Spreading Knowledge: Why Promoting Your Work is a Necessity

For a long time, maybe due to my vanity or other reasons, I rarely promoted the books I wrote. Although I often shared my knowledge through blog posts or sessions, I felt reluctant to promote books that readers had to pay for. I worried it would make my sharing knowledge appear less genuine and more tied to commercial interests.

One such book I wrote was on JavaScript and was published ten years ago. Honestly, I put a lot of effort into writing the book, and its content was comprehensive and straightforward. It covered how to use JavaScript in the DOM, how to internationalize Java's Swing applications, and how to use JavaScript in Node.

However, I seldom recommended the book to others during my speeches or blog posts.

Now, in hindsight, I realize that this was a naive idea. People don't buy a book simply because you tell them to. The naivety in this idea is that my original intention was to share knowledge, but the result was that few people knew about the book, limiting its potential readership.

This is a mistake that every author should be aware of. Promoting your own product does not make you appear like a merchant. It's essential to believe in your product and its benefits for people.

Recently, I've had some free time, so I started revising my first technical book in English, Test-Driven Development with React. I sent a survey to my readers in the email group and received many responses. I will take some time to organize and categorize the feedback and incorporate it into the second edition of the book.

I will avoid the past mistake, as I believe that this book can help my readers. I hope they can experience the joy of gradually cleaning up lousy code and refactoring it to obtain an excellent design. I want them to appreciate the beauty of testing and the sense of security that comes with making changes to code with test assurance.

Have a lovely weekend!