An Update After Three Months of Launching Street-Smart Coding
28 Jan 2026 #booksThree months ago, I launched my first book, Street-Smart Coding. A persistence test.
It wasn’t my first, but the first I was confident enough to call a book. It challenged my persistence. I even wrote chapters in a hospital while supporting a loved one. Chapter 17 is one of those. Sometimes I avoid rereading those chapters.
Some lessons, realizations, and hard-truths
Writing a book taught me many lessons:
#1. Interior design is not that hard. Reedsy does the heavy lifting. Or you can find your way with Word and a lot of Googling.
#2. Instead of a massive launch, think of a series. That’s the best promotion strategy for your first book.
#3. Set a deadline. A task can take as much time as we give it. Writing a book isn’t the exception. It took me about 4 months to finish the first draft. Here are more lessons nobody told me about writing a book.
#4. Once your book is out, the game starts in your head. That’s the fear of finding typos or getting bad reviews. That’s refreshing your sales dashboard and comparing your book to others. Here are more realizations. Just focus on what you can control: work on the next one.
#5. There’s always something you could have done better. Once it’s out, it’s out. Your job was to write it, your audience’s job is to read it. Again, work on the next one.
I’m doing this differently
By no means, I’m an expert book writer. I only have two under my belt. But here’s what I’d do differently.
#1. Start backwards. Start with a promise, cover, sales page, and outline. That forces you to clarify your book promise and message.
#2. Come up with a one-liner. That’s to summarize the core ideas and to make promotion easier.
#3. Pre-sell it earlier. “Do good work and people will come” is a lie.
I once read an ebook called, Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding by Rob Walling. It was about building SaaS startups, but the idea works for books too.
With a clear promise, cover, and sales page (following #1), start promoting from day one.
#4. And I’d order my author copies from Amazon earlier.
Some numbers
I offer Street-Smart Coding as an eBook via Gumroad, and in Kindle and paperback formats in Amazon.
Here’s a breakdown of copies sold:
- eBook version: 51 sales. +2 in Spanish edition
- Kindle version: 1 sale.
- Paperback version: 1 sale.
- “Door-to-door” sales: 8 copies. (7 Spanish, 1 English).
For me, even one sale beyond friends and acquaintances meant success. That’s enough motivation to keep writing.