‘Learning MySQL & MariaDB’ Book has Arrived!

by Russell Dyer

published: april 15, 2015; revised: september 10, 2017; readers in past month: 149

The publisher of my new book, Learning MySQL and MariaDB sent me a copy by Federal Express. It arrived today. After two years of working on it, it’s so cool finally to see it, to have it in my hands. I can see from Amazon’s site and from the author resources page that my publisher, O’Reilly provides me that sales of the book in print and digital format has started.

I’m thrilled about all of this. In fact, under the encourage of some friends, I’m having a book party to celebrate the publishing of my book. I’m inviting some of my friends in Milan. A couple of others are coming in from outside the country. There should be between fifteen and twenty guests. Since I’ve been taking cooking lessons for the past year, I plan to cook for the party. I’ll cook lasagna, honey-baked chicken, shrimp rémolade, some side dishes, and cheesecake. It won’t be a sit-down dinner, but a buffet setting. I also bought some wine and have made other preparations.

In addition to having a copy of my new book on display, I’ll have copies of my other books. Plus, I ordered copies of my Nutshell book in other languages. I have a copy in German, Polish, and Japanese. I’m just waiting for a copy in Chinese. I’ve done very little marketing of my books in the past, but I’m trying to do better. A book launch party with my friends, especially friends who aren’t database developers, won’t sell any books. But it’s still good to go through the motions. The more I do things like this, the better I will get at doing more public activities to promote my books.

I have done some marketing for my new book. First, I managed to get Monty Widenius to write the Foreword and Colin Charles to write a quote for the cover. That should help plenty. Since the book covers MariaDB, the marketing department at MariaDB agreed to include my book in the list of MariaDB books on their site. I’ve asked the documentation manager at MySQL to list the book on their site. Additionally, I wrote an article for MariaDB, using an excerpt from the Foreword related to MariaDB for the bulk of the article. And I wrote an article on O’Reilly Radar. I’ve also asked a few others to write articles and reviews on the book. Hopefully, they’ll do that soon. I also posted a message on LinkedIn announcing the book being released.

I’m not great at marketing, but I’m doing better with this book. Hopefully, it will improve sales. If you read my book, please mention it on your web site, in your social networking feeds, or write a review on a site which sells books.