Shipped! (But not without drama)
The Tech Drama is now available!
Today is launch day. I feel a bit frozen up. I had a real problem with my book links this morning. I paid a site to do “redirects,” which allows me to future proof the links in case I need to switch platforms.1 The site also allows me to track where traffic is coming from2. It’s been working well for a month, and then this morning I went to buy my ebook, following my link and --
nothing...
…instead of going to my Amazon site, the browser timed out.
Part of the The Tech Drama is about my coming to terms with the importance of quality in things that we build. So, I’m particularly sensitive to things not working and how we support people. To a developer this can seem like, “it’s just a link, don’t throw a fit...” but to me... this is my book’s purchase link. 3+ years of writing, boiled down to following the link to buy the book. If it doesn’t work, that’s literally my livelihood. I could take the site out of the loop, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. A few months ago Amazon, who I can’t effectively cut out because they print the books, yes Amazon, lost a day’s worth of orders3. The other option for selling books because they over-relied on their AI coding tool! Did you read that article? It was buried, but it’s the canary in the coal mine. The problem, Dario and Sam Altman and Elon are all busy trying to hype things so they can IPO. Ingram, Amazon’s main competitor to printing books on demand, took 22 days to respond to a problem… Trusting Self-Publishing Platforms
The link came back after 5 minutes, but I really oppose the “move fast and break things,” mentality. Failure is a thing, but so is constant improvement. You have to fix the things you break. My old boss used to say, “Small victories, rapidly.” The point there, victories. You can have little failures, but you must come back and fix them, turning them into wins.
I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. One of the big takeaways was: Steve Jobs learned a real lesson when he was fired by Apple: if you make things that suck, your business will begin to fail. Steve came back and turned Apple into a company that was all about quality. Quality: See W Edwards Deming.
My book is also about recovering from deep, emotional trauma through writing. It’s about managing a creative mind, because creative minds can catastrophize. In the 8 years since the book, I’ve gotten good at recognizing and working through this.
Status: Links are back online. Support responded within 10 minutes.
Next steps:
I’m going to go ahead with my links.
I’m going to check them regularly.
If they begin to fail, I will find a new platform for the links. (That was the whole point in the first place.)
A go live wouldn’t be a go live without some drama.
Hey, I shipped! I fucking shipped! 3+ years of committed writing and a decade figuring it out.
Learn About/Buy The Tech Drama, available now! (If the links don’t work here’s the direct link):
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The engineer/product manager in me, thinking about contingencies… In case I ever move off of Substack.
For marketing… I have a storyteller in me, but I am generally skeptical of marketing. I will try to not be obnoxious. I appreciate how valuable your time is. I just want to know if ads are working or not.