Blog + Leanpub + Scrivener = “A”
Depending on how you look at it, I wrote a book.
Except that I already wrote it (it’s taken almost entirely from previous blog posts. And to be fair, it’s not really long enough to be a book (the good news is that you can easily read it in an hour or two, and that it’s available in three different electronic formats).
When I wrote the Last Word on the A Word post some time back, I felt an urge to revisit all of my various posts on GUI automation…and after pondering those for a while, I thought I’d consider compiling those posts into a one-stop-shop of what I think about test automation and test design.
And I ended up with The “A” Word. And I’m happy with how it came out.
When I began compiling the book, I was planning to give it away for free. But – after working with the leanpub tools for the last few weeks (and being impressed time after time), I felt bad not giving them any money for their tools. As a result, I decided to make the minimum price free, but allow people to pay if they wanted (as I’m already overpaid for a job I love, I’m donating all of the profits to the American Cancer Society).
I also found that Scrivener was a perfect ally in this little project. I bought a copy a while back, but haven’t done much “serious” writing recently. After struggling a bit to figure out what should go where, I decided to give Scrivener a full test run, and it worked perfectly. My colleagues in Office won’t like me saying this, but my next book will also be written entirely in Scrivener.
So, if you haven’t checked out The “A” Word already, what’s stopping you? Check it out and let me know what you think.
Occasionally I’ve found books based on compiled blog posts to be interesting when they are written by authors that I share an interest with. I think that’s what led me to buy your book. That and I wanted to learn more about your experiences with automation.
With a new book does that mean its time to update your bio? =)
Still awaiting the audio version. 😉
Thank you for sharing. Those articles on automation have been really interesting, and it is great that you have gathered them in one place.
/Johan
When I press the link in the resources section of the book to get to your chapter of Beautiful Testing, it directs me to “https://angryweasel.com/Articles/Beautiful_-Testing_chapter8.pdf”
which gives you a 404 Page not found error. I guess it is because of the “-” at the line break as the correct link is “https://angryweasel.com/Articles/Beautiful_Testing_chapter8.pdf”.
Best regards,
Johan
uggh – let me see if I can find a way to fix that. Unlike hwtsam, I’ve had surprisingly few typo reports – maybe ebook readers are more forgiving.
http://gothamgr.com/project/how-american-cancer-society-uses-your-money/
I could cite others. I’m not so sure I want to give any money to the ACS. They seem more like a “making money from charitable donations business” than an effective charity. Frankly, I’d feel better about just paying *you* directly not needing to know how you spend the funds. But I’ll probably buy and even also recommend the book anyway.
yeah – I’ve seen that stuff before, and perhaps gave them too much credibility.
Is there another organization that supports cancer research you could recommend?
It’s great to have the blog posts all collected up in one place. I enjoyed reading them in the blog and maybe even more so when reading the book.
Read the book in one go and doing so made the phrase “How are we going to test this?” really stand out and stick, will try to make sure I start every day with that phrase in my head.
Wish I could ‘Like’ comments on WordPress. Well put, Phil.
Hi,
Firstly I would like to appreciate you to opt for donating it to an needy organization rather than earning more for yourself. I liked the concept of placing all blog articles together, even though it is not innovative but very few will go ahead and do it. will get back to you after reading it. Thanks..