What we learned writing and self-publishing a book

An insight into self-publishing a book

Andrew Couldwell
How to self-publish a book

--

Until a year ago, I had never in my life thought: I want to write a book. It wasn’t a bucket list item or a new year’s resolution. It was more a realisation that I had the material to do it… So why not? 💡

Page spread of a book
Our book! Laying the Foundations / Published October 2019

The seed

In November 2018, my wife, Meagan Fisher and I (Owl Studios) were invited to run a day-long web design workshop. One of the topics I planned to cover on the day was design systems. As I prepared for the workshop, one Keynote deck turned into two, then three. I had the crazy idea I could cram several years of knowledge and experience into a couple of hours. I was so wrong! On the day of the workshop, I cut one presentation altogether and blew over at least half of the slides in my remaining two decks. Clearly, I had a lot to share about design systems… 🤔

I figured I had three options:

  1. Do nothing and move on? So not my style!
  2. Write a series of long articles? There are so many articles on this subject!
  3. Write a book? ✅

As a person who works exclusively in digital, the thought of producing a physical object that will outlast me — that my future kids can hold in their hands and say “my Dad wrote this” —…

--

--