Writing a tech book on Medium, part 2
This is a follow-up to the post, “Would you read a book on Medium if it were posted one chapter at a time?”
I created a few polls on LinkedIn and Twitter. The communities submitted the highest number of votes. This makes sense because they were communities focusing on the two topics for my book idea: AWS and Serverless.
The voters said they prefer to learn from a YouTube series (with 96 votes). The following preference was a blog post series (with 47 votes). Next was reading an ebook (with 29 votes). Lastly, reading a printed book had the lowest preference (with seven votes).
Are technical books losing demand?
I was surprised (and not surprised too) that books had the lowest preference. I spent many years writing technical manuals, and I have wanted to publish a novel for a long time. I decided to write a technical book instead of a story a few years ago because I already had experience in that area. Since then, I have wondered whether technical books are losing demand or need to be more specialized. As mentioned in my previous post, experimenting with a different model might be worth exploring.
Is YouTube king for learning?
For years, I have been told to search YouTube to learn. I have pondered using videos to share what I have learned. I have heard of many success stories on YouTube, but I have attributed that success to the charismatic personalities of the YouTubers. I do not see myself as charismatic, but I have been told I can explain things well and simply. I find video editing dreadful and time-consuming since I do my best to release content after testing and evaluating it many times. My poll results show this is where people want to learn.
Should I publish a book on Medium?
Many people still value reading a blog post series over a YouTube series. Everyone is different: some people learn better from reading than visual learning.
I feel most comfortable in writing. I have been giving technical presentations for many years now. It takes me up to eight hours to create and practices for a 15-minute technical presentation. Yet, writing and editing one printed page takes me one hour. I am more efficient in writing than in creating video presentations.
My next steps
It is worth experimenting with writing a book on Medium and releasing it one chapter at a time. I will leave it to the audience to express whether it is valuable. The Medium stats will show me.
Creating a complimentary YouTube series to bring value to visual learners would be great if the Medium book succeeds.
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The poll results
