> what else should I be thinking about?
Additional food-for-thought, Tim Ferriss offers this excellent blogpost, tons of helpful links > http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/02/04/how-to-get-published/
Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
101–110 of 147 posts
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the mentions of IO.js in the book should mention that it was merged back into Node.js. Out of curiosity which chapter were you looking at? I will check the MEAP and make sure that it has the latest chapter versions.
Just the Welcome before Chapter 1. Why not just remove the references to IO.js? And explain Node.js.
Ah, the welcome bit, yes that was written a while back. I will get round to updating that now.
Paul
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked someone who does this. Somewhat transcribed comments: Expect $0 to $3k from a really shitty publisher who is probably just going to waste your time, or a serious publisher who believes you'll waste the publisher's time, or both. $3k to $6k from a publisher who has some clue, but the topic is extremely niche. ("Pentesting South African Wifi Networks with Monads") $6k to $12k from a publisher with some clue for…
If you are going into a book contract, familiarize yourself with cross-accounting or basket accounting clauses, and get them stricken from the contract. (This is the clause where you need to earn out all the books before getting royalties for any of them.) In general familiarize yourself with book contracts, and understand the pitfalls. Or consult a literary lawyer. Source: I'm the author of multiple tech books over…
What's the general difference in contract terms between tech books and novels? Or are they fairly similar?
Also curious about the differences in how you do the writing.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#104I'm currently an author with O'Reilly, writing about the design space. ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920038887.do ) I am in the final stages after over a year and half. I was in your position not too long ago and researched as much as I could before accepting, so I will skip things you will find in a quick Google search. Negotiating: 1. Everything is negotiable, remember that 2. Under promise on #pages, they…
One point there really resonantes with me as someone who reads a fair number of tech books. "5. Choose a topic that will sell in a year and half." makes it hard (I think) for books to be written about very fast moving technical topics (e.g. Docker/Kubernetes/CoreOS). By the time you've written the book, it will inevitably be out of date. The approach that publishers like Manning and O'Reilly take of publishing beta b…
I've co-authored some Spark books and while the first one is hella out of date - the second one which was written against the 1.X APIs is only somewhat out of date and still selling really well.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#105I'm currently an author with O'Reilly, writing about the design space. ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920038887.do ) I am in the final stages after over a year and half. I was in your position not too long ago and researched as much as I could before accepting, so I will skip things you will find in a quick Google search. Negotiating: 1. Everything is negotiable, remember that 2. Under promise on #pages, they…
> Negotiate on how many free books you can get to give away What's a realistic order-of-magnitude number there? 50? And do you have to agree not to sell them?
If you forget to negotiate with them, and you go with O'Reilly, they are really good at sending free books for book signings to conferences which can be a really great chance to both get the word out and meet people that care about the tech you wrote about.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#106I wrote "Using Docker" for O'Reilly recently. My thoughts: - I wouldn't bother with the advance. It was a pitiful amount of money and was paid in instalments that I constantly had to chase. Instead see if you can negotiate a better royalty rate (as your first book, I don't know if this will happen). Supposedly I was lucky to get advance at all, not sure how true that is. - Another commentor mentioned the free books t…
I'd like to second O'Reilly having a good infra setup - compared to pushing around word documents working with the O'Reilly tooling people is awesome. If you get stuck with their build or asciidoc they have a tools support alias which gets back to you fairly quickly compared to other publishers.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#107I wrote a technical book for Wiley. 12.5% royalties for paper sales. 25% for book. Negotiate the ebook rate. The main thing that surprised me (which shouldn't have) was the complete lack of marketing Wiley did. You write it, you find the tech editors, you edit it. They assign someone to you who basically bugs you to turn in chapters. I had the cover designed myself so it wouldn't suck. Then it comes out and you are t…
Is that 12.5% of the list price or 12.5% of the profits? E.g. if the list price $100, the publisher sells it wholesale for $45 and the printing cost is $10, will your royalty be $12.50 or $4.37=(12.5% of $35)?
12.5% of publisher's revenue. In this case, it's 12.5% of $45. Publisher eats manufacturing costs, which is why their percentage is higher.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#108I was a reviewer for a Packt book ( http://droppdf.com/v/UTl8X ). The review process was terrible, they ended up not taking my feedback into account and the book was published with lots of technical mistakes. The final book is essentially a random tutorial from pre-existing web content. Avoid them.
Yes, Packt is awful. Do you enjoy spending hours on the phone with overseas tech support employees who speak very little English, don't care about their jobs, and have no actual skills? Now just imagine that, but you're trying to edit a book with them, and you're doing it around their local office hours. That's what writing for Packt is like.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The content of some of their books is written by very capable technical folks. Sadly, being a techy does not make you a good writer. Especially when you're not a native English speaker and are writing in English. What's worse is that their review process seems to be worse than useless. Recently tried to read one of their books, which credited maybe 10 reviewers, and every other line had me cringing so hard it was unr…
Yep, I've recently read a Packt book and I found I think at least a hundred (!) of typos, grammatical errors etc. These kind of things give very bad evidence about the publisher, and (not always justly) indirectly also about the author, even if he is very competent technically. Better avoid this kind of publisher. I've read an HN thread a few months ago and there was a lot of folks, both readers and writers, complain…
I wrote a book for Packt (and later for O'Reilly -- much better!) and I still cringe when I think about people reading it. They gave me three months to write it, and it's been out for three years now, so code samples are slowly breaking as technology moves forward, and some of the content is badly out of date. The principles are good, and there are definitely some useful things in it, but, my god, what I wouldn't have given for a copy editor and someone to actually review the code. It was all written in MS Word, as well, which made formatting and editing a nightmare. Their editors actually put mistakes into the book. I think I took most of them out, but, like I said, their deadlines are nuts.
Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?
#110What is a fair, market-rate deal for a first-time technical author writing about a popular subject? You're going to be shocked and dismayed by the offer they give you. Let's get that out of the way now. This is the model: they'll tell you to not do it for the money, in exactly those words, prior to explaining to you terms which imply that they're not doing it for ~92.5% of the money. You will likely be offered someth…
Entirely agreed on your second point.
Regarding your first part, I must mention that The Pragmatic Programmers are the exception to this rule. They offer 50% of royalties which adds up fast.