time gig that it's gonna take you a year, you know, to write a full two fifty to three hundred pages. I think also to your point earlier, you know, no one no one wants to publish an eight hundred page book. Like four hundred plus is too much. ⁓ attention spans are lower than they've ever been. ⁓ so and and and people still do, you know buy print books. A lot like it's still the most popular way to read a book. It's still you know, it and that's across across all genres. You know, I mean, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say all genres, because I think there are some genres that where digital think romance does r much better in digital. ⁓ but across the majority of genres, print is still the most popular, ⁓ which means it's still very expensive for a publisher to print, especially in color. ⁓ but they literally put the books ⁓ they get printed in China most most often and they put the books on a ship and they, you know, s ship them out here. So so the it it's expensive and it's and it takes it takes a lot of time. So I think ⁓ folks don't often think about all the logistics involved there. but like tell me like maybe were there what was what was like the hardest part about about the process? ⁓ or or was there any point where you were like ⁓ my gosh, I quit. Like this is too much.
Dave Langer: No, no, I never I never got to that. ⁓ so the one thing the one thing that I will mention is is that if you want to make if you want to make this process as easy as possible, and it's gonna be hard. I mean this is not let's not kid ourselves here, it's gonna be hard. It's a lot of work. Write about something that you already know a lot about. Do not pick a research topic and pitch it. now that can be very tempting right now in the age of AI. try and find some sort of AI related topic and pitch that and the and the publisher will be like, ⁓ yeah, well, yeah, we want to need more AI stuff, for example. But if you actually, if you're like, you got to do all the research and you got to vet everything, it's just adding to the stress of actually writing the book because inevitably something might not work out the way you thought. And you're like, ⁓ my goodness, now I'm now my chapter outline is not right. So now I got to go talk to the editor about changing that. Blah, blah, blah. So write about something you know very, very well. That's gonna help you out a ton. ⁓ for me, Python and Excel was pretty pretty easy because I already built an online course for Anaconda. so I was already very, very familiar with it. I've been doing analytics for a long time. So that made things very much easier. And I've been a programmer for, I don't know, I've been programming for forty years, something like that. So So it made things a little bit easier. And that's simply because I picked a topic that I knew a lot about. So I would say that's the first thing. That really prevented me from being burned out. The hardest part was the imposter syndrome. And for folks that are on social media in I don't know, Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, imposter syndrome's everywhere, right? People are talking about it all the time. And it is a bit ⁓ even for me, somebody with all my experience and all the things that I had done, I'm like, I'm writing a book. This is like serious stuff, okay? So this is not like writing a LinkedIn post or an email newsletter or something like that this is a Book, man. ⁓ it's be in Barnes and Noble potentially. It's gotta be it's gotta be legit. So there was a certain amount of imposter syndrome for that. And though in the early chapter reviews, I did get I did get very anxious, I guess, for lack of a better word, with the technical reviews, because that's when the imposter syndrome flares up. You're like they point out something that you got wrong and you're like, ⁓ my god, I'm a failure. What am I doing? I this is you know, this is well beyond me. But then you're just like, wait a second. It's a 30-page chapter and they mention two or three things. It's not that bad. Ease up on the gas, Dave, relax, keep going. ⁓ so the hardest part for me was the imposter syndrome. But one way I would highly recommend avoid that is make sure that you write about something that you know very, very well, and then that will be extremely helpful.
Jess Haberman: Yeah, absolutely. And you will learn a lot as you write, you know, like you don't have to know front to back everything that you're gonna say because you're good you're good things are gonna change, most likely, because you're writing about tech. ⁓ and you're gonna have to research things. But I totally agree. Like you you're You're the expert on this topic. ⁓ you should be. Otherwise, ⁓ yeah, you're gonna have a hard time really standing out ⁓ against other experts in the field. So I think that's that's fair and having a special like kind of a special specialized topic that that you you're uniquely ⁓ an expert in is is a really good is a really good idea. ⁓ so like who should who should not write a book? Like, you know, should most people write one? Who's like who are gonna who's gonna have the hardest time writing a book?
Dave Langer: That's that's a lot of pressure. In t in tech books specifically. If you think you're gonna make a lot of money writing a tech book, then the then that's that's the first that's the first class of folks that should not get into this whatsoever. ⁓ because you're not. You're just not. ⁓ not from the book itself. Now potentially, like I said before, maybe it might lead to speaking and training and things like that. That's entirely possible. Absolutely possible. And you can't make good money doing that. But that's downstream. That's also gonna be
Jess Haberman: Yeah.
Dave Langer: a direct result of what I'm gonna say next, which is realistically, if you absolutely hate marketing, if you're not like me and you're not a sh shameless self-promoter, then it might be really problematic for you as well to write a tech book because the publishers are really expecting you to mark to take the lion's share of the marketing. Yes, they will do good things like for example, my book is in a bunch of Barnes and Noble stores. There's no way I could have done that. Self-published. There's no way. ⁓ so they can do that sort of thing, but they're not actually like driving people into the Barnes and Noble. That's up to you to do. Like, I literally take pictures of myself in front of Barnes and Noble and put them on social media with my book. That's the kind of thing they if you hate that, if that like you find that morally reprehensible, then maybe being a tech writer is not for you. So I'm gonna stop there. I'm gonna stop there. Gold
Jess Haberman: Yeah. Good.
Dave Langer: Gold diggers, you know, gold diggers for lack of a way of describing it, right? I guess. ⁓ and people who don't want to sh be sh shameless self promoters. Those are the two folks that probably shouldn't write a tech book.
Jess Haberman: Yeah. Yeah. If you can't get yourself there to promote yourself, yeah, 'cause you're you're not gonna have a bestseller unless you're ready to to really promote. ⁓ like there's just no way. The only only the people who really can ⁓ can put it out there are really gonna succeed there, ⁓ in terms of best selling.
Dave Langer: Yeah, and well again if you're if you got the first mover advantage, like if you're like if you publish a book on a early book on a hot really super hot topic and you're riding the wave, that will help you out tremendously. ⁓ if you pick a topic like Python and Excel, it's gonna be a little bit more of a difficult road.
Jess Haberman: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ No, it's true. ⁓ yeah, and I think ⁓ the first mover advantage is is something, but ⁓ you know, I've always sought to not be first, but to be, you know, to be have a robot. Like 'cause you know, there's all ⁓ there are publishers who take that strategy as ⁓ we're gonna be first on this topic, ⁓ have the only book out there, so there's really no competition. ⁓ but you you tend to not have the full picture, you tend to not know if this is just a a a quick trend or if it's really got some longevity to it. ⁓ you ⁓ you know, you s y maybe an untested technology that, you know, you just don't know. So ⁓ so it is good to to be like you do wanna have especially this comes up when you write a book proposal, is like you do want a unique point of view. You wanna r to be able to really clear clearly ⁓ persuade ⁓ the publisher that your book will stand apart from the competition and why. and and that can be it can just be, hey, ⁓ listen, we're the last time anyone published on this topic was before the kind of Gen AI ⁓ era happened. So ⁓ right now it's a really good reason to ⁓ to revise and to publish a lot of new books. I think it's given rise to a lot of interesting content. ⁓ because that's a good reason w that like you need a new spin on so many technical topics because of Jen A I now. ⁓ but ⁓ but you do need to have a perspective on what makes your book different. ⁓
Dave Langer: Yeah. And one thing I would also mention too, if I may be so bold, is that if you have built up an audience and you're known for something, right? You're known for business intelligence or you're known for data science or you're known for Excel or whatever it might be, having having placing your book, positioning your book as part of the proposal saying, look, this aligns with my existing audience and also beyond that as well. I think that Correct me if I'm wrong, I think that would also resonate with the publishers as well, because they're like, Okay, we've got some built in sales to begin with, and then we can springboard from there.
Jess Haberman: Sure. Absolutely true. ⁓ so Dave, ⁓ what's next for you? What are what are you what are you working on?
Dave Langer: Book number two
Jess Haberman: Amazing. Amazing.
Dave Langer: And it's ⁓ s to continue a theme of the hard road the hard road to hoe is ⁓ the tough road to hoe is it's SQL for Excel users step by step. So kind of what you were mentioning before, Jess, there's like there's kind of ⁓ my publisher's Wiley, there's kind of they had a book in the past that was kind of similar to this, but the author didn't want to write a second edition, so they're like, Hey, we've got a hole in our lineup, we could use something fresh in that perspective. ⁓ something shorter than the previous book that we had in in that particular hole in our lineup. So ⁓ I'm writing a book to kind of dovetail with my other book, which is like, look if you're an Excel user, I'll teach you both SQL, SQL, and Python at the same time, right? From these two books. So that's what I'm working on right now, as opposed to all kinds of other shameless promotion that I do nonstop.
Jess Haberman: Wonderful. Yeah, so that book probably will be out next year. Is that right? Just trying to think of the
Dave Langer: Yeah, 'cause you told me that I was really aggressive with my proposal timeline, so yeah, it's supposed to be up next year. Early next year.
Jess Haberman: Next year. That's great. So stay tuned for that. ⁓ any other like ⁓ advice you wanna leave folks ⁓ who are thinking about writing a book?
Dave Langer: Talk to Jess. I'm shamelessly promoting you now. ⁓ well because she's she's my agent. She's awesome. ⁓ she's I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, to be quite frank. So I'd be one. ⁓ a literary agent, if you don't want to get into the whole business of book writing and publishing and all kinds of stuff, get an agent. It's totally just do it. It's it's worth it, trust me. ⁓ so I'd be one. and two, just you just gotta love to write.
Jess Haberman: Thank you.
Dave Langer: First and foremost, if you're gonna write a tech book, you you gotta be passionate about the subject and you have to love to write. Otherwise it is going to be just a slog, just a painful slog.
Jess Haberman: True. Yep. Good advice. ⁓ where can folks find you? Where where should they look for more information about you?
Dave Langer: ⁓ like I mentioned, I'm on the probably the best place is LinkedIn. ⁓ you just search my name, I'll come up. ⁓ I'm a LinkedIn top voice and I'm on there all the time. ⁓ so that's probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
Jess Haberman: Dave is not hard to find. Well, Dave, thank you so much for for being my first guest on the podcast. This is really great. It's been such a pleasure working with you. And ⁓ thanks for all your ⁓ kernels of of knowledge ⁓ that you've shared both here and in your writing. We really appreciate it.
Dave Langer: Okay, thanks for having me on, appreciate it.
Jess Haberman: Absolutely. Thanks guys.
