Writing a software book and making over $100k • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

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?

> how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

I had no problem accepting just 10% of my book sales - without going through a traditional publisher, it would have been impossible for me to get my book carried by physical book stores. Of course, this was 10 years ago, when physical book stores were more common; this may not be such a consideration today.

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

#52

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #49

chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone that smart could make more than that - guaranteed just by consulting. I'd have absolutely no idea where to even start consulting, or whether I'd have any aptitude for it. I'd be very surprised if anyone anywhere wanted to pay me $100k for consulting! But I could probably write a book. People have strengths in different areas.

Yes you could write a book, but no one would buy it or even hear about it unless you put in the work that he did to make a name for himself. By the time you established yourself as an expert in the field like he did, consulting opportunities would open themselves up. I just have a very small network compared to him, haven’t tried to market myself and just through word of mouth, I’ve had a couple of people asking me a…

It all tends to be interconnected. A number of people ask me for advice based in part on the last book I wrote. I'm happy to give them a free hour phone call as it's sort of good ambassadorship associated with my day job. I could do a side consulting business in the space but don't really have an interest so I give them the name of one or two people I know who do have consulting businesses if they want to dig deeper.

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

#53

Post by vladmihalcea » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #46

vladmihalcea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prod…

That makes sense. From what I’ve seen, most authors don’t write books just to make money from the books themselves but as the center of the “flywheel”.

I manged to get some training engagements because someone in the company read the book and liked it.

So, it can surely help you sell other services. However, this Twitter thread aimed to point out that a book can also make good money, not just be an exposure mechanism.

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

#54

Post by vladmihalcea » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

ngcc_hk wrote: post #48

Seems to be genuine. In fact for 1 year whilst $100k is quite a lot but as he said, he may be able to get that in consultancy. But I guess the satisfaction (if successful) would be very different.

I did't make 100k in one year. It took several years to get to this amount, but it didn't stop there either.

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

#55

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #50

scarface74 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you could write a book, but no one would buy it or even hear about it unless you put in the work that he did to make a name for himself. By the time you established yourself as an expert in the field like he did, consulting opportunities would open themselves up. I just have a very small network compared to him, haven’t tried to market myself and just through word of mouth, I’ve had a couple of people asking me a…

> Yes you could write a book, but no one would buy it or even hear about it Lol thanks for the attack on my writing skill and ability to promote myself! Being an expert in a field and being able to write a book doesn't mean you're any good at consulting . That's my point. It's a different skill.

That’s not what I said at all. I in fact said just the opposite. The process he took to promote himself so his book would sell is the same process it would take to promote himself as a consultant.

Also, consulting really involves only a few things:

- marketing yourself

- being able to listen to people and figure out their needs

- being a good communicator and being able to explain concepts well.

- being technical sound enough to solve the problem.

- being disciplined enough to be a consistent worker.

Most of which overlaps with being a successful technical author.

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

#56

Post by vladmihalcea » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #47

hnick wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unreasonable that for many people, a publisher with experience and an existing distribution network & agreements, perceived authority as a "real" publisher, and a marketing budget and plan will result in 10x the sales. I've had a friend self publish in another industry and getting books shipped around the world and in stores is a hassle as a lone operator - and that's if people even know you exist.…

>perceived authority as a "real" publisher, With certain professional books publishing with a known publisher definitely gives the book a certain "gravitas" (deserved or not) that it may not have if you independently publish. And if you're mostly writing a book to burnish your professional reputation (as is often the case) rather than to make money, that may be a pretty good tradeoff even if you could have made more…

I was approached by two "real" publishers asking me whether I want to publish my book with them.

I had declined both of them as they only offered 10% royalty rates.

I didn't have to pay for editing. I did everything myself: writing, diagrams, proofreading, marketing.

In fact, I decided to self-publish it after reading this article from Antonio Goncalves about his Java EE 7 book:

https://antoniogoncalves.org/2014/09/16/the-uncensored-java-...

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

#57

Post by distalx » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

vladmihalcea wrote: post #2

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

Thanks for sharing your process. it is very insightful. How did you found out that JAVA is your niche?

edit: This might sound vague, I'm curious because I'm trying to figure out my own niche.

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

#58

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

vladmihalcea wrote: post #56

ghaff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>perceived authority as a "real" publisher, With certain professional books publishing with a known publisher definitely gives the book a certain "gravitas" (deserved or not) that it may not have if you independently publish. And if you're mostly writing a book to burnish your professional reputation (as is often the case) rather than to make money, that may be a pretty good tradeoff even if you could have made more…

I was approached by two "real" publishers asking me whether I want to publish my book with them. I had declined both of them as they only offered 10% royalty rates. I didn't have to pay for editing. I did everything myself: writing, diagrams, proofreading, marketing. In fact, I decided to self-publish it after reading this article from Antonio Goncalves about his Java EE 7 book: https://antoniogoncalves.org/2014/09/1…

Everyone should obviously do things as they individually see fit. But, in my experience, publishing something without someone else doing at least copyediting/proofreading tends to lead to a lot of errors and is certainly not something I would advise in general. All I know is that I find it hard to even publish a blog post without typos if someone else doesn't edit it--and sometimes even then.

(The good news is that it's not really expensive to pay someone to do if you don't really need the services of a full-blown editor who is advising on structure, flow, etc.)

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

#59

Post by thesz » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

vladmihalcea wrote: post #39

eafkuor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working for any SP500 company will easily get you the same amount of money in less than a year If you live in the US. Which I'm (maybe wrongly) going to assume the author doesn't. 100k dollars is a life changing amount of money in a lot of countries.

> Which I'm (maybe wrongly) going to assume the author doesn't. I'm not living in the US. I live in Romania. In Europe, salaries are not as high as the ones in California. But then, even in the US, the Silicon Valley salaries are much higher than in other states. The great thing about selling products is that there is no upper boundary to how much money you can make. So, over time, you can end up making 250k $ from a…

US dollar is a prefix currency sign. All your dollar sums should look like $ (Euro is also prefix, BTW). Compare [1] and [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_leu#List_of_current_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_one-hundred-doll...

Sorry for nitpicking, it really bothers me when such small and easily correctable error continues.

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

#60

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #51

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?

> how is that possible and acceptable by authors? I had no problem accepting just 10% of my book sales - without going through a traditional publisher, it would have been impossible for me to get my book carried by physical book stores. Of course, this was 10 years ago, when physical book stores were more common; this may not be such a consideration today.

You get an advance. And in the past it used to be possible to get a royalty stream too. In the 80s and 90s, some authors made fortunes like this.

Today, you'll only get an advance - or maybe small royalties on low-volume sales and no advance.

If you self-pub, you have to consider the market very carefully. If you look at the Leanpub best-sellers they're mostly senior-level niche performance/career dev topics in mainstream corporate languages - like specific performance tweaks in Java.

The bigpubs usually do broad-brush topics like "How to Visual Studio". They're aimed more at beginners and side-movers. They have the marketing links to sell into the big physical bookstores, but for tech that market is smaller than you might expect, so they're unlikely to make anyone rich.

But... it's worth considering all of this is just another example of product/market fit. You get the best results from growing a customer base and giving them what they really want, just as you do for any other business, but with some added complications around product creation and distribution.

You might want to write a fun book about something creative and unusual in tech, but even with a following it's unlikely to sell many copies.

With selfpub you have some control over the big picture. Bigpubs just do what they do. Upfront money and your name on real shelves in a real bookstore may seem sweet, but there are huge costs to authors down the line, and mostly they're not a good deal now.