You don’t need permission to change the world: how I co-authored, self-published and best-seller’ed my first book

It’s been almost a month since the #iPadOnly book was published. It’s the first book I wrote and published in my life… and it’s the one I co-authored with Augusto Pinaud and it already became an international bestseller in only a few weeks on sale at a pretty “high” price for an eBook ($9.99). I already shared the story behind writing the book earlier on this blog but in this post I’d like to focus what happened after the book has been published and how I feel as a first-time, best-selling author. Hope it’ll inspire you to write the book you’ve been meaning to write for a while now.

Unique moment in time - you can choose yourself!

I’ve been a long-time Seth Godin fan and what he’s always been preaching on his blog, through his books and in the interview he did with me is that we’re in a unique moment in time and we can choose ourselves and not wait to be picked. We can self-publish, self-create, self-show… in other words: “there it is, I built it, hope it resonates with you”… and that’s why I wrote a series of blog posts about the #iPadOnly way on this blog and later emailed Augusto and asked him to write the book with me. Now that the book is published, here’s what happened and what happens next, and what you should do about it:

Self-publishing the bestseller

The decision to self-publish our #iPadOnly book was the best one for us. Now, thanks to our fans, Nozbe users and you, my fantastic blog readers, it became a bestseller and we’re working on promoting the book as much as we can. We received lots of positive emails, lots of skeptical ones as well (more on that later) and we’re getting ready for phase two - keep the momentum going.

Digital books are great for self-publishing era

You can get our book in several formats: iBooks, Amazon Kindle and paperback. Hardly anyone buys a paperback version… but maybe because it’s a book about the iPad… but the digital versions are flying off the digital bookshelves… what it simply means is that really you can self-publish a book these days, make it a bestseller as people are used to the fact they get the book in a digital form. With so many Kindles and iPads and other tablets around… as well as iPhones, Androids and other portable devices… it’s the perfect time to self-publish a book in a digital form.

From a book to an #iPadOnly movement

In the coming months you’ll see how we’ll be publishing our book in more languages, adding more #iPadOnly videos, a regular podcast and so much more. Clearly we’re only scratching a surface there and people crave for more information on #iPadOnly and we’ll be happily giving it to them.

Changing people’s lives one book sale at a time

From all the reviews we got so far, people are intrigued by the #iPadOnly movement, they are changing habits, trying new things, checking out the apps we recommended… the book resonates with them. The best part, we deeply believe that by publishing this book we’re changing the world a little, changing old habits, questioning assumptions… we’re making a small dent in the universe… and it feels great.

You don’t need permission to change the world

This is what I want to leave with today - choose yourself and change the world - you don’t need anyone’s permission. Seth Godin is so right!. Both Augusto and I didn’t ask anyone for permission… we wrote a book we had in us and hoped for the best. Now, as an international bestseller we can honestly say it’s been a great ride and a fantastic experience… and we’re just getting started. We’re hooked and proud to be best-selling authors… but we’ll be more proud if our message resonates with more people and our dent in the universe becomes bigger… and this is what we’re aiming at.

Question: Have you read our book? Are you planning to your own? What stops you? Why don’t you start today?