Ask HN: Have you written a book? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#31

Post by dpapathanasiou » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #15

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

Agile/Kanban without the Bullshit For folks who have suffered under various Agile, Kanban, and other improvement regimes and know that it's not supposed to be like this. I'm about 80% of the way through the first draft. I have a few prominent community members that are going to review (and recommend, if they like it) but it's more of a personal statement than a commercial venture. It's a topic I have a lot of experie…

What are the best current resources for self-publishing and the epub maze?

My startup runs eBookBurn (https://ebookburn.com/), which lets you create valid epub and mobi files w/o having to learn the underlying spec or do any coding.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#32

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #4

Well... not quite, but I was involved in getting one published and wrote some of it: http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk-toolkit... It has left something of a bitter taste in my mouth though... I've made an order of magnitude more money from this article that took my a few hours to put together: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode as compared to weeks of work for the Tcl one. Al…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#33

Post by donnfelker » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:33 PM UTC

Writen 3 books Android Application Development for Dummies (wiley) Android Tablet Application Development for Dummies (wiley) Landing your dream tech job (self pub) Two articles in Code Magazine

Not a day job.

Do consulting and bootstrapping work as my main source of income.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#34

Post by xpaulbettsx » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

I'm working on my first book right now:

http://www.apress.com/microsoft/wpf/9781430237471

It's a lot of work, but it's worth it - I've been working with this technology (Rx) for two years now and I think it's a huge step forward yet very few people understand it. The book will help bring Rx to the masses which is definitely exciting.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#35

Post by swalberg » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:36 PM UTC

I wrote CCSA Exam Cram 2 (http://www.amazon.com/Check-Point-CCSA-Exam-156-210-4/dp/078...) which is a study guide for a Check Point firewall exam, and was the primary author for Wireless All In One for Dummies (http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-All-Dummies-Sean-Walberg/dp/0...)

I don't think I've got another book in me. For now I enjoy writing technical articles, mostly for IBM developerWorks. See http://seanwalberg.com for the list of articles.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#36

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:43 PM UTC

I have written 16 books, mostly for two reasons: I really enjoy the writing process and it also opens a lot of doors for introducing myself to interesting people (people who are famous or much more talented than I am, that otherwise I would not want to bother).

I take a lot of the hassle out of writing by doing two things: I mostly just write about things I have used for work and only write about things that really catch my interest.

I mostly write about artificial intelligence, Java, Lisp, and Ruby.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#37

Post by jasonshen » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:47 PM UTC

While in college, I self-published a collection of stories featuring the stories, passions and dreams of students at my school. Sold a box of 50 copies to my bookstore. Got my own ISBN number and everything. You can still buy them on Lulu or read it online for free.

http://www.stanford.edu/~jashen/home.html http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/stanford-spirit/448066

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#38

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #17

I write books for a living. Mostly fiction: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap... Which is not to say that I haven't written technical books, back in the day: http://www.amazon.com/Web-Architects-Handbook-Charles-Stross... I'm not self-published -- I've got Ace (aka part of Penguin USA), Orbit (aka Hachette) and Tor (aka Holtzbrinck) as my publishers. Yes, I do this for a day job.

I had not heard of your fiction, but based on other comments here, I just bought "The Atrocity Archives" for my Kindle - looking forward to reading it!

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#39

Post by Dgriffiths » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

One on Rails. One intro to programming with Python. Now working on one in C.

Re: Ask HN: Have you written a book?

#40

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Apr 30, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #4

Well... not quite, but I was involved in getting one published and wrote some of it: http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk-toolkit... It has left something of a bitter taste in my mouth though... I've made an order of magnitude more money from this article that took my a few hours to put together: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode as compared to weeks of work for the Tcl one. Al…

I ust looked at liberwriter - a very cool idea! A suggestion: you might want to support some form of easy importing material from Google Docs.