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The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

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Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#121

Post by pc86 »

jedberg wrote: post #64
JustinGarrison wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

author here Do you have examples on how you would correctly capitalize on this expertise? I put some things that have happened since writing the book in the outcomes section but so far they have all been free speaking engagements.

The free speaking engagements is the first step. After you do enough of those, you will get invited to international and big name conferences as a keynote speaker (if you're good at it). At that point, hiring managers will start contacting you about new jobs with big name companies, for big time salaries. That is where you get the leverage. You'll also start getting offers for paid speaking gigs for both public and p…

Oof sorry to hear about the bad luck with the book. Do you mind sharing the subject?

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#122

Post by pc86 »

anothergoogler wrote: post #100
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #24

I authored and co-authored some books. I wrote a book on Akka for Packt that has made maybe 5k. Packt is out of India and they have some different standards around topics and contents, but the experience wasn't much different from O'Reilly overall. And there was a mini book for O'Reilly that netted a couple k, mostly because of later sponsorship. Writing a book is a really tough experience. I found it taxing. It's in…

> Packt is out of India and they have some different standards around topics and content That they do. I pretty much won't buy a Packt book anymore, burned too many times. And it's shameful the way they astroturf Amazon reviews.

This is a shame, I hadn't looked too deeply into the content but everything looks high quality.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#123

Post by pc86 »

xrd wrote: post #88

I wrote a book for O'Reilly: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920043027.do This post is so accurate. I have nothing but good things to say about the O'Reilly staff. It didn't make a dent in my finances but was a good experience to understand the challenges in writing something like that. The most meaningful experience for me was when someone reading the early access version found me on the internet and sent excite…

How would you recommend someone with a limited audience go about becoming an O'Reilly author?

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#124

Post by jedberg »

pc86 wrote: post #121
jedberg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free speaking engagements is the first step. After you do enough of those, you will get invited to international and big name conferences as a keynote speaker (if you're good at it). At that point, hiring managers will start contacting you about new jobs with big name companies, for big time salaries. That is where you get the leverage. You'll also start getting offers for paid speaking gigs for both public and p…

Oof sorry to hear about the bad luck with the book. Do you mind sharing the subject?

This was many years ago. I was writing a book on cloud computing before it was a thing. But it became a thing in that one month. It all worked out though. I ended up editing AWS for Dummies later on, and my coauthors managed to use some of our content in other places.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#125

Post by actuallyalys »

scottinseattle wrote: post #73

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.

You could easily make $23 an hour as an entry-level server in a diner if you include tips.

I don't think this is true—the median pay for servers is $10 an hour in the U.S. [0] Even servers in areas with unusually high pay barely reach $23 an hour. [1]

With a median personal income in the United States of $31,000 [2], most people make significantly less than $23 an hour.

[0]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/waiters...

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes353031.htm Scroll down to "Top paying metropolitan areas for this occupation"

[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#126

Post by justboxing »

macintux wrote: post #15
jashmenn wrote: post #13

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…

Well, the other reason $400k in revenue was possible: you were writing about a popular JavaScript framework. There aren't many topics with such a wide audience.

> Well, the other reason $400k in revenue was possible: ........ There aren't many topics with such a wide audience.

OP mentions Ramit Sethi, so have to quote his post on this statement, it's called "The Shrug Effect"

https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/success-and-the-s...

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#127

Post by macintux »

justboxing wrote: post #126
macintux wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the other reason $400k in revenue was possible: you were writing about a popular JavaScript framework. There aren't many topics with such a wide audience.

> Well, the other reason $400k in revenue was possible: ........ There aren't many topics with such a wide audience. OP mentions Ramit Sethi, so have to quote his post on this statement, it's called "The Shrug Effect" https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/success-and-the-s...

I'm simply pointing out that "the reason" cited is not the sole reason. No amount of effort will turn a book on Factor or SML into $400k of revenue.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#128

Post by egonschiele »

pc86 wrote: post #116
egonschiele wrote: post #83

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?

Yes

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#129

Post by xrd »

pc86 wrote: post #123
xrd wrote: post #88

I wrote a book for O'Reilly: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920043027.do This post is so accurate. I have nothing but good things to say about the O'Reilly staff. It didn't make a dent in my finances but was a good experience to understand the challenges in writing something like that. The most meaningful experience for me was when someone reading the early access version found me on the internet and sent excite…

How would you recommend someone with a limited audience go about becoming an O'Reilly author?

In my case, I stumbled into it. I went to Google I/O and talked to someone who already had written several books for O'Reilly. He proposed the book to them long before I got involved. Honestly, the hacker in me thinks that finding a list of people who have already written for O'Reilly and then seeing if you can help them complete a book in progress might be a good way to get into the oreilly ecosystem.

I proposed a book 16 years ago to O'Reilly and the rejected the idea. So maybe just show up multiple times and you'll get lucky? I think I did.

But once I got "lucky" then I did have three years of hard work for very little money. Be prepared for that!

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#130

Post by badminton1 »

pc86 wrote: post #108
badminton1 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't approve of the "full stack" mindset, or the term. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but I am past that point now. The idea is that full stack engineers implement features "vertically" by maintaining various parts of a "stack" at the same time. Sounds good, but often the result is bad. A web frontend is very resilient, whereas backends are the complete opposite. If you apply the same mindset on both it better…

> A web frontend is very resilient, whereas backends are the complete opposite. If you apply the same mindset on both Even if I accept your premise (which I don't), nobody is suggesting you apply the same mindset to two different things. I consider myself a full stack developer, but if I had to pick one it would be back end as that's where I started, where my strengths lie, and if I never wrote another line of JavaSc…

I salute your approach to engineering but that's certainly not how employers view it.

I am not saying that frontend engineering is trivial. It clearly has many overlapping and non-overlapping requirements. But they non-overlapping part is large enough to require dedication and specialization.

DevOps and DBAs overlap with backend but it would be weird for a backend engineers to call themselves devops engineers or database administrators because of that. The latter suggest specialization.

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