"GitHub Actions Essentials" is published
The hard part is marketing it
I released GitHub Actions Essentials into the world yesterday. The link will take you to a website which has links to all the places where you can buy it. Currently, that’s Amazon and LeanPub, but I’m open to suggestions of other places where you’d expect to buy it.
Currently, it’s ebook-only, but I’m looking into options for making it available in the physical world as well. Let me know if you’d find that useful.
This feels like the culmination of many weeks of work - researching the subject, writing the book, editing the book, wrangling it into a format that can be sold through various outlets. But, in reality, the real work starts now.
I now need to sell it.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a natural marketer (is it “marketer” or “marketeer”?) I would love to live in a world where I mention my new book on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and suddenly the sales start flooding in. But, sadly, it’s not like that at all. There’s a lot more work that needs to be done. I did the easy tweeting and stuff like that yesterday. This newsletter is the next step in the campaign. This is a relatively easy step. This feels a bit like talking to a group of friends. I hope you don’t feel like you’re being marketed to - even though you are.
Buy my book! It’s great!!
But that’s not how marketing is supposed to go these days. Hey, I’ve read Seth Godin - I know how this stuff works. Let’s try again.
GitHub Actions will make your life easier by automating a lot of the software engineering process
GitHub Actions Essentials will show you how to use GitHub Actions in order to make your life easier
Buy my book! It’s great!!
See! That’s better, isn’t it? My book solves problems and makes your life better.
Then there are the bits of the process that a traditional publisher would do for me. Sending out review copies to people (and, later, chasing for reviews), paying for adverts in the right places (knowing where “the right places” are). I’ll need to do all of that myself. (Hint - if you’re able to help me get a review copy to someone who will write a relatively high-profile review, then please get in touch.)
A couple of things have serendipitously fallen into my lap. LeanPub has started doing a series of “book launch videos” where they interview the authors of recently-published books. Overnight I got an invitation to take part in one of those - so I’ll be interviewed next Monday for that. Also, when my last newsletter went out, one of the subscribers was looking for someone to be interviewed about GitHub Actions for their (pretty well-known) software engineering podcast. We’re recording the conversation next week, so I’ll be able to share more details in the next newsletter.
Another important marketing tip is to use any existing audience that you have. Some of you will know me from my work in the Perl community. The Perl community has annual conferences in both Europe and North America and I’ve proposed a talk on “GitHub Actions for Perl Development” to both of them. Yesterday I heard that it had been accepted for the conference in Toronto in July, so it looks very much like I’ll be speaking there. This will be the first time I’ve spoken at a conference in North America since OSCON was in San Diego (over twenty years ago).
It’s possible that writing this newsletter is slowly turning into a marketing avoidance tactic. So I should probably stop now and turn my attention to some other potential customers. I’ll be back with more updates in a week or two. Oh, but before I go, I wanted to include an extract for you (step 1: provide useful content). So, below is “Appendix B: List of Useful GitHub Actions and Integrations”. Hopefully, this will give you a brief flavour of the kinds of things that you can do with GitHub Actions (thereby giving you a reason to buy the book - this marketing lark is addictive!)
Speak to you soon,
Dave…
Appendix B: List of Useful GitHub Actions and Integrations
This appendix provides a curated list of useful GitHub Actions and integrations that can enhance your workflows and improve your development process. While this list is not exhaustive, it should help you discover the potential of GitHub Actions and encourage you to explore the GitHub Actions Marketplace for more actions.
actions/checkout: This action checks out your repository so your workflow can access its contents. It is one of the most commonly used actions in GitHub Actions workflows.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/checkout
actions/setup-node: Sets up a Node.js environment on the runner, allowing you to run Node.js scripts and tools in your workflow.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/setup-node
actions/setup-python: Sets up a Python environment on the runner, allowing you to run Python scripts and tools in your workflow.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/setup-python
actions/cache: Caches dependencies and build outputs to improve workflow execution times.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/cache
actions/upload-artifact and actions/download-artifact: Uploads build artifacts from a job and downloads them for use in subsequent jobs.
actions/create-release: Creates a new release on GitHub and uploads assets to the release.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/create-release
actions/github-script: Allows you to write inline scripts that interact with the GitHub API and other GitHub Actions features using Octokit and the actions-toolkit libraries.
Repository: https://github.com/actions/github-script
codecov/codecov-action: Uploads your code coverage reports to Codecov, a popular code coverage analysis and reporting tool.
Repository: https://github.com/codecov/codecov-action
deployments/ftp-deploy: Deploys your repository to a remote server via FTP or SFTP.
Repository: https://github.com/deployments/ftp-deploy
jakejarvis/lighthouse-action: Runs Google Lighthouse audits on your web application and generates reports.
Repository: https://github.com/jakejarvis/lighthouse-action
peter-evans/create-pull-request: Automates the creation of pull requests from within your GitHub Actions workflows.
semantic-release/semantic-release: Fully automated version management and package publishing based on semantic versioning rules.
snyk/actions: Scans your dependencies for vulnerabilities using Snyk, a popular open-source security platform.
Repository: https://github.com/snyk/actions
SonarCloud/github-action: Integrates SonarCloud, a cloud-based code quality and security analysis platform, into your GitHub Actions workflows.
Repository: https://github.com/SonarCloud/github-action
stale/stale: Automatically marks issues and pull requests as stale after a period of inactivity, and eventually closes them if no further activity occurs.
Repository: https://github.com/stale/stale
Remember to explore the GitHub Actions Marketplace for additional actions and integrations that may suit your specific needs.