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

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

#101

Post by jashmenn » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #83

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…

(a) It takes me about 20 hours of work - and 1 week calendar time - to finish a chapter. A typical book is ~10 chapters.

(b) Hard to say. Some weaknesses (wrong topic) are unrecoverable. Blogging well is way more work than, say, tacking on interviews to an already-great course.

shelf life: longer than you'd think. we wrote ng-book in 2015 and it still brought in thousands last month. (To be fair, I have been releasing updates.)

I don't do consulting. It's the worst of both worlds: the unreliable income of entrepreneurship, but you still have a boss and don't get to accumulate any long-term value.

Re shovels: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." - It's more fun with friends, and we can teach more topics than just whatever I'm an expert in

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

#102

Post by archagon » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

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…

This sounds less like “publishing a book” in the traditional sense and more like “becoming an education and training entrepreneur.” (Which is fine if you enjoy that kind of thing, but seems like the book part is only a tiny % of the work involved.)

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

#103

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #98

ghaff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Agreed, but it's easy to hire a freelance copy editor. In fact, that's often what traditional publishers do too.

Yep. The one time I really wanted one, I just paid an intern working for a magazine editor friend of mine a few hundred dollars and that was fine.

IMO, it's not something you can rely on software for although software catches a lot of course. The one time I didn't do it worked out OK. But I had a co-author and we had sufficiently reworked the (somewhat shorter) book enough times over a fairly long period that I decided it had had enough fresh eyes on it to stand on its own.

And of course publishers aren't perfect either. I've found a few typos in my last book which did go through a traditional publisher even though I also proofread it pretty carefully. (One mistake was in front matter which I added fairly late on which makes me suspect there would have been a lot more errors in the book if I didn't check it carefully myself.)

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

#104

Post by archagon » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

jashmenn wrote: post #101

rglullis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(a) It takes me about 20 hours of work - and 1 week calendar time - to finish a chapter. A typical book is ~10 chapters. (b) Hard to say. Some weaknesses (wrong topic) are unrecoverable. Blogging well is way more work than, say, tacking on interviews to an already-great course. shelf life: longer than you'd think. we wrote ng-book in 2015 and it still brought in thousands last month. (To be fair, I have been releasin…

I assume writing books is a full-time job for you. How do you maintain enough in-anger technical expertise to keep writing books that people find useful? Or do you learn as you write?

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

#105

Post by perlgeek » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 5:50 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?

I've gone the traditional publishing route with three books so far.

Making money wasn't the goal.

A traditional publisher organized a technical review, editorial review, cover design, type setting and project management for me; the result was better than I could have done on my own.

Sure, I could have hired an editor and a cover designer and all that, but would have been exhausting and a financial risk.

So, I went with a publisher, and accepted that I'd likely never recover the advance that the publisher payed.

If you're after exposure or the best result, a traditional publisher can still be the way to go.

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

#106

Post by vladmihalcea » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #102

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…

This sounds less like “publishing a book” in the traditional sense and more like “becoming an education and training entrepreneur.” (Which is fine if you enjoy that kind of thing, but seems like the book part is only a tiny % of the work involved.)

When you use a publisher, you only have to write the book, and the publisher will take care of editing, printing, distribution, marketing, advertising, etc.

When you self-publish a book, you need to do way more than just writing the book. You have to do all the things the publisher would have done for you.

By self-publishing, you can get 80 or 90% royalties, instead of 10%, which I think it's worth. It might not be worth for everybody, but, considering how much time I put into writing the book, I wouldn't be happy getting just 10% profit.

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

#107

Post by jashmenn » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #104

jashmenn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) It takes me about 20 hours of work - and 1 week calendar time - to finish a chapter. A typical book is ~10 chapters. (b) Hard to say. Some weaknesses (wrong topic) are unrecoverable. Blogging well is way more work than, say, tacking on interviews to an already-great course. shelf life: longer than you'd think. we wrote ng-book in 2015 and it still brought in thousands last month. (To be fair, I have been releasin…

I assume writing books is a full-time job for you. How do you maintain enough in-anger technical expertise to keep writing books that people find useful? Or do you learn as you write?

I've started to collaborate with other folks to sort of semi-self-publish. Meaning, I have structure, a process, and an audience and I've been working with other folks who want to teach, but don't have an audience yet.

So I maintain my technical expertise by just asking a lot of questions. It's pretty great because I have a personal tutor to learn some of the most interesting technologies.

Andy Weiss (Fuschia at Google) taught me rust as he wrote Fullstack Rust.

David Guttman (Js.la) taught me advanced Node with Fullstack Node.

Amelia Wattenberger (the Pudding) with Fullstack D3 etc.

Having such awesome personal conversations - that were essentially lost to the ether - was actually the inspiration for us to launch our podcast: I just wanted everyone to learn what I was learning.

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

#108

Post by archagon » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

vladmihalcea wrote: post #106

archagon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds less like “publishing a book” in the traditional sense and more like “becoming an education and training entrepreneur.” (Which is fine if you enjoy that kind of thing, but seems like the book part is only a tiny % of the work involved.)

When you use a publisher, you only have to write the book, and the publisher will take care of editing, printing, distribution, marketing, advertising, etc. When you self-publish a book, you need to do way more than just writing the book. You have to do all the things the publisher would have done for you. By self-publishing, you can get 80 or 90% royalties, instead of 10%, which I think it's worth. It might not be w…

I wonder how feasible it would be to write a (great) book, skip most of the coursework/training/audience-building bits, market it using more conventional means (reach out to journalists, etc.), and make ~$10k?

Personally, as someone who loves technical writing but less the people bits around it, I'd much prefer doing something like this to "building my brand" and essentially becoming an instructor. (This is roughly what I ended up doing when releasing my first iOS app, though the journalist cold-calling was arduous and questionably reproducible. The success I had was mostly on account of Apple taking notice, perhaps with a small push from positive blog coverage.)

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

#109

Post by ghaff » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #108

vladmihalcea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you use a publisher, you only have to write the book, and the publisher will take care of editing, printing, distribution, marketing, advertising, etc. When you self-publish a book, you need to do way more than just writing the book. You have to do all the things the publisher would have done for you. By self-publishing, you can get 80 or 90% royalties, instead of 10%, which I think it's worth. It might not be w…

I wonder how feasible it would be to write a (great) book, skip most of the coursework/training/audience-building bits, market it using more conventional means (reach out to journalists, etc.), and make ~$10k? Personally, as someone who loves technical writing but less the people bits around it, I'd much prefer doing something like this to "building my brand" and essentially becoming an instructor. (This is roughly w…

>though the journalist cold-calling was arduous and questionably reproducible

To do this seriously you probably want to contract with a decent PR person.

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

#110

Post by paulryanrogers » Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

jashmenn wrote: post #107

archagon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume writing books is a full-time job for you. How do you maintain enough in-anger technical expertise to keep writing books that people find useful? Or do you learn as you write?

I've started to collaborate with other folks to sort of semi-self-publish. Meaning, I have structure, a process, and an audience and I've been working with other folks who want to teach, but don't have an audience yet. So I maintain my technical expertise by just asking a lot of questions. It's pretty great because I have a personal tutor to learn some of the most interesting technologies. Andy Weiss (Fuschia at Goog…

While it's great you're sharing your success and formula one must consider market saturation. Once that point is reached there may not be enough underserved demand to support similar gains for others.

Edit: you're not your