"A few hours (and a pity party) later, I realized that this isn’t the end of the world. The concept has been validated" This is an important realisation. Just

"A few hours (and a pity party) later, I realized that this isn’t the end of the world. The concept has been validated" This is an important realisation. Just because there is someone else already doing something isn't a reason not to do it. It seems like this affliction is curious to software, and possibly more pronounced in web based software. In his post entitled "Making Ideas Work"[1], Chris Savage (CEO of Wistia) relates his experiences prior to starting Wistia: "There are tons of viable startup ideas that get stopped before they get a chance to start. These ideas get left un-executed for a multitude of reasons including fear, money, and time. But, the most common roadblock I see is overestimation of the competition. The process goes like this: come up with an idea, google to see if it’s been done, find someone doing something similar, and give up. As it turns out, this is the exact process we went through when trying to start Wistia. We’d think we were onto something exciting because our idea was so unique, then we’d find a company doing something similar and we’d give up on that particular approach. We continued this vicious cycle for 4 months until we realized that absolutely no one else had heard of the ‘competition’ we’d found. It turns out that it’s actually really, really hard to get people to pay attention or use anything. After this epiphany it was easy to forge ahead." Now I'm not saying your book side-project is, like, your startup idea or anything but obviously you've fallen victim to a very, very common thing in our industry and that's to drastically over-estimate the value in being a first mover. If something already exists, don't be afraid to compete! The "market" out there is unimaginably huge and people just wander round trying out all sorts of things. Not only that but it's constantly growing, not only due to population growth but the growth of the internet itself. There's room for everyone to get in there and have a slice of the pie. [1]http://savagethoughts.com/post/1591677111 http://savagethoughts.com/post/1591677111