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

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

#51

Post by swalberg »

I've written/cowritten 3 books and a whole lot of articles over the past ~15 years on a freelance basis. Most of the good work came through an agency, StudioB, though I had pitched magazines and other places from time to time on my own.

My experience is that a lot of the good sources of ad-hoc work have dried up. That's not to say there is nothing now, but it's not the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel it was a few years ago. The demand has gone up and down over the years so I'm sure it'll be back.

As you've seen it's a lot of fun. I always treated it as a way to get other people to pay for me to learn the stuff I would normally have done in my spare time anyway. The money was good for the time invested, but I make far more just working a day job.

If I wanted to make an income from it, I'd be finding a company or two to attach myself to rather than piecework.

I've found that the industry is very focused on your portfolio, so continue to build upon that.

Also, be very nice to the editors you work with. They provide a lot of feedback to the people making the decisions, and no one likes a prima donna.

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

#52

Post by mooreds »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #29

Not sure if you are strictly interested in branching out on your own, but if you are interested in writing at a startup, DigitalOcean has an amazing team of writers, and is currently hiring Technical Writers https://www.digitalocean.com/company/careers#technical-write... Disclaimer: I work at DO!

They didn't mention a salary range in the job posting. Us that something you can share?

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

#53

Post by mcone »

p8952 wrote: post #46
mcone wrote: 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…

>You start with a background in English or professional writing and learn the technology, or you can start with a computer science degree or something similar and learn how to write. Could you please recommend some good resources for learning to write, in the context of technical writing or more generally?

Different people will give you different answers, but I always advise people to do three things: study writing samples, find mentors and nurture relationships with them, and practice writing on your own.

The first item is really easy. Just go out and find companies that have documentation that you like. You'll probably find you like the way some technology companies write docs -- I personally like the documentation provided by Heroku and Apple -- but you can find good documentation in other places too. Study these docs! Read them again and again. Try to to soak it up like a sponge. After a while you'll start noticing patterns in how they use language and how they organize the information. Just as important, of course, is studying documentation that you don't like. Try to figure out why it doesn't work and then avoid making those mistakes in your own documentation.

Finding mentors is a little more difficult. I cold emailed several authors back when I was started out and almost all of them responded and provided a lot of help. Owen Linzmayer, an author at No Starch Press, responded with this advice: "The most important thing to remember about technical writing is that the goal is not necessarily to be understood, but rather to avoid misunderstanding. As such, consistency and clarity are paramount, and you should never assume your reader has the knowledge you possess. I try to make sure to tell readers not only how to do something, but why. That way they are not just following instructions and learning by rote, but rather, they're building their understanding of the system you're explaining, and perhaps can devise solutions to problems you haven't covered." I also emailed author Robin Williams, and she invited me out to lunch. She was kind enough to have me do some ghost writing with her on a book at Peachpit Press. You need these kind of breaks to learn the ropes and get into a position where you can author books and work in the industry full time.

Obviously practice is really important. The best thing to do is probably create or contribute to some kind of blog or open source guide about something you know. There are plenty of them out there. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python (http://docs.python-guide.org/) comes to mind. Keep working at it. It's frustrating and difficult work, but you'll get better over time. In many ways learning to write good technical documentation is just as difficult as learning to code.

Another thing you'll want to do is find a good style guide. Microsoft has one, as does Apple. Apple's is available for free: https://help.apple.com/asg/mac/2013/ASG_2013.pdf

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

#54

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

I used to do some of this, and have a few books out.

It's an incredibly varied field, with a lot of different routes into it. The main markets are:

Print magazines

Online magazines/blogs/sites

Formal corporate technical writing

Mainstream tech publishing

DIY tech publishing

They all have different requirements, schedules, and working relationships.

The first two are probably the easiest to get into. If you have no experience, write a couple of polished sample pieces, and then start contacting editors with ideas that match the magazine/blog. Send in the samples when they ask for them. Mention the Python book too. If you can build a relationship and are good, you will get regular work.

Beware - good writing is harder than it looks. You have to be accurate, concise, and entertaining as well as informative. You may also have to be fast. Payment varies from not much at all to - exceptionally - high four figures at the very top end for high profile journalism.

Formal tech writing is a very specific skill and it's hard to get a job in it without some previous experience and/or a basic qualification. I've never done it so I don't know how to get into it.

Mainstream publishing - list the publishers (there aren't many in tech), find the commissioning editors, and email them with a couple of suggestions for books. Mention the Python book. If you get interest you will probably get an advance - high four to very low five figures is usual for niche tech, maybe double that for consumer tech. Don't accept a project that offers less, because it won't be worth the time. Formatting and editing for print can be torturously specific, so it's not so fun from that POV.

DIY - Leanpub is a popular platform. So is Createspace. Marketing will kill you, so you'll have to do a lot of it. Putting up a marketing site is not enough. Email lists are your friend.

Generally writing doesn't pay nearly as well as coding. I did it for a while after burning out on writing too many projects in assembler in the late 80s and early 90s. It was great for a period, and I had a couple of years where I could have lived off royalty payments. The market now is much broader but much shallower - many more opportunities, but mostly they don't pay nearly as well.

Like other people, I've sometimes used mainstream pub as a way to get paid to learn. You have to pay that back with a book, but it's not a bad deal compared to not getting paid to learn.

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

#55

Post by mcone »

danso wrote: post #30
mcone wrote: 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?

I think wallflower is right: Technical writers generally get paid less than what developers make. But every company is different. At Compose.io, for example, I think it could be more of a blended position, which is to say that you could be writing documentation and contributing to the codebase [1]. There may not be much of a pay gap at companies like that.

There are also other benefits. Technical writing positions are generally extremely low stress jobs where you have ample time to finish your work, learn new technologies, etc. And as I mentioned before, many of these positions are remote, so you have the opportunity to live in places with low costs of living.

[1] https://compose.io/jobs/#technical-content-creator

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

#56

Post by bliti »

mooreds wrote: post #50
bliti wrote: post #45

I spent about a year writing technical documentation for clients as an add on service to consulting. It was a really nice experience. It was the main source of income for some months. People would try and hire me for writing but I wanted to focus on code. One trick I learned is to find not well documented projects or APIS and write tutorials about them. Then turn those tutorials into cookbooks. That sold well directl…

Hmmm. Very interesting. Mind if I ask a few questions? Would you publicize the tutorials and cookbooks to the public (via a blog or project email list) before you sold the cookbooks to the companies? How many of these did you do? What was the level of effort for each of the cookbooks? What did the company do with the cookbook? Put it up on their website?

>Would you publicize the tutorials and cookbooks to the public (via a blog or project email list) before you sold the cookbooks to the companies?

I did not (only did it a handful of times). Although it would be the smart thing to do. It would put you in an advantageous position to market the book to all interested parties.

>How many of these did you do?

About five in total. None of them were ultra-long and detailed cookbooks. They were short, but to the point. Less than a hundred pages.

>What was the level of effort for each of the cookbooks?

It was rather easy because cookbooks don't require a lot of explanation. They were just me showing people how to do things with whatever technology. If the cookbook was for an API I already had a formula. Start with authentication and work my way through the endpoints. Including code examples for every step in various programming languages (mostly Java, PHP, and Python). Super easy.

What did the company do with the cookbook? Put it up on their website?

They would either put it on their website or distribute it as a PDF. Though all these companies are now dead except one. And that last one did a complete rewrite of their stuff.

Overall, the whole thing was fun and easy money. I've been working with technical documentation since the 80s so it came kind of naturally. I stopped doing it because I wanted to code more. But I would not mind doing it again someday. I'm actually working on some books myself, but those are a scheduled for much later this year. :)

Best of luck!

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

#57

Post by ghaff »

swalberg wrote: post #51

I've written/cowritten 3 books and a whole lot of articles over the past ~15 years on a freelance basis. Most of the good work came through an agency, StudioB, though I had pitched magazines and other places from time to time on my own. My experience is that a lot of the good sources of ad-hoc work have dried up. That's not to say there is nothing now, but it's not the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel it was a few years ago…

In general, I think it's fair to say that freelance writing has gotten tougher. A lot of the people who used to have full-time journalism gigs are now freelancing in various ways (or working for companies doing evangelism, editing, etc.) I'd also agree that the people I know who probably make the most money directly from writing get most of their business from a small group of clients.

However, for the vast majority of people I know who write computer-oriented books (including myself), it's essentially a branding exercise to support either their full-time employment or a consulting business of some sort.

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

#58

Post by karlb »

p8952 wrote: post #46
mcone wrote: 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…

>You start with a background in English or professional writing and learn the technology, or you can start with a computer science degree or something similar and learn how to write. Could you please recommend some good resources for learning to write, in the context of technical writing or more generally?

I write for a living (conversion copywriting). My favorite resources are all at the bottom of this article my colleagues and I wrote:

http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/writing/

I absolutely love the first half of the one by Stephen Wilbers (Keys to Great Writing):

http://www.amazon.com/Keys-Great-Writing-Stephen-Wilbers/dp/...

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

#59

Post by yxlx »

vijayr wrote: post #23
JacobAldridge wrote: post #11

My memory may be a little hazy, but check out /u/GrinchofSR on Reddit for someone who has spun technical writing into a long term location independent career - and not the 'it costs me $1,000/mth to squat here' Digital Nomad, I recall him sharing average months of around $20,000 income which is 'making a living' by pretty much every standard.

that user doesn't seem to exist anymore on reddit

I made a web search for that name but didn't find it. I think parent commenter must have misspelled it.

I found something else, though, through that search: http://www.nackerhews.com/news. Be sure to follow the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism at the bottom (or here where I just repeated it) to understand what it's all about.

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

#60

Post by mathattack »

I'm not a technical writer, but I've been at a few firms that have hired them. A couple observations:

1 - There's an enormous gap between great technical writing and so-so technical writing, but it is hard to get paid for the great work unless you're working for yourself. (Hard for a company to pay one technical writer $50K and another $100K, but they can pay $100/hour part-time vs $50K full-time to someone who can do clearer work in a quarter the time)

2 - Many people write books with secondary agendas (to promote their day-career) so it's hard to just make money off the book. A well-written book is a fantastic calling card, though, and beats any resume.

3 - For better or worse, some of the coolest folks in tech are the writers. I don't know why. Perhaps because they're in it for interest rather than getting rich?

4 - I don't know any dabblers who have made a career of it, but I know several who have said "This is who I am" and have made a decent living.

How to start? Start writing a blog! Then share your portfolio. Meet people until you find one that has a need. It's a different field than engineering where every company has holes. It's more like there's 0 or 1 spot, and you want to be top of mind to someone who has 1.

Good luck!

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