Hello!

It's looking like Kill the HiPPO will be published by the end of this month, March 2026.

Here's an update of all the balls I'm juggling to get there:

Acquire 2 ISBNs

So far I've got 1 out of 2 ISBNs approved.

To sell a book on Amazon, you need an ISBN. Two ISBNs actually: one for the print version, and one for the Kindle/ebook version. And if there's an audio version? That's another ISBN.

These cost about $50 each, and have to be applied for from a national agency in the country you live in. I live in Spain, where any bureaucratic procedure is unnecessarily harder than it should be 🤷‍♂️. The ISBN application form came with a 14-page "how to apply" PDF - and I'm glad it did, because it was a tricky form and my Spanish is weak.

Illustrations

On my copyeditor's advice, I removed a couple of illustrations from the manuscript for rights reasons. One was a Simpsons screenshot— as a self-publisher getting rights to use something like this is not worth the pain.

Fortunately I found an additional source of illustrations at workchronicles.com. They are right on topic, and have simple and affordable licensing. I particularly liked this one for our book's "delete your backlog" section.

Proofreading

Where software has unit tests, a QA team (maybe!), and CI/CD, books have copyediting and proofreading. The proofreader is a final check before publishing, so it is time to get this done. I've received quotes from 3 proofreaders; I'll choose one soon.

Cover image design

I received the first draft of the cover design today. I'm very happy with it - but I'll wait until it is finalised before sharing. Hopefully soon!

The pre-publication todo list:

• Copyediting to strengthen the prose DONE!
• Proofreading to fix typos and grammar - IN PROGRESS
• Final review readers to gather pre-launch testimonials
• Finalise illustrations DONE!
• Interior page layouts for paperback, ebook, and PDF DONE!
• Get some ISBNs - I need separate ones for each format (e.g. paperback, Kindle) - 1/2 DONE
• Create cover images - extremely important because people do, actually, "buy a book based on its cover" - IN PROGRESS
• Set up print-on-demand (using Amazon's "Kindle Direct Publishing")
• Create an Amazon book page that sells

Until next time,

Steve
​​​killthehippo.com​​