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Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

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31–40 of 67 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#31
I can't speak to the people writing books on coding, etc., but I have written a lot of product documentation and am thinking about doing it full time as an independent consultant.

The small startups where I have worked have had woefully bad documentation. Developers and support reps never have time or want to write it. I would say the most useful thing I have done for these companies has been to set them up with a basic Zendesk account and just start writing articles to answer the most basic support issues and how-to guides.

I have found these topics to be not very prone to political word-smithing. People are just grateful for the documentation to be written. The company word smiths and bullst artists would rather fight over the copy for the front page of the website than type up "Troubleshooting CentOS Client Installation". It's uncontroversial stuff.

You would have to offer a turnkey solution (set up a Zendesk or Confluence knowledge base for them, perhaps as a value-added reseller), propose a list of articles to be written, then knock it out in a couple weeks, with add-on work to keep the documents fresh with future releases.

Your sweet spot would be companies with 25 employees or fewer who don't have the money to bring in a full time technical writer.

I don't think you could make F-U money, but you could do much of it remotely, and it would be less stressful than other types of work. Your clientele would have to come largely based on personal reference.

Curious if others think this is viable...

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#32
It is hard to find work, I've applied to technical writing jobs only to not hear back from them. Jobs that usually pay $100 per article you write for them on a blog.

I've tried self-publishing books, but they don't sell. I can't afford to market them. If you build up a lot of social network followers you can promote your books and blog links to them.

I had websites but they are down now because I couldn't afford to keep them up. It is really hard to get noticed and your writing and grammar has to be near perfect.

I am writing a book on technology trends, but as soon as I write a chapter it is obsolete. For example I was writing about Windows 8.1, Mac OSX 10.9 and others and new versions came out and changed how they worked. I was writing about the operating system wars between commercial companies and FOSS projects. It changes so fast that what I write is obsolete before I can get it ready to publish.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#34
I work on Developer Relations at Google. My team alone employs ~30 full time Technical Writers in Mountain View, San Francisco, and Kirkland. These 30 are largely responsible for writing developers.google.com and developers.android.com. There are a few hundred at Google all told.

If you're interested: samstern [at] google

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#37
post #30
post #25

I'm a technical writer at Fastly and a published author with No Starch Press. I've worked full time as a technical writer since 2006. It's a great career and I highly recommend it. If you have a technical background and you've coauthored a book, you already have what it takes to find full time work as a technical writer. There are really two ways into this field. You start with a background in English or professional…

If I can ask...what do you make as a technical writer relative to what you could be making if you were an average person doing the actual technical job, e.g. what is the work and wage like to write about JavaScript as opposed to being a front-end developer at the average tech company?

The ratio, from knowing the approximate range of what my technical writer friends make, is probably around 50-75% (depending on experience).

However, technical writers who write books can share in an income stream, an advantage in the long term.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#38
I've had fairly good success with my books on math and physics. It's not a living yet, but definitely helps with the bills. Amazon (via CreateSpace) is by far my best channel, though when I can bring traffic to the book's website I have decent conversions too. The mailing list works great, though I'm hesitant to milk it as I don't want to spam my readers.

To reiterate patio11's comments, make sure you run the business (80% marketing + 20% pushing the book to distribution channels), as this will give you very interesting margins, like 45% of the list price. In comparison, if you were to write for an established publishing company, you'll get I totally recommend it as a career option, though keep in mind writing a quality book takes a lot of time, like a year per book... Feel free to email me if you need further advice (or a LaTeX template). Be sure to also check out https://github.com/softcover/softcover Michael Hartl's kick-ass ePub/mobi production toolchain.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#39
post #4

I am part-time author of books and articles from IT area. Nowadays I am writing my third book. Article take me just a few hours during evening. Books around 250 pages takes ma around one year, written mainly during evenings and nights (my wife is getting insane from this). In regards to money...no, you can't pay your mortgage from it. In regards to fun .. yes, it is fun, usually I learn a lot with every book. In rega…

My uncle is a technical writer (full-time job) and it certainly pays his mortgage.

From my experience writing articles for magazines, documentation, technical analysis on daily basis might be enough for your bills.

But writing books (if it's not bestseller) isn't so highly evaluated. You receive only 8-15 % (depends on contract) from final book price.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to live off technical writing?

#40
UK-based full-time employed tech writer here. Been shaping my experience towards that magic 50% programming (Java, JavaScript, Python) and 50% writing. Current gig pays well but doesn't offer the amount of programming I would like. I've been a freelancer (10 years) before, and it's a little feast-or-famine, but averages out at least equivalently to being employed, with the added bonus that you usually get decent, long breaks between contracts. Various UK government-based initiatives (e.g. IR35, recent dividend legislation) have slightly taken the lustre off the freelancing lifestyle, but not so much that I wouldn't reconsider it for the right kind of work.

I've been seriously considering some outreach to young startups who wouldn't need a full-time writer. Great docs really help to distinguish great software - would Django have become so mainstream if its docs weren't so good?

Edit: typo

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