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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

#81

Post by Mathnerd314 »

lukaseder wrote: post #75
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

There might be a market for a Pihole book, if the existing documentation is insufficient (https://docs.pi-hole.net/ looks pretty thin). But Clojure seems unlikely.

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

#82

Post by vladmihalcea »

ghaff wrote: post #58
vladmihalcea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I'm using Grammarly to correct my spelling mistakes. It also provides tips about phrasing.

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

#83

Post by rglullis »

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…

Honest questions:

- how much work do you estimate need to be put for those (a) writing the book and (b) to turning a weak offering into a strong one?

- what is the shelf life of a software programming book?

- Do you make more money by writing the book or by providing consulting for those that want to create content?

Your self-plug in the end implicates that you are more interested in selling shelves than going after the gold.

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

#84

Post by vladmihalcea »

lukaseder wrote: post #76
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?

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

They told me that it will help me get a better job. At the time I was working for Red Hat on the Hibernate project.

I said that I doubt they could help me find a better job considering that my book is mostly about Java Persistence and Hibernate :D

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

#85

Post by quietbritishjim »

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…

> Strong promotion: ... collecting emails - launching to an email list of 10k-100k+

One thing I've often wondered about this: who are all these people posting their email addresses everywhere?

Even if I'm reading a blog post I'm so interested in that I'd like to read more later, I would never dream of putting my address in one of those "sign up for more" popups. I know many will comment that it's offensive that they popup over the page, but for me that's not even the main reason - email is just not the right place for that sort of thing, I already get enough cruft in my email account without adding blog post notifications too. I know not everyone is exactly like me but surely that is the rule rather than the exception?

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

#86

Post by commandlinefan »

swalsh wrote: post #44
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…

Writing a highly niche book like this, probably compensates you more in the "exposure" side of things (i realize that word has negative connotations now, but it is a real thing). I have to imagine consulting gigs would go up. And as the "guy who wrote the book on it" you can probably charge significantly more.

LOL, good lord, no. I published a book about SSL around 10 years ago or so (one of only, I believe, five or six such books). I found myself unexpectedly back on the job market around 2017 and I applied for job listings specifically related to SSL. Never heard back from a single one of them. The only time the book came up was when I interviewed for the (completely non-SSL, non-security-focused) job I have now when one of the interviewers said, "You published a book about SSL? But you can do other stuff, right?"

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

#87

Post by jashmenn »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #81
lukaseder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There might be a market for a Pihole book, if the existing documentation is insufficient ( https://docs.pi-hole.net/ looks pretty thin). But Clojure seems unlikely.

This is a good point. There probably is a market for a Pihole book.

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

#88

Post by jashmenn »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #85
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…

> Strong promotion: ... collecting emails - launching to an email list of 10k-100k+ One thing I've often wondered about this: who are all these people posting their email addresses everywhere? Even if I'm reading a blog post I'm so interested in that I'd like to read more later, I would never dream of putting my address in one of those "sign up for more" popups. I know many will comment that it's offensive that they…

Email fatigue comes from self-serving emails. When you get value from an email, it isn't a burden.

Context: We have 100k folks on our list, and our typical open rate is 25%. Almost all are web developers.

I think the key thing required to maintain this is to give value. I'll spend hours personally writing high-quality email tutorials. My friends and family are subscribers and so I treat each email as such.

I feel an obligation that if you open an email from me you're going to get value from it. I might send out 19 emails that teach before I ask for a sale on the 20th (but even then, I'm only going to ask you to buy something I think you might also find valuable).

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

#90

Post by teleforce »

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…

As also mentioned by OP, blogging for your book while writing it, is a very important exercise and it's so underrated.

I've spent countless hours during Covid isolation looking for good to excellent books on Engineering and Computer Science. Excellent book authors for examples Lewis Van Winkle, Pieter Hintjens and Andrew "bunnie" Huang do have blogs.

p/s: To be honest the three authors examples are from an Amazon's book reviews but I hope you've got my point.

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