Open Call for Book Authors: Vapor, Kotlin, Unity VR, and More

Writing a book can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.

The first book I ever worked on was Learning Cocos2D, which I co-wrote with Rod Strougo back in 2011.

I still look back on that experience with a sense of accomplishment and pride, and I think I always will. There’s something incredibly fulfilling about completing a large project like this, doing it well, and seeing the difference it makes in other people’s lives.

If you’ve ever dreamed of writing your own book, we have a unique opportunity for you. We are currently recruiting lead authors for these upcoming books:

• Server Side Swift with Vapor: We’re looking for a lead author for Server Side Swift with Vapor, focusing primarily on folks who want to create back-ends for mobile apps, with no prior web development experience. [Update: Taken]
• Intermediate Kotlin: We are looking for an author to cover intermediate topics in the Kotlin language (focusing on the core language itself, not developing Android apps). We already have an author who will be covering the beginning topics.
• Unity VR and AR Games by Tutorials: A guide for experienced Unity developers on making VR and AR games in Unity for devices such as the Vive, Rift, Hololens, iOS/Android. We already have 1 Beginning AR author, 1 Advanced AR author, and 1 Advanced VR author, so are looking for a lead author focused on the Beginning VR side.
• Your book idea here! Although those are the books we are definitely recruiting for, perhaps you have an idea for a book we haven’t thought of. We’re always looking for advanced developers with a passion for making a great book, and we’d love to hear your ideas!

Keep reading to find out why you should write a book with us, what’s involved, and how to apply! :]

Why Write a Book with Us?

As I’ve mentioned, being a book author is a rewarding and often life-changing experience.

There are plenty more reasons to write a book with us beyond that, but here we’ll cover the top 3 that most authors ask about.

1) Work With an Awesome Team

Self-publishing is all the rage, but the key word there is “self” — as in, you’ll have to do everything your “self”. Self-editing. Self-designing. Self-typesetting. Self-management. Self-promotion. And everything else associated with a book, including customer support, creating art, store infrastructure and dealing with payment processors.

And the worst part of all is self-marketing. Even if you can handle all of the above, you need to build a sufficient audience of people who know you and want to buy your book! This can be quite challenging and time consuming if you’re going solo.

You could work with a traditional publisher, which definitely helps with some of the work involved in getting a book to market. But in our experience, the amount of support you get from traditional publishers varies widely, and most of the work involved in polishing and marketing your book falls on you.

At raywenderlich.com, we think of our books as a coordinated team project, and we’re fully invested in making your book a success. Here are the top 15 ways the raywenderlich.com Book Team helps you out:

1. Book process. We have tons of experience creating books with a distributed team, and can guide you through a proven step-by-step process.
2. Market analysis. We research the market to make sure that there’s sufficient demand for the topic you’re writing about to make it worth pursuing.
3. Outline feedback. We provide constructive and technical feedback while you develop your outline.
4. Sample project feedback. We help ensure your projects in the book are both fun and instructional.
5. Design assistance. We help provide any cover art, internal art, or other design assets if you need them.
6. Writing feedback. We help you build your writing skillset through continuous feedback on your manuscript.
7. Tech editing. Our tech editors provide technical editing of the entire manuscript.
8. Copyediting. Our editors copyediting and proofreading of your manuscript.
9. Quality checks. Finally, our final pass editor performs quality checks to ensure all parts of the book are as polished as possible.
10. Writing tools. We have developed custom authoring tools that allow you to write and preview your book in Markdown!
11. Publishing. We publish your book to PDF, ePub, and print format.
12. Audience building. We release tutorials and videos every day to build a strong audience of developers interested in your book, before it’s even released.
13. Marketing. We market your book through our blog, newsletter, Twitter, Facebook, paid advertising, and more.
14. Selling. We sell your book through our online store and other channels.
15. Customer Support. We handle customer support for readers, and set up a book forum where customers can ask questions and provide feedback.

We’ve made a ton of books over the years and have learned a lot along the way, so you get to benefit. :]

2) Become a Recognized Subject Matter Expert

Authoring a book with raywenderlich.com will add a lot of heft to your resume. If you want to become known as a subject matter expert in a particular area, authoring a great book is a tried-and-true path. This will open doors for contracting work, conference talks, new jobs, and more. You can think of a book as a business card, résumé, and income stream all rolled into one!

The best part is that you don’t have to be an expert in your chosen field right now — all you need is solid experience as a developer and a willingness to dig deep and learn. At raywenderlich.com, our authors often become experts in their chosen subject by going through the process of writing a book. Check out the case study below to learn more.

Case Study: Marin Todorov and iOS Animations by Tutorials

Long-time team member Marin Todorov had some experience creating animations he needed for day-to-day development, so he created a video course about animation, learning how to create great animations as he built the series.

Marin took this experience and turned it into the successful book iOS Animations by Tutorials. Since then, he has spoken at many conferences around the world on his work, and is now known as the expert on iOS animations (and more!).