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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

#71

Post by JKCalhoun »

dhosek wrote: post #69
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?

It's worth noting that the 10% vs 80/95% figures are comparing different totals. For a traditional publisher, the 10% is against the price of the book (depending on the contract this might be against cover price or against the price the publisher actually receives from the wholesaler). It's not , like the self-publishing platforms, the percentage of net profit after costs like printing etc.

Yes, good point.

And once upon a time, buying, inking, moving pulp was not cheap.

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

#72

Post by ghaff »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #71
dhosek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the 10% vs 80/95% figures are comparing different totals. For a traditional publisher, the 10% is against the price of the book (depending on the contract this might be against cover price or against the price the publisher actually receives from the wholesaler). It's not , like the self-publishing platforms, the percentage of net profit after costs like printing etc.

Yes, good point. And once upon a time, buying, inking, moving pulp was not cheap.

Probably less than you think. When there was a lot of discussion around ebook pricing back in the day, it turned out that ebooks weren't really all much cheaper to produce than physical mass market books. The costs associated with the physical books were only around $2 per copy.

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

#74

Post by siscia »

jashmenn wrote: post #68

These numbers are possible and repeatable. I've made over $100k on software books at least 7 separate times [1]. If you're going to try to do this, the key idea is to build an audience e.g. an email list. You need to budget 50% of your time to writing the book and 50% of your time to blogging/promoting the content. There's basically three key aspects to making $100k on a programming book: 1. Market - is the topic bro…

How wide need to be the market?

It is useful to focus on a single technology or it can be as wide as a general topic?

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

#75

Post by lukaseder »

jashmenn wrote: post #68

These numbers are possible and repeatable. I've made over $100k on software books at least 7 separate times [1]. If you're going to try to do this, the key idea is to build an audience e.g. an email list. You need to budget 50% of your time to writing the book and 50% of your time to blogging/promoting the content. There's basically three key aspects to making $100k on a programming book: 1. Market - is the topic bro…

Great. With this spoiler, I'll never get to read about how to write that Adblocker with Clojure on Arduino

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

#76

Post by lukaseder »

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?

They'll tell you about their competition offering you 8%, and they're not even lying.

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

#77

Post by jashmenn »

siscia wrote: post #74
jashmenn wrote: post #68

These numbers are possible and repeatable. I've made over $100k on software books at least 7 separate times [1]. If you're going to try to do this, the key idea is to build an audience e.g. an email list. You need to budget 50% of your time to writing the book and 50% of your time to blogging/promoting the content. There's basically three key aspects to making $100k on a programming book: 1. Market - is the topic bro…

How wide need to be the market? It is useful to focus on a single technology or it can be as wide as a general topic?

People want to learn what you do at work. Real projects, real code, with usable output. Blog posts tend to teach in an idealized, shallow way - because it's easier to write about and easier to teach.

If you, instead, put in the work to show every step, every detail, and every hack that sort of quality is extremely valuable to beginners.

So I could say, go look at the Stack Overflow developer survey, or State of X 2020 survey, or Google Trends -- and that will help, for sure. But the most valuable thing you can do is show someone what you /actually/ do at work.

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

#78

Post by ghaff »

teddyuk wrote: post #63
commandlinefan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've just signed a contract to write a book and I get an advance and then 10% (goes up to 12/15% if more are sold). One major reason is that I am more likely to finish it and get it done than if I rely on it myself. Another reason is that I want to be known for one niche, this will help and if that works out then I could likely self-publish and keep more of the profit. It is slightly more nuanced than I want as much…

Publisher deadlines are both a blessing and a curse. I did the last book I wrote through a publisher. It was a concept I'd had bouncing around in my head for a while but hadn't made much progress on beyond a rough mental headline. When a publisher wanted to run with it, it forced me to focus on it--fortunately during a period when doing so wasn't too onerous.

On the other hand, I've had other periods when it would have been difficult.

The other thing with publishers is that you're now tied into publishing industry economics. So you can't typically write, say, 100 page book even if that's what you think is the best match for you and the subject. (This is probably the thing that would be most likely to keep me from using a publisher the next time.)

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

#79

Post by jsjohnst »

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?

To make matters worse, the 10% figure can actually be a bit on the high side based on experience.

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

#80

Post by siscia »

jashmenn wrote: post #77
siscia wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How wide need to be the market? It is useful to focus on a single technology or it can be as wide as a general topic?

People want to learn what you do at work. Real projects, real code, with usable output. Blog posts tend to teach in an idealized, shallow way - because it's easier to write about and easier to teach. If you, instead, put in the work to show every step, every detail, and every hack that sort of quality is extremely valuable to beginners. So I could say, go look at the Stack Overflow developer survey, or State of X 202…

I am in the fortune situation where I work on very low level details of foundational technology. Basically I believe that I got like 20 colleagues (people working on the same topic as myself) everywhere in the world, and all of them in big-tech companies.

I had the idea to work on this: https://jr2sr.com but I don't see much interest yet... Even though I am not pushing it nearly as hard as I should

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