I wanted to do it for 24 years: I released my first book!

... and it feels so good! I'm on a little cloud for 3 days now. ☁️

I wanted to write a book since I was 10. I was begging my mom for a typewriter for Christmas; but it stayed a dream (the castle was fine too, and my mom didn't have this kind of money).

And now, I'm so proud to announce that I've released Building Your Mouseless Development Environment! I know, it's a mouthful, but... I like it. 🥳

The Beginning of the Journey

"I don't want to try i3, Arch Linux, or Vim. What's the point using less of the mouse? Such a waste of time!"

That was me, 6 years ago. My colleague developers were pushing me to look at the tools they were already using for years. They are very good developers, so at the end they convinced me to try them.

I had to admit I was wrong.

I fell in love with these tools. I loved not using the mouse when I was coding or writing. I loved to work mostly with plain text (Word, I hate you). Seriously, it changed my life. I was finally feeling at home, in my slippers, drinking a good cup of tea, in my Mouseless Development Environment.

The Valuable Dev

Since I know how to write, I never stopped writing. I consider myself blessed: it doesn't stress me, when I put my finger on a pen I write, write, and write. Same effect with a keyboard. I was mainly writing for myself, and then I thought: what about helping others?

I'm a developer. I'm coding for 20+ years as a hobby (10+ professionally). Naturally, I decided to write about development. I began my "blog" The Valuable Dev (called Web Techno at the time) 5 years ago.

Writing in English was a challenge to me, but the kind of challenge which pushes me forward. I like challenge, it's like climbing a mountain. I also like climbing. How perfect!

At the beginning, my articles were sporadic. Then, I found my pace: publishing an article every month. I do that for 3 years now.

When I saw that hundreds of people were visiting The Valuable Dev, thanking me for my work apparently good, it only increased my motivation. I've a strong imposter syndrome, so I couldn't believe that others could be interested in my broken English. During these years, I wrote about many things, including articles about the tools I was using for my mouseless system.

I found that these were my most popular writing, and the most controversial on Reddit.

The Idea for the Book

Fast-forward 2 years ago. Since many people were interested in mouseless tools, I asked myself: what about writing a book to show how to build a Mouseless Development Environment tailored to the readers' need? Where the readers could customize everything they wants because they would understand everything they're doing throughout the book?

I wrote about the idea on Reddit, and I was surprised: many people seemed interested. It was enough for me; I wanted to write a book for so many years! Even if it would have been a total flop, it would have been fine. The real reward was to write it, to finish it, and to finally having a book with my name on it. This was my next mountain to climb. ⛰

But I had a full time job, a blog where I was writing lengthy articles, and I wanted to travel. I didn't have time. But my idea was maturing, slowly, at its own pace. I've a mind map full of ideas, and I was doing more and more connections between the ones concerning the Mouseless Development Environment.

I like to see an idea like a little plant 🌱: it looks tiny at the beginning, but if you nurture it with other complementary ideas, it can grow, and grow, and grow. It's still an idea though; even if I think it's important, it doesn't exist. It needs some implementation.

Then, I went in a total burnout because of my job at the time at the end of 2020. I quit, and I began to travel in Asia in January 2020 with my girlfriend. The goal: traveling for 6 months. No problem, right?

The Covid-19 Mountain

If Covid-19 would be a mountain, it would be a treacherous one, with a full blizzard in the face. We were in Thailand, with my girlfriend, when we decided we had to come back in Europe. We wanted to go to many other countries, but we had no choice.

We came back to Berlin in April 2020, without any flat; we were subleasing ours for 6 months. With incredible luck (if you live in Berlin, you know what I'm talking about), we found a temporary flat. I only had my clothes and my old laptop Lenovo x220.

But I had time, I still had energy, and I knew I have a strong resilience; again a blessing. I began to write Building Your Mouseless Development Environment.

Building in Public

I had a newsletter on The Valuable Dev (my blog), but not for long (maybe one year). I'm terrible in marketing, so I had only 100 subscribers on it. But I knew they were dedicated to my blog. They loved it because I was proposing something a bit different than the others.

I don't have many followers on Twitter either, and I never really liked the platform (till this year). How to spread the word? How to have feedback? How would I know what I was writing was interesting?

I needed what many call "an audience".

I had already articles on my "blog" about the tools which are part of my Mouseless Development Environment, so I decided to capitalize on that. I knew there was a bit of traffic on it; and a bit of traffic everyday can be a lot of traffic after months. So I just added a little message in the middle of the articles which was redirecting to the landing page for the book.

On the landing page itself, I was describing the book with a call to action to a newsletter.

The Release

I spent hundreds of hours on this book. As I was saying, I have a strong imposter syndrome which leads me to perfectionism. I know it's bad, but I'm me, and it's difficult to control. At the same time, I was regularly updating the followers of my newsletter which was growing more and more.

If the book I was writing was a mountain I was climbing, my followers where this beautiful river which was quenching my thirst after so many efforts. They supported me, they cheered for me, they gave me precious feedback. They weren't my audience, they were my friends.

I wrote almost everyday from July 2020 to January 2021 (except a period of two months end of 2020... but it's another story).

And finally, last Monday, I released it on Flurly. If you don't know, it's a new platform where you can sell products or membership, with a really good UI and options I never saw anywhere before. The founder is really responsive, too.

I had 600+ subscribers to the newsletter at that point; to me, it was crazy. If you would have told the 10 years-old-me that I would have 600 people interested by my book, I would have been the happiest little boy in the whole world!

I sold 40 books the first day. I couldn't believe it either. I thought that maybe two, three people would buy it. And then they would have asked for a refund. But 40 people!

Even better: nobody asked for a refund. Everybody was happy. A couple of people even told me that the price was way below its value.

The Price

I forced myself for this one. I thought 20 euros would be way too much (imposter syndrome back in town) but I knew as well that I had a problem to value my own skills. So I was really telling myself, for days: "Matthieu, you'll sell this book 20 euros, and no less". My subscribers were the most important though, that's why they had 50% off.

I still think it's a fair price. Even if the entire book was proofread by my subscribers, I'm not a native English speaker, and I could have done better (yeah... I know...). And I don't really care, to be honest: the reward, the diamond 💎 at the summit of the mountain, it's the book. It's the way I took to reach it. I didn't even know I would meet so many priceless people along the way!

The Marketing

I was speaking about the book on Twitter, Dev.to, and Indie Hackers, but I don't like marketing. At least, I didn't like it, till I understood that I could turn the idea I had of marketing on its head: it was a good way to help people too! And that's something I like to do.

The first day was mostly my subscribers buying the book. Then, I posted again on Reddit, in:

• /r/programming
• /r/commandline

The first one was a total flop. I knew it; wrong audience. The second one had way more success and sales than I could dream of.

The Role of Indie Hackers

This post is dedicated to Indie Hacker; this community helped me so much, it's incredible. I come here for years from time to time, and I often learn something new. I've got hundreds of good advice from you all, and I applied some of them for this book.

From the bottom of my heart: thank you all!

The Results So Far

You can see in the header the result so far: 76 sales in 2.5 days! I still think it's crazy, especially for a book so "niche".

The Adventure Continue

Today I've launched on Hacker News! I don't expect much, but let's see. I have no idea afterward how to promote the book, and... I'm already thinking about the next one. 😁

I think I'll never see the top of the mountain, and that's fine. I'll never stop. That's what I like to do: creating and helping. Why would I stop?

The way to the top is so much nicer.