Getting the book into my hands

Published: April 22, 2021

Revised: February 17, 2024 in 490c42f

Around a month ago I placed an order for a reference copy of my upcoming book Why Cryptocurrencies?. I took the cheapest shipping option at IngramSpark, without tracking and, apparently, without customs declarations as it got stuck in customs for several weeks.

But it’s here now!

There’s something special of having worked on something for more than two years and finally getting the result in your hands. Somehow, it makes it all feel real.

Also, while my parents, my girlfriend and her parents know that I’ve been writing a book, they were quite surprised and impressed when I showed it to them. I think that’s a good sign?

I was very worried that the images in the book would be blurry. They’re supposed to be at least 300 PPI, but I had accidentally made some of them in 72 PPI. The images are hand-drawn using a digital pen in Krita, so they weren’t vector based either, which in hindsight might have been a good idea. I tried to upscale the images, but on the computer some of them looked a little blurry, so I was sure I had to recreate them.

But I didn’t have to worry, the images looks good. Some even looks great!

My camera skills don’t do the images justice—they look very good in real life

Yes, flexing like this is the real reason I have a split keyboard

One funny thing about IngramSpark is that colored books cost almost the same as black-and-white books. So we can get some sweet syntax highlighting as well:

It’s really annoying that publishers of many programming books only publish in black-and-white. It’s unfortunate that this is the *only* example of syntax highlight in the entire book, but it does look great. My next book, if I ever write one, will be full of code examples so I can show traditional publishers how a programming book should look like.

So does this mean that the book will finally release?

While I don’t have to rework the images, which would’ve been a large time sink, there are minor adjustments I need to do. I also need to re-read the book from cover to cover, to ensure that it looks as good as I can possibly make it.

The plan was to release in April, but due to the shipping delays I don’t have time to make these changes, so I’ll have to postpone it into May.

Pre-order or read the book here!