Publishing my first testing book, “An Exploration of Testers”

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been working on a testing book for the last year-or-so. With more free time since leaving full-time employment back in August, I’m delighted to have now published my first e-book on testing, called An Exploration of Testers.

The book is formed of contributions from various testers around the world, with seventeen contributions in the first edition. Each tester answered the same set of eleven questions designed to tease out testing, career and life lessons. I was humbled by how much time and effort went into the contributions and also by how willing the community was to engage with the project, with almost every tester I invited to contribute then committing to doing so. A number of contributions will be added in the coming months (and additional versions of the book are free after your initial purchase, so don’t be afraid to buy now!).

My experience of using LeanPub as the publishing platform has been generally very good. When I was researching ways to self-publish, LeanPub seemed to get good reviews and it was free to try so I gave it a go, then ended up sticking with it. I’m still on the free plan and it suffices for now for this project. The platform makes most aspects of creating, publishing and selling a book really straightforward and the markdown language used for writing the manuscript is easy to learn (though sometimes comes with frustrating limitations on the control of layout). I would recommend LeanPub to others looking to write their first book.

At the very start of the project, I decided that any proceeds from sales of the book would be ploughed back into the testing community and this fact seemed to encourage participation in the project. I will be transparent about the money received from book sales (with the only expenses being those taken by LeanPub as the publishing & sales platform) and also where I decide to invest it back into our community. It seems only fair to give back to the community that has been so generous to me over the years and also generated the content for the book.

For more details and to buy a copy, please visit https://leanpub.com/anexplorationoftesters