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The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

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111–120 of 151 posts

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#111

We've published several books, and the author for our latest Vue book earned $20k on the opening weekend. The economics change completely if you self-publish or publish with a smaller firm that has marketing abilities (and better royalty rates). Self publishing is awesome because you keep all the money, but it takes years to build an audience. Honestly, writing the manuscript is the easy part. Building an audience, m…

I really hope you aren't the author of NGBook - genuinely one of the biggest over-hyped pieces of shit I have ever had the displeasure of reading a chapter in.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#112
post #105

> The contract stipulated that Kris and I own the copyright for the content, but O'Reilly has exclusive rights to use the content any way they see fit throughout the world now and in the future for the duration of the copyright. I'm a little confused by this. Can Justin and Kris use the content they own? Or does O'Reilly's exclusive use rights supersede their ownership?

I don’t know about O’Reilly’s contract but the one I’m familiar with provides for fairly generous reuse of content in blog posts, articles, etc. However, I very reasonably can’t just up and reprint the book or large sections thereof.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#113
I've self-published two books and my economics have been completely different. Since first publishing Mastering Modern Payments in 2013 I've grossed almost $75k directly from product sales. Of that, I've paid about 3% to Stripe and PayPal for credit card processing, a few thousand for server hosting, and another few thousand for design and editing work over the years.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#114

OK. Doesn't anyone else who read this now think, "Well gee why would I ever write a book then?" You could easily make $23 an hour as an entry-level server in a diner if you include tips.

That is absurdly high pay for a server, you'd be lucky to make half that in most places. I don't even make that much doing software development.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#115
post #14

I've been pitched to write books a few times, by editors at reputable technical publishers. (HN readers would recognize the names of the publishers.) One of them told me up front that I would be offered an advance of $8K, that it would take 3-6 months to write the book, and that I shouldn't count on earning back the advance. She was clear that the benefits of authorship were reputational. (The price wasn't why I turn…

I think I had the same publisher. Two books done in 2010 & 2011, same basic results. What's worse, once they hit the shelves they were already out of date. The publisher had no interest in a second edition. But, the books look aweseme on my resume/linkedin. Today, I'm on a career path I wouldn't be considered for if it wasn't for these projects.

What career path is that?

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#116

I've written a book with Manning (Grokking Algorithms) and had a good editor experience: I had 2 editors that stayed with me through the whole book. They gave me a ton of great advice -- I even asked one of them if they would like co-author credit, it was that good. Manning regularly scheduled technical reviews and readability reviews, and I got a lot of comments from those as well. I have also only written one book…

Would you recommend Manning to a first-time author?

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#117
post #76
post #4

Another payout of writing a technical book is that it pretty much solidifies you as an expert in the topic and can be a springboard leading to great job opportunities and things like paid offers to speak or teach. If I ever write a technical book, it won't be for the immediate monetary payout, it will be to solidify expert status in a topic.

Be careful what you pick. I've done a couple of projects (book, video course) because the opportunity presented itself. Then, at the end of the projects I either was burnt out on it, or wasn't in a career position to take on consulting around it. So, nice resume burnisher and proof I can finish something, but not a springboard.

I think this speaks more to differences between people than anything else. If 5-10 extra hours a week for 6-12 months burns you out on a topic, writing a 250+ page technical book is probably not a great use of your time if the finances alone don't make it worth it.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000/day is $125/hour, which is a standard hourly rate for software developers. I would expect authorhood/extreme-subject-matter-expert to yield at least a 2x premium.

> a standard hourly rate for software developers Maybe in SF or NYC, but even then I don't think $125/hr or $260K/year at 40 hours/week is "standard" even there.

$125 is pretty much the de facto rate regardless of location (give or take a small percentage). But you're missing several points in the equation that make that rate much much less than $260k/yr.

1. You're not differentiating between the rate that's charged and the rate that's paid to employees. I am billed out at $185/hr. I make a small fraction of that as an employee, even after benefits.

2. You're not including any time off - you're figuring 40.0 hours for 52 weeks straight which is ridiculous. US employees are much more likely to be 48-50 weeks. Europeans are at what, 20 weeks a year or something now? (I jest)

3. For consultants (who are not employees), if you want to bill 40.0 hours you're going to be working 60-70 when including all the marketing and admin work, or you're outsourcing that which eats into your base rate considerably.

4. When I was consulting a big reason why was freedom and time off. I billed $125/hr but made probably $50k/yr because I only worked 25-30 hours a week all in. That included all my marketing, proposals, billing, chasing invoices, and actual billed work. It was great seeing a direct financial impact to the amount of work I did, but also sucked because if you have no motivation for more than a few days that impacts you financially for weeks.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a standard hourly rate for software developers Maybe in SF or NYC, but even then I don't think $125/hr or $260K/year at 40 hours/week is "standard" even there.

I know of at least one consulting shop that bills corporate clients $250/hr for mostly general software development in SF. The employees only see about ~1/3 of that amount. As a bonafide expert with a significant addressable market (expertise isn’t valuable unless you’re solving problems people have) and a knack for self promotion, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear $500/hr in SF/NY. It really depends on who your client…

Not to mention it matters where the money's coming from.

If you just closed a $40M round of VC financing, $500/hr for a 1-week project ($20k?) from someone you know isn't crazy. If you're a bootstrapped company and that's 6 weeks of revenue it's not as easy of a decision even if you think the ROI is there.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically $1000+/day consulting rates. You still have to do the legwork of getting the gigs, but justifying those kinds of rates are much easier when you literally wrote the book on the subject of your contract. Having written it for a well known, respected, even iconic, publisher does a lot of the work here too, self publishing would have a lesser effect.

$1000/day is pretty standard, and might even be low for someone who has the expertise and communication skills required to write a book. Even if that person had not written one. Companies routinely pay agency rates this high.

Agency rates bring an entire agency, though. Speaking from experience, companies will pay other companies multiple thousands a day for software implementations without a second thought but typically will fight paying a single person $250/hr to do the same job (even if it's a 1-person job).
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