Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

Will second the "look for good rates on e-books" People often underestimate income from ebooks, but it's huge. I was offered a $5,000 advance with 10% of ebook sales, or no advance with 25% of ebook sales, and it was one of the best decisions of my life to take 25% with no advance. For the past year, I've received an average monthly royalty check of $3k (albeit before taxes, which I have to pay quarterly), with most of the income from ebooks. Not only do I earn a higher royalty rate for them, but the "wholesale" price from the publisher for print books is smaller than you think it would be (not shelf price), and my ebook/print book sales are about half and half.

I also get a few hundred dollars a month from licensing it out through Safari -- each page read through the platform earns me money, which they calculate through some wizardry (all revenue, divided by all page reads, times the page reads your book got, times 25%). So really think hard about the royalty rates for online access, licensing (the book's been purchased by five international translators, and each one is another $500-$1000 for me, on top of 5% of the revenue from foreign translation sales). Those things really add up.

I wrote a book (https://www.manning.com/books/relevant-search). Considerations: are you willing to write the book assuming that you will effectively make nothing in direct proceeds from the book? (Close to true.) The upside from a book is in monetizing on it indirectly. For instance, as a "though leader" you'll be able to garner a higher salary at your next job or you'll be able to ask for higher rates for consulting. But the catch here is that you've got to be willing to put yourself out there, otherwise it's a nice bullet point on your resume.

Oh yeah - and don't underestimate the time and effort involved. (I know you mentioned it in your post, but still.) A due date, even if fairly far off, looms ominous. For a year you'll have trouble relaxing and having fun because you know you should be getting work done on the book. You won't have weekend back for quite some time.

Would I do it again? Yep. Will I do it again? Nope. (At least not likely :D )

Good luck!

Indeed. They contacted me to provide technical review on a Chef book that was factually incorrect in so many places that I could see no way it could go to print.

After turning in the review of the first chapter I was told this wasn't the kind of feedback they were looking for. Far as I know, the book was published - factual inaccuracies and all.

Hi, I'm the co-author of a book by PacktPub.

Throwing some incoherent thoughts together:

I was approach by PacktPub, and I did a bit of Google'ing before I started, to check it wasn't a scam but didn't find a great deal of advice. I really wish I had the good sense to ask on HN, like yourself, before I picked up the contract. I've been meaning to write it up on a blog, when I put mine together (ironically considering the subject matter of the book).

So for me I knew it was never about the money, I was intending at least not to take the advance (which is actually a kind of loan that comes out from your royalties), it was about having my name on a book, but in the end it was so much work I figured I deserved it at the very least.

The main thing that shocked me was how much time it would take to do, in the end 18 months and that was from the half way point that my co-author had got it to, to the point where I gave up with it.

It should be noted I'm not a free-lance developer, I have a full time job so all this work had to be done in my spare time. This was not well understood by the publisher even though I explained it often, but deadlines came and went without any feedback. I was asked to make Skype calls during my working hours, never times that inconvenienced them, just when it inconvenienced myself. I believe they were based in India so calling in my evenings would be 2am or so for them, but I wouldn't be able to write their book at all if I was fired.

I went though 3 (or 4) different 'project leads' who always told me the end was just around the corner. There was no outline as to how much work was involved, the contract stipulated chapters and some re-drafts, but there is WAY more effort in it than that. No one seemed to have a coherent view of what was going on.

In the time I wrote the book and it being published, I got engaged, and married, and the thing that really annoyed me, and the point where I just stopped responding to them, is that I was still being contacted while on my honeymoon after being explicitly asked not to, that and I wasted my time 2 days before my wedding writing the pre-amble that turned out had already been written by my co-author after I was told it was just one last thing (again).

As for the quality of the book? I just don't know. There are errata which get sent to me, but I am done writing books for a very long time.

I wrote an introductory Python book for No Starch, Python Crash Course. Bill Pollock, the owner of no starch, invited me to consider writing a book after I gave a lightning talk at PyCon a few years ago. Writing for no starch was a really good experience, and I'd do it again.

I feel fortunate that my first writing experience was with no starch. They take each book seriously, and work hard to craft a high-quality book. They have their own editors on staff, and they asked me to recommend a technical editor. They trust their authors to know their field well enough to identify an appropriate technical editor. I am deeply grateful to my technical editor, Kenneth Love. Kenneth has a deep knowledge of Python and a strong background in teaching. He caught many technical issues, and we had numerous conversations about how best to present certain concepts to new programmers.

The writing process was clearly defined. I drafted a chapter, got feedback from a no starch editor, and then sent the chapter off for technical review. After that it went to a copy editor, and then the chapter went through a final layout process. It was my responsibility to respond to feedback at every stage. Every so often Bill would read through the chapters and offer feedback as well. At first this process felt like a bit much; in the end I really appreciated the attention to detail, and I can't imagine writing for a publisher that doesn't have a rigorous approach like this.

I committed to this work for several reasons. Writing at the introductory level is a little different financially than writing about a niche technical topic. The market for an introductory Python book is much larger than the market for just about anything else. I think of the audience for technical books as a pyramid; introductory books target the base of that pyramid. Any topic that requires background knowledge is higher up the pyramid, and the opportunity to make a meaningful number of sales is lower.

I teach high school math and science. Writing an introductory technical book has opened many doors, and I don't feel stuck in teaching at all now. I can write more, and I can easily shift to teaching CS full time if I want to. Just the process of completing a quality book has taught me a lot about following through on the less enjoyable but necessary aspects of a long-term business project.

Here's the no starch description of Python Crash Course: https://www.nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse

Here's the Amazon page. I was terrified to read the first reviews on Amazon when the book came out, but now I really enjoy reading what people have to say about something I put so much effort and thought into: https://amazon.com/Python-Crash-Course-Project-Based-Introdu...