Writing a #1 Amazon Best Seller while working a demanding full-time job: how I did it.

I will share the process and tools I have used to publish, and the lessons I have learned.

Jul 03, 2025

I wish I could say I sat in a Tuscan villa, sipping espresso while dictating chapters into a vintage typewriter, but the truth was messier, much more caffeinated, and heavily reliant on Google Docs, Readwise, plus the goodwill of my sleeping child.

Let me share with you the exact process I followed to write and publish Beyond Slides, and all the tools I leveraged to get there.

It took roughly two years, but that’s because I have a demanding full-time job, a family, the occasional urge to sleep, etc.

I believe I could have done it in 4-5 months (elapsed time) if this had been my only focus.

We can divide the work in five phases.

Phase 1: The one day that became Day One

The idea for the book had been marinating in my head for years: a mix of stories, principles, battle scars, and lessons from two decades in consulting.

What turned one day into now was my father’s passing in 2023.

He managed to publish his first book (a collection of poems) just weeks before the end, but I know that he had been working on that book for at least thirty years.

He had waited too long. I did not want to.

Lessons:

“I will do it later” is where good ideas go to die.
“I don’t have time” is always (absolutely, always) bullshit. You have time, you just squander it and/or prioritize other stuff.

Phase 2: Brain dumps meet structure

I did not start with a title or an outline, but with anecdotes, fragments, dialogues I remembered, mistakes I made, advice I gave.

For weeks, I dumped everything into a single Google Docs, and this created a reservoir of material. Then, one day, I wrote a thread on X, where I started to give a bit of structure to this idea.

This thread was published on 4th Jan 2024

The thread caught on, which made me think maybe this idea had legs…

I iterated my way into 12 rules, each rule becoming a chapter. I would end up with 14 eventually (and, ultimately, I would ditch the idea of referring to them as rules, they are just chapters of the book).

Tools:

Google Docs for idea capture and later outlining.
X for early testing.

Lessons:

Clarity comes from writing. Write to see what you think.
Test early on, like I did with the thread on X that caught attention.

Phase 3: Writing under constraints

I wrote mostly early mornings and weekends - always in bursts, a couple of hours each time, for months and months.

A single chapter could take 10 rewrites. I would re-read it and think: “Who wrote this shit?”

Then fix it. Then hate it again. Until eventually, I stopped hating it.

I wrote directly in Google Docs, and only at the very end migrated drafts into Atticus (the tool I used for formatting and exporting the manuscript for Kindle and paperback).

About half-way through Phase 3, who lasted in total about 12 months, I also engaged an editor to help me develop the story.

He did a great job, and I credit him for the idea of introducing the Ivy and Morrie sections. Talking to Pranjal made me identified parts of the book that had to be more developed.

Tools:

Google Docs for collaboration and real-time notes.
Obsidian to surface all relevant thoughts and ideas I have been recording for years.
Grammarly Pro for typos and general grammar fixed.
ChatGPT for testing ideas.
Readwise to surface books or quotes that could add value to the narration.
Atticus for beautiful formatting and export.

Lessons:

It is less about writing every day, more about not stopping for too long: momentum beats perfection.
Talking to another person opens up possibilities.

Phase 4: Feedback, doubt, and the final mile

At 80% completion, I sent the manuscript to a few trusted readers (consultants, non-consultants, friends who would not sugarcoat it) to gather detailed feedback and comments.

I collected about 10 testimonials which I used in the early section of the book.

At this stage, I also started to look for somebody I admired to write the foreword. I can’t thank Tom Goodwin enough for agreeing to be THE ONE.

These parallel tasks allowed me to also leave a bit of time where I did not touch the book at all. It left a bit of air in the middle, which helped me when I picked it up again to rework the feedback I had collected.

Editing at that point was brutal, not because of typos, but because I had to cut things I liked, stories that were funny but off-topic, insights that were deep but irrelevant.

Darlings were killed.

Entire sections were re-written to accommodate some of the comments I had received. This phase lasted for 2-3 months (again, elapsed time, because I had to juggle multiple priorities).

Tools:

Google Docs comments for reviewer input.

Lessons:

What makes sense in your head may not land on the page.
Readers do not owe you their attention: you have to earn it, sentence by sentence.

Phase 5: Publishing and letting go

I used Amazon KDP for both eBook and paperback.

Final steps:

Built the cover with a service called GetCovers: I only gave them a high level idea of what I wanted and the designer gave a good first draft. After 4-5 interactions I was happy with the result:
Final cover delivered by GetCovers
Quality is OK, especially for the low price, but it did not feel premium (it did not cost premium either…)
Added a custom publisher name (“Vatum House”): I came up with a name, a logo I made on Canva in 3 minutes, and used it.
The logo I made on Canva in 3 minutes
Bought my own ISBN: I did not want to use the Amazon “free” one because it comes with many limitations (e.g., you can only use it on Amazon, and you are very much locked in), so I bought 10 ISBNs in bulk through the official service (each country has one).
I used 2 ISBNs for this book (1 for the Kindle version, 1 for the paperback - yes, each format needs a different ISBN), but I’m planning to write more books in the future.

Launch was soft, then grew.

I used this newsletter, then LinkedIn, then X, then Substack Notes, and direct asks.

Nothing “viral”, but it worked, and I hit #1 Amazon Best Seller in my target categories “Consulting” and “Business Consulting” within a few days, in multiple markets (the USA, UK, Australia, and Italy). This was wildly unexpected.

Publisher Rocket is the tool that helped me with the category identification and keywords selection.

#1 Amazon Best Seller in my target categories in USA, UK, Australia, and Italy.

Tools:

Amazon KDP.
Publisher Rocket for keywords and category ranking.
Canva for launch visuals.
Substack to talk about the journey and invite early readers.
LinkedIn to engage my professional audience.
Booklinker to generate one unique link that auto-directs the customer to the Amazon page of their country.

Lessons:

You are not done when you write the book. You are done when people start reading it.
I set-up a pre-order period of 13 days which seems (now, knowing what I know) unnecessary long, because the book got traction straight away. I don’t think I needed it, and, if I really want to have a pre-ordering period again in the future for my next book, I will shorten it to perhaps 4-5 days.
I enrolled into Kindle Unlimited and I won’t do it again. Kindle Unlimited users get access to the book for free. I don’t like the model.
The book was too cheap during the pre-order period: $1 is NOTHING! While it was sort of a deliberate tactic to get people to download it without thinking twice about it, I kept the $1 window open for too long. In hindsight, I would offer the book for a very low price (between $1 and $2.99) for 4-5 days, then switch to $8.99 (or whatever the target price is for the Kindle version). I also think the $1 price makes the book look and feel less valuable.

Would I write the book again?

Absolutely.

In fact, as I mentioned a few times already, I WILL do it again.

It was not easy, but it was worth it!

The book gave shape to my thoughts, clarity to my experiences, and conversations I would not have had otherwise.

You do not write a book for fame or fortune (especially if you give it away for $1 like I did 🤣), but you write it to make something real, to close a chapter in your own mind, and, maybe, to open one in someone else’s.

If you are thinking of writing your own, start by writing badly, but consistently, in a tool you like, at a time that suits you. The rest will follow.

If you think this post was useful, please share it.
If you read the book, please leave a 5-star review on Amazon!!!
And if you haven’t read, but are curious about, Beyond Slides, go and grab your copy. Beyond Slides is now available as an ebook on Kindle, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Vivlio (and more), and in paperback format too through Amazon, for those who still like the feel of paper and ink.