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Writing a software book and making over $100k

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Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#21

Post by ChrisLomont »

hohenheim wrote: post #20
vladmihalcea wrote: post #2

I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.

You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

Content is easy to get for publishers, and they have to often invest significant time and money to get the book to market. They often take a risk on printing X copies, and they don't sell, the publisher eats the cost. You can say to just print on demand, but that is costlier per book. They often have to provide editors to clean up the book, do marketing through their channels, and promote the book.

Most authors don't do all this guy did. Most simply write the text and leave it there. Publishers do everything else this guy did to move the book.

(I've written parts of several books, and have received small royalty checks for well over a decade)

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#22

Post by pc86 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #18

As another point one could add "Write about a reasonably popular subject and write for beginners". From my own experience of analyzing popular content and people that have successfully built a large follower base (in tech) it seems that almost all of them produce content about subjects that a lot of people are interested in (e.g. Javascript, CSS, web development, basic Unix/Linux functionality) and target mostly begi…

Once you find someone willing to put in the level of work required (probably 80% of people simply will not work hard enough to finish), the most common mistake is targeting the advanced/experts in their field. That's great to flesh out your following, but if your goal is revenue, beginners are going to be the key to driving that. That doesn't necessarily mean actual beginners - you can write about microservices architecture for mid-level and advanced software developers, but target those who aren't familiar with microservices. They're beginners in that respect. You'll have 10x the revenue from a "Microservices 101" type product as you will from a product of similar length and quality talking about all the different ways to structure your messaging topics, for example.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#23

Post by atom-morgan »

hohenheim wrote: post #20
vladmihalcea wrote: post #2

I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.

You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

I don't understand it myself which is why I chose to self-publish. Very easy nowadays, even if you want to be on Amazon.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#24

Post by scarface74 »

xchaotic wrote: post #19

I consider this a success story similar to an NBA star making it. So if 100k is very successful in terms of computer book revenues, then I’d say money should not be the main motivation to do it, as there’s better, more reliable ways to earn money in the software industry - working for any SP500 company will easily get you the same amount of money in less than a year, more or less guaranteed. I know it’s not either or…

I’ll go a step further. I agree going through all of the trouble writing and promoting a book for only a $100K seems like a lot of work. Especially when you consider the risk adjusted return.

Anyone that smart could make more than that - guaranteed just by consulting.

I’m most familiar with the Apple related ecosystem, but there you see people with a following making a money via optional subscriptions (Accidental Tech Podcast,Upgrade), subscription only podcasts (Dithering by John Gruber and Ben Thompson), or daily newsletters (Ben Thompson).

If he is not doing just for the money, then go for it. Another example is John Siracusa of ATP. He wrote large reviews of each version of OS X for the first 10 years that literally took months, did much more than his contract required and admitted that if he actually accounted for every hour he worked on it, it paid much less than minimum wage.

One more mention is Horace Deidu. He got his start as an analyst, started podcasting and now hosts paid workshops and conferences.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#25

Post by dcsilver »

I've bought a handful of software and technology books from O'Reilly and had mixed experiences.

One of them - The Art of SEO, feels like a treasure trove of wisdom and experience. Another that I won't name, but is about a popular programming language, feels more or less like like a print copy of the online documentation that's available for free, with very little value-add.

Shop with care, and if you're going to write, write with purpose and real value.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#26

Post by pc86 »

paul_f wrote: post #8
vladmihalcea wrote: post #2

I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.

If everything in the book was also in your blog posts, didn't that dampen sales of the book? This is my fear, if I give it away, no one will buy it.

Many in this space have made good revenue by literally just packaging blog posts together with a nice cover and no additional editing. Maybe a small intro for each group of related posts.

If folks really like your content, they'll often pay for the book just to support you.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#27

Post by vladmihalcea »

scarface74 wrote: post #24
xchaotic wrote: post #19

I consider this a success story similar to an NBA star making it. So if 100k is very successful in terms of computer book revenues, then I’d say money should not be the main motivation to do it, as there’s better, more reliable ways to earn money in the software industry - working for any SP500 company will easily get you the same amount of money in less than a year, more or less guaranteed. I know it’s not either or…

I’ll go a step further. I agree going through all of the trouble writing and promoting a book for only a $100K seems like a lot of work. Especially when you consider the risk adjusted return. Anyone that smart could make more than that - guaranteed just by consulting. I’m most familiar with the Apple related ecosystem, but there you see people with a following making a money via optional subscriptions (Accidental Tec…

The book made more than 100k as it's still selling pretty well. In fact, the sales have increased over time, even if the book is now 5 years old.

I keep on updating it and will release a second edition soon.

The marketing effort is not just for the book. It also helps me sell:

- video courses

- on-site training

- online training and workshops

- find consulting opportunities

- subscription licenses for a software product I created, Hypersistence Optimizer, https://vladmihalcea.com/hypersistence-optimizer/

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#28

Post by samastur »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #21
hohenheim wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

Content is easy to get for publishers, and they have to often invest significant time and money to get the book to market. They often take a risk on printing X copies, and they don't sell, the publisher eats the cost. You can say to just print on demand, but that is costlier per book. They often have to provide editors to clean up the book, do marketing through their channels, and promote the book. Most authors don't…

We both seem to have direct experience of working with a publisher, but I think you are overstating the effort of most publishers these days. Too many books, even from reputable publishers, are of fairly low quality, which as a reader bothers me even more than stuff like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/markos/49564386913/in/datepost...

Also, I don't see why them taking on a risk of printing upfront should be offloaded on the author through smaller fee.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#29

Post by wyldfire »

hohenheim wrote: post #20
vladmihalcea wrote: post #2

I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.

You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

Historically, publishers take on the cost of marketing and printing. Printing copies of a book demonstrates their capital investment in the work and that helps unlock distributors, retailers. Often publishers would supply editing and formatting/publication services too.

Now, for ebooks, the marginal cost of "printing" is close to zero. But editing and marketing are still expensive. I think there's a lot of momentum towards preserving the historical royalties even if the business has changed.

The music industry seems to have made this leap to electronic distribution (near exclusively in their case). If royalties have been upset in that industry then we should probably expect something similar for writers.

Re: Writing a software book and making over $100k

#30

Post by asicsp »

xchaotic wrote: post #19

I consider this a success story similar to an NBA star making it. So if 100k is very successful in terms of computer book revenues, then I’d say money should not be the main motivation to do it, as there’s better, more reliable ways to earn money in the software industry - working for any SP500 company will easily get you the same amount of money in less than a year, more or less guaranteed. I know it’s not either or…

>money should not be main motivator for writing a book.

I know my case is an extreme corner case, but I did finally try my hand at writing a book to make money. Long story short, I left my job, was living on my savings, tried a few things, etc. The only active earning came via 1/2 workshops I conducted at my college. I started maintaing materials for those workshops and expanded it on my own interest and tried to get donations. But no one did (GitHub didn't have sponsors at that time).

Finally, as a sort of last ditch effort before being forced to start working a job again, I tried my hand at converting my materials into a book. I had been working to convert "Think Python" to "Think Ruby", so that gave a bit of experience and confidence as well. Second book gave an initial sale of $250+ (enough to pay two months of my expenses), so I've continued with it.

With the pandemic, my workshops have dried up. Fortunately, I have 6 books now and looks like I'll comfortably cover my expenses this year. My monthly salary from 6 years back when I left the job would've covered my current yearly expenses, but I'm unlikely to go back to working like that again.

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