Richard Bullington-McGuire is the author of Docker for Developers, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.
Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey…
Richard: Packt has contacted me several times before asking me to write a book for them, but this time I got an invitation from Mike Schwartz, a co-worker at Modus Create, to be a co-author on a Packt book. Packt contacted him after reading a blog article he wrote for the company blog on using Docker for software development. Together with Andy Dennis, another co-worker who has written multiple books for Packt, we set out to write a comprehensive book on using Docker, deploying Docker-based apps, and securing them.
Q: How long did it take you to write the book?
Richard: It took about 9 months to write and edit the book.
Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Richard: Since my part of the book was about deploying Docker-based applications to production, I did not need to do extensive research before writing the outline, but I did do research before and during the writing of each chapter.
Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Richard: I had a great deal of trouble balancing the demanding day job I had with writing for the book. I faced this primarily by dedicating weekend time to the project, and eventually setting aside 4 hours during the work week to focus solely on the book. This strategy did not always work during the week, though. I had trouble keeping the subject matter to the page count projected because to treat the material in depth for a hands-on book required more setup and proving out that integrations worked than I expected. Recording the Code in Action sections was challenging in that since I first wrote the drafts of the chapters, some of the software had changed so I had to re-write portions of the book late in the revision cycle.
Q: What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Richard: Learn a bit of everything. Follow your interests but find real problems to solve. Read technology news sites.
Q. How do you keep up-to-date on your tech?
Richard: I work with many people who have exposure to more and different things than I do and I learn by having them suggest that something might be worthwhile. I also read technology news aggregation sites such as Hacker News and Lobsters, and subscribe to a variety of IEEE and ACM publications, including IEEE Software and Communications of the ACM.
How would you describe you author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Richard: I would recommend Packt as the editorial support they provided was really helpful, both from the perspective of figuring out what to put in the book, and in the very detailed and technically astute editing they provided. Packt provided very clear guidelines for what they wanted and helped with how to scaffold the chapters and provide transitions for the readers.
You can find Richard’s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here
