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UX Strategy (2nd Edition): Behind The Scenes — Take 1
I don’t know where exactly to start, so I guess I should just start (before I chicken out). Isn’t that how life is anyway? We take risks and make ourselves vulnerable. And sometimes things work out… But if we do nothing, we get nothing.
So what the hell is this post series? It’s basically me journaling about the process and progress of my authoring experience while I research and write an update of my book UX Strategy over the next 500 days. I believe by doing this that I will end up with a more worthy 2nd edition than if I just sit reclusively in a library like the last time.
After completing my book four years ago, I had no idea if I had just wasted my time and money (paying editors, photographers, etc.) researching and writing about something I found fascinating…UX Strategy. I lucked out though because the timing was right. The book has now sold over 21,000 copies (which apparently is a lot for a tech book).
Here is an initial list of reasons why I want to share my journey with you:
- to hold myself accountable to getting the 2nd edition done
- to create a short list of the tasks I need to accomplish before the next post
- to strengthen my finger muscles on the keyboard by writing in a stream of consciousness format
- to share with other potential authors exactly what it’s like to write a long-format book versus all of the other publishing formats we can choose from these days
- to share with my readers all of the cool things that happened and what I have learned over the last four years as a result of the 1st edition
- and most importantly — to get feedback early and often from you if the new content is accurate and what you want/need!
Here is what I told my publisher O’Reilly Media I am doing with the 2nd edition.
40% new content??!! Yeah right. I don’t know if I’m going to actually accomplish this because I have no idea if people are going to share case studies with me about how they have used the UX Strategy techniques described in my first book. And I don’t want to write another book about how I personally conducted UX Strategy. But more on that later.
For now I’m going to list the things I need to get done this week or before my next post:
- Paste the final manuscript (which was sent to me only as a PDF so I didn’t change/add another word) of my first edition back into Scrivener so I can start writing again. I love Scrivener and it saved my life writing the 1st edition. Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. I actually owe author Jeff Gothelf a big thanks for telling me about it!
- Write at least five people who are UX/Product/Digital Strategists who work for companies I admire (whom I know bought my book or at least downloaded my UX Strategy toolkit) to see if they are willing to contribute case studies to my new book.
- Hire somebody to help me proof these raw posts!
Please feel more than welcome to reply with comments to this and all future posts with any feedback to help me move forward on this project.
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Link to the next post, Take 2 –“Writing UX Strategy II in Berlin”
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