Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

I've written a book, on publisher's request. It helped that I had about 7 years of experience as a freelance writer for one of their well established IT magazines.

While others in the thread have already stated the obvious (don't think of doing it for money; negotiate everything; under promise, over deliver etc...) - there are a few things you should be aware of as a first-time book author.

1: It will take a LOT longer than you ever thought possible. For every page of final product, you will have written 3-4 pages of text.

2: It's a full-time job. Expect to spend 5-6 hours a day, just writing.

3: The workflow between you and your editor is crucial. Treat the book the same way you would treat a complex software project - your editor will want regular progress reports, and you want to provide work-in-progress manuscript revisions or chapters. A good editor is going to send back lots of editorial comments, questions, requests for expanding (or sometimes contracting) on varying topics and so on. Approach this the same way you would approach a very thorough code review.

3b: Ask to meet in person with your editor before you sign the contract. The two of you have to be able to work together over written media.

4: You will learn a lot about how to use written and spoken language. You may want to consider the entire project an opportunity for an extremely intensive course on written communications.

5: Before you embark on the project, find out what activity helps you relax. Then find a way to record audio. When you feel blocked, take up the activity but keep the audio recording device at hand. When your mind comes unhinged and ideas pop up, record them immediately.

6: Don't even try to write your book "in order". Focus on one or two chapters at a time, and think of them as 90% independent results. The time to tie the chapters together comes towards the end of the project, as you and your editor realise that a previously "logical" chapter order may not work after all. Leave yourself some wiggle room to make the chapter shuffle easier to handle.

And because we in engineering discipline are even more likely to suffer from existentialism...

7: Do your best to maintain an emotional distance. You are not your book, and your value as a human being is not dictated by the progress of writing or the (lack of) success of the published book.

Basically, writing a book is easy. You sit down, open your veins, and pour the blood out.

P.S. Having an ISBN to your name is one hell of a CV item. But don't ever imagine that you're doing this to buff up your Publications section.

Depends. I find sufficient quantities of money to be pretty motivating as well as quite useful. I don't have any problem with the satisfaction that comes from teaching or with egoboo but it's hard for me to justify the huge amount of work that goes into a book based on those non-monetary things alone.

As has been remarked elsewhere, the monetary rewards don't need to come from royalties. Books are quite valuable as validation for people who make income from other sources--and therefore help support consulting and other income streams.

I recently wrote a book for Packt (ASP.NET Core 1.0 High Performance - https://unop.uk/book).

I won't go into exact numbers, but you can expect an advance of around 1000 GBP (obviously, if you live outside of the UK then this is worth less now). This is paid in instalments, as you progress through writing the book.

Royalties will be around 15%, but you will need to pay back the advance before you see any of this. There will also be a minimum threshold before anything is paid out, otherwise it will be rolled over. You won't get any visibility of how well your book is selling apart from the quarterly accounts.

I don't think you can value writing a technical book solely on the direct financial return. You could probably make more in a week of contracting than you will see for your six months of effort in writing a book.

Look at it as more of an investment in marketing your personal brand. It can open doors to higher paid jobs and better contracting work. If you enjoy education (both learning and teaching) then you can look at it as a virtuous endeavour even if it doesn't pay well. As long as you go in with your eyes open to this then you won't be disappointed.

It's not normally a problem, but be careful about any lock-in on options for future works. You may wish to switch publishers after the book.

Be prepared for a very low tech process. Depending on where you work now, writing a book may be much less sophisticated than what you do to write code. The quality over time curve will not always go up and it is quite a complex oscillating wave function. :)

I may write more about this on my blog if anyone is interested. I'll also be at the London .NET User Group tonight if anyone wants to pick my brains or see a copy of the book.

Edit: LDNUG link - https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/8274-security-basics-and-un...

Edit 2: Show HN for the book on Amazon UK (cheaper because of weak GBP) if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12121133.

Happy to take questions.

This. But keep in mind that books generate consulting gigs. My first book probably earned $4,000 in royalties over the last six years. But I got a $10K speaking gig in Columbia almost immediately and a three year engagement in Australia at $24K/year not to mention business class seats to Sydney once a year.

100 to 300 tends to be reasonable