I've always wanted to write a book. One year ago I joined Publish0x and started writing articles on crypto. How much harder could writing a book be? Turns out, quite a lot...
Truthfully I've been writing articles now for 18 years. It started with my first website which was sports related, about American football, in which I proclaimed myself the Editor-In-Chief. We produced about five long-format articles a week of which I usually wrote 2-3 and my team of writers wrote the rest. Most recently, I wrote articles for the website for the professional football team (round ball version) that I worked for. But is really only in this past year, writing about crypto, that the thoughts of writing a book have emerged.
Two people inspired the idea of writing a book, one is a family member and one is another writer here on Publish0x. First it was my brother who shared a manuscript of his book with me asking me to proof a couple of chapters. If my little brother can write a book, certainly so can I. Next it was @PVMihalache, a prolific writer on the site who I not only share a desire to write with, but also share a name (Paul) and birthday (April 6). According to his Amazon page:
Paul Valentin Mihalache is a Romanian writer, born 04/06/1986, who lives in London, United Kingdom, since 2010.
I also share a love of football with Mr. Mihalache who now lives in my birth country of England, the birthplace of the beautiful game. He leaves a link to his Amazon page at the bottom of each article he writes and that link got me thinking...
The subject of choice was easy for me - yield farming. It is an area of crypto that truly fascinates me but is complex and very confusing. I could not find any good comprehensive resources on the subject which made it a great challenge to tackle both as far as getting involved and later writing a book. But where to start?
Publish0x of course!
I decided to write a series of articles on yield farming explaining the basic terms and concepts. I wrote a ten different articles back in May and April which would each serve as a chapter in Part One the book. I would add an introduction, conclusion and another chapter or two and after more editing Part One of my book was done.
For Part Two, I decided to cover the general strategies I employ in yield farming, then go into specific yield farming ecosystems before going through a step-by-step process in how to actually participate in yield farming. The second half of the book turned out to be much more challenging and I had to rewrite much of it as I went given the speed at which crypto changes.
Getting the book ready for publication on Amazon turned out to have many turns and twists as well. After you submit all your information and the basics about your book, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offers three main formats; eBook, paperback and hard cover. I'd designed my book as an eBook but transferring it into KDPs digital format presented a number of challenges for me so I decided to build the paperback version first.
When building a paperback, you must build the contents and the cover. The contents seemed easy, I just had to upload my PDF version and I would be all set. The first issue turned out to be that my book wasn't quite long enough and in order to meet the minimum standards of 74 pages I would have to write a few more chapters. Back to the drawing board. Once done, I resubmitted my PDF version. This time the length was good, the format however wasn't. My eBook was written in 8.5"-11" page-size format and it turned out the paperback format was 6'-9". I had to reformat the entire bookk, which might not sound hard but considering you have to completely redo the table of contents and with pictures all the page formatting had to be redone. Eventually I finished and much to my chagrin, under this new format, I would have had more than enough pages / content to begin with. Oh well, bonus content for the readers to the tune of about ten extra pages.
Next it was onto the cover. I had designed a cover, but getting this into Amazon's paperback format turned out to be a pain. For the eBook, it should be fairly simple but given the issues with the paperback version I eventually just went with Amazon's own cover creator. A cover design actually isn't just the cover, but the back page as well, so I had to build the back page which included a brief overview of the book and a brief bio of the author - yours truly. After getting all the information in I looked to preview the book only to get a bunch of errors. Apparently my content on the back cover kept bleeding out of the print error, that was surprising since I was using Amazon's own book cover builder but through trail and error I eventually got there. At some point I plan to redo the cover but my goal was to get this done. Finally, some positive news...
I went back to the eBook version and decided to download Kindle Create as an app on my Mac to format the content correctly. The .kpf format it created after playing with the content for sometime eventually worked better than uploading in .doc or .epub formats. I essentially had to remove the table of contents along with the illustrations outside of a few screen shots, and then reformat chapter headings and the first paragraph of each chapter. I was, however, able to use the cover design I wanted. Eventually I got there and another message like the one above for paperbacks let me know it was in the process of quality control.
Next I had to sit back and wait for Amazon to approve my book in both formats. A few days can seem like a long time but I had the World Cup to keep my mind occupied and eventually it all worked out. I did it! As a bonus, both England and the United States advanced out of the group stages. Win! Win! Win!
All in all, there are 85-pages in the paperback version listed on Amazon for $10.99 and $7.99 for the eBook version. I still want to try to create my own custom cover for the paperback version and next I want to tackle getting the eBook version up and listed. I have given out eBook versions to those who have purchased my BOTZ passive income generating NFTs. Their feedback has been very positive and much appreciated. I'm also very appreciative of those who helped edit the book along the way - thank you.
Amazon Product details
- ASIN : B0BMZ9ZX8T
- Publisher : Independently published (November 29, 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 85 pages
- ISBN-13 : 979-8351934907
- Item Weight : 6.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
For a preview, here is the table of contents (please excuse the formatting which doesn't translate well here):
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Yield Farming Part One Table of Contents
Part One Introduction…………..………………………………….…………….5
Chapter 1 - What is Yield Farming………………………….…………….…….6
Chapter 2 - Decentralized Finance……..…………………….………………….9
Chapter 3 - Automated Money Maker……………………….………………...11
Chapter 4 - Liquidity Pools…….……………………………………………....13
Chapter 5 - Smart Contracts.………………..………………………….………16
Chapter 6 - APR vs APY………………………………………….…………...19
Chapter 7 - Gas Fees, Slippage and Other Fees…………………….…..……...22
Chapter 8 - Impermanent Loss…………..……………………….…………….25
Chapter 9 - Rug Pulls……………………………………….………………….28
Chapter 10 - Yield Farming Platforms……….……….………………………..31
Chapter 11 - Simple Yield Farms…………………………….………………...34
Part One Conclusion……………..…………………...………………………..37
Yield Farming Part Two Table of Contents
Part Two Introduction….………………………..……………………….…….38
Chapter 1 - My Crypto Strategy………………………………………….…….39
Chapter 2 - BNB Chain………….…………………….……………………….43
Chapter 3 - Pegged Coins Yield Farming Strategy…………………………….45
Chapter 4 - Tomb Forks……………………………………………….…….…47
Chapter 5 - EMP Money….…………………………………….………..…….50
Chapter 6 - Dex Finance….…….…………………………….……………..…55
Chapter 7 - Other Tomb Forks and Non-Tomb Forks…………………….……59
Chapter 8 - Step-by-Step Walkthrough………………………………….…..…61
Chapter 9 - Securing your Crypto………..…………………………….………68
Chapter 10 - Other DeFi Projects………………………………….…………...69
Chapter 11 - Crypto (Blockchain) Bridges….…………………….……...……70
Chapter 12 - Launchpads………………………………….….…….…….……71
Chapter 13 - Airdrops…….…………..…………….………………………….72
Chapter 14 - BOTZ…..………………………………….……………………..73
Part Two Conclusion..…………………………………….…...……………….76
Yield Farming Appendix Contents
Appendix A - Whiteboard Crypto Videos……..………………………...……..77
Appendix B - Helpful Yield Farming Resources……………………….…..….78
Appendix C - DeFi News Sites and Newsletters……………………….……...79
Appendix D - EMP Money Loops..………………………………….………...80
Appendix E - Crypto Bridges……….…………………………….…………....81
Appendix F - Top Crypto Launchpads..………………………...……………...82
Appendix G - Airdrop Sites..…………..……………………….……………...83
About the Author……….…………………………………………….………..84
Free NFT for Leaving Book Review..……………………….…………..…….85
Writing a book was a challenge, but one I embraced and would like to embark upon again when inspiration strikes. I'd love to serve as inspiration for someone out there, much like @PVMihalache did for me, and hopefully this article gets one of you to consider writing a book. If interested, I'd suggest using Publish0x as a platform to test out ideas and potentially writing a series of articles like I did to jump start your journey.
Hitting the one-year mark of my crypto journey in November coincided with the launch of my first crypto business and the release of my first book. What does year two have in store? Stay tuned...
