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Why I’m Live-streaming My Next Writing Project

When my latest book, Mastodon For Dummies, was released, several people on social media commented that it was “probably written by AI.” These comments infuriated me much more than a bad review ever has. Bad reviews often contain information that can help me to do better next time, and I’ve been lucky (or good enough) that the number of truly bad reviews I’ve gotten on my writing is fairly small. If people start to assume that any book on a currently hot topic was written by AI, it might be time for me to hang up my keyboard.

None of the people who commented that the book was “probably AI” even looked at the book. If they had, they would have found that it contains humor, subtlety, good writing, and sensitivity to emotions and frustrations that human learners frequently have. AI isn’t capable of authentically reproducing any of these characteristics of a good “For Dummies” book.

Suggesting that a book I wrote (or co-wrote in this case) wasn’t written by humans discounts the hundreds of hours of difficult and creative work that’s informed by over 20 years of experience (for each of the authors in the case of this book) and the meticulous and exhausting editing process the book receives after the first draft of the manuscript is finished.

Most book authors don’t make a living from it. We have day jobs, and writing a book is often at least 40 more hours of work per week on top of a 40 hour work week at a job we wish we didn’t have to do. I’ve calculated that my average book has earned me less than $10 per hour — and I’m a somewhat successful author.

As a response to anyone who would question whether my books are written by me, I’ve decided to live stream the entire process of writing my next book. In each exciting episode of “Watch Chris Write a Book” (working title), you’ll get to see me at my desk from 2am to 7am (at least) every day for 6 months. In each gripping episode, you’ll get to see a real person doing some or all of the following things: typing, researching, planning, outlining, coding, and drinking a lot of coffee.

I don’t have another book project lined up at this point, because I need to make some money for a couple months to get ready. But, I have a couple proposals out and I’ll post an update here and on Mastodon with the link where you can watch me when I do have a new project. Unless some better solution comes along, I expect that live-streamed book writing may even become the norm for any (human) author.

Mastodon For Dummies: the most important book I’ve written.

From time to time, I get copied on mass emails from my agent looking for an author for a book on a specific topic. In early November 2022, I got such an email. Wiley was looking for someone to write Mastodon For Dummies.

I wrote my proposal that night, in spite of being in the thick of writing a 900-page programming book that was pretty much consuming every waking minute of my life. My proposal was accepted, and I was teamed up with Mike McCallister so the book could be written as quickly as humanly possible.

I jumped at this opportunity because I desperately want Mastodon to continue to grow and be successful, and this was a way that I could contribute to its success. I wrote my part of the book in two weeks, and the book was written, edited, published, and in stores in under 3 months — a crazy fast turnaround in the world of book publishing. It’s a really good book, too — thanks to a great co-author, editor, technical editor, production editor, copyeditor, and a team of people that’s far larger than I even know.

When I wrote my proposal and outline for the book, Elon Musk was in the process of destroying Twitter, and people were looking for an exit. Mastodon became the most popular option for “Twitter refugees” who wanted a social media site where they could post and read short messages, but without the negativity and extreme manipulation of their feeds that’s come to characterize Twitter under Musk.

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is open source, completely free to use, and not controlled by a billionaire. In fact, Mastodon isn’t controlled by any single person or company. Instead, Mastodon is mostly built and operated by volunteers who feel strongly about creating a space where speech truly is free.

The problem, however, is that there’s a perception that signing up for and using Mastodon is more difficult than signing up for and using other social media sites. Mike and I and the team at Wiley were determined to do what we could to change this.

Mastodon For Dummies is the first book about Mastodon, and it gives simple-to-follow instructions for everything you’ll want to do on Mastodon. It starts with a quick overview of how Mastodon is different from other social media sites and then goes into a wide range of topics, including:

  • How to sign up for Mastodon
  • How to find your friends and make new friends on Mastodon
  • How to create posts, favorite posts, and boost other people’s posts
  • How to curate your Mastodon feed (because there’s no algorithm that’s going to do it for you!)
  • How (and whether) to conduct business on Mastodon
  • How to set up your own Mastodon server

What excites me most about Mastodon is that it feels like the World Wide Web I fell head-over-heels in love with in 1993. It’s a community of people who are having conversations and sharing their interests and ideas in an advertising-free environment without having their actions monitored and tracked. For the most part, people on Mastodon are friendly and aren’t trying too hard to sell you on themselves or something else. Every post by someone you follow shows up on your feed — in the order in which they were posted. It’s simple, but liberating, to be in complete control over what you see and don’t see.

The best part is that the creators of Mastodon aren’t going to sell it or suddenly start charging $8 per month or sell your personal information to make money off advertising — and they couldn’t if they wanted to.

The book is now in every store and on every website that sells computer books. If you want to support and become part of an authentic community on the Internet without being at the mercy of a mega-corporation or eccentric billionaire — please check out the book from your local library, independent bookstore, or even Amazon.com.

If you have any questions about Mastodon that aren’t covered in the book, please email me (chris at minnick dot com), or direct message me on Mastodon!

Mobile Web Apps for Smart People!

My latest book (and my first book since 2001) is almost finished! The title is WebKit for Dummies, and it’s available for pre-order now!

I’m excited about the publication of this book (coming in February), and about the topic, but I’m finding myself having to explain what exactly it’s about pretty frequently, so I thought I’d write something about that here in order to clear up some misconceptions and possible confusion.

WebKit is the name of the open source browser engine that powers every mobile device’s browser except for Windows devices. This includes iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, and more. It also runs a large and growing percentage of desktop web browsers (Google Chrome, Apple Safari). My book isn’t really about WebKit, however — it’s really about how you can take advantage of the fact that WebKit is so widely available on smartphones and tablets in order to create cross-platform mobile apps with HTML5.

Also, the book isn’t really just for dummies. It is part of Wiley’s huge and successful “For Dummies” series, of course, but I want smart people to buy it as well. That’s not to say that dummies won’t also learn something, but I don’t think anyone needs to be excluded — with the possible exception of people who can’t read.

Now that you know all that, I hope you buy and enjoy the book!