Anniversary of SQL Wait Stats Book: Memories From the First Year

Today is the first anniversary of SQL Wait Stats book, and a few memories keep coming back to me.

About a year ago, I had a very proud moment. I published my second book, SQL Wait Stats, and I was its primary author. The book got a great response, and the community has welcomed it ever since. It was a first-of-its-kind book, written to concentrate on Wait Stats and performance.

The book grew out of my month-long blog series on the same subject, SQL Server Wait Stats. Lots of things come to my mind today, so let me share a few here.

The Idea Behind the Blog Series

A question I hear all the time is why I wrote a 30 day series on Wait Stats. There were two reasons.

First, I’d been working with SQL Server for a long time, and I had troubleshot hundreds of servers with performance problems. That taught me a lot, and I documented what I learned. After a while, I could rely on my own notes whenever I had to troubleshoot a server. That’s when I decided to document my experience for the community.

Second, there were things about Wait Stats that I thought I knew, because they were working. There was always a fear in the back of my mind. What if my belief was wrong, and I’d been on the wrong path all this time?

There was only one way to find out: put my understanding in front of the community and ask for help. And it worked beautifully. I received plenty of conversations, emails and comments, and I refined the content based on them. My understanding became more accurate.

The Idea Behind the Book

After the series ended, many readers asked me to turn it into an eBook or a hardcopy. They said blog posts are great, but a book gives a more complete understanding. People who were starting on the subject wanted to read about Wait Stats in a structured way.

After hearing the same feedback for more than four months, I decided to write the book. I wanted it to cover the concepts from the fundamentals and fill the gaps in my earlier blog posts.

Rick Morelan and the Team

I must acknowledge my co-author Rick Morelan for unconditional support. I’d already written one book, and the experience was still out of this world. Writing blog posts is much easier than writing books. A book takes 100 times the effort, even when the content is ready.

I couldn’t have done it without my co-author and my editor’s team. We spent days researching and discussing the concepts the book would cover. When we were in doubt, we reached out to experts. We also reproduced the scenarios to validate the concepts and claims. After three months of hard work, the book reached the community.

September 1st: The Lucky Day

We had to pick some day to publish, and the book was complete in the last week of August. We felt very glad. Every time my books are published, I feel the same joy which I had when my daughter was born. The feeling of holding a new book on my hand feels (almost) the same as holding newborn baby. I was excited. For me, September 1st was (and has always been) the luckiest day of my life.

My daughter Shaivi was born on September 1st. Since then, every September first has been a special day for me, and has always taken me to the next step in life. I believe anything and everything I do on September 1st is turning out to be successful and blessed.

Rick and I sent the finished book to the printer and asked for it to come out as soon as possible. We didn’t choose a date, because we wanted it out as fast as it could be. Interestingly, the printer selected September 1st. Because of that date, I had a feeling this book would reach the next level.

Book Model: The Most Beautiful Girl

We were done with the book, and we had no budget left for marketing. Rick and I had a long conversation about how to spread the word. Rick came up with the idea that we should hire the most beautiful girl around, someone who cared about our book.

I am a father and the most beautiful girl for me is my daughter. This was not a difficult task for me. Rick had given me the task to find the most beautiful girl and I just could not think of anyone else than my own daughter. I still do not know what Rick thought about this idea but I had already made up my mind.

The Fun Experiments

We had lots of fun moments along the way. We’ve given away more books for free than we’ve sold. We went through book signing events, contests and plain giveaway events whenever more people could benefit. There was never an intention to get rich. We wanted more people to learn this concept.

Today, when I look back at the earnings in dollars, there’s not much there. The best reward has been the satisfaction and the love of the community. The emails and conversations about this book now run into the thousands.

We had fun writing this book, and it was a very satisfying journey. I’ve earned lots of friends while learning and exploring.

One Year Later

The book is one year old, and its content still matters when it comes to performance tuning. If you’ve read the book, please let me know what you think of it.

A book’s anniversary is not about the sales, it is about the people who learned something from it.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.