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I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

greglim81.medium.com

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Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#13

Congratulations. Most people get stuck at the procrastination phase you mention. Just getting a book to published is a huge achievement let alone making significant revenue from it. This is not only good advice, but also an inspiring tale.

Agreed - I finished a book last year and it felt like the last 10% took 75% of the time.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#15
I've considered writing a book on how to grow software through different evolutions, and using different software paradigms that make sense for the different stages of growth. I don't think there's an audience for it though, or at least an audience that would respect the opinions of a non-credentialed author.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a fair definition of passive income. Not sure why the commenter feels it's not.

There's nothing passive about writing 78 books. That's what, approx 2k per book? If this were 20 years in the future since the books were written, sure. This is more just a person writing a ton of books for relatively little money. Please don't take it as any insult, I love the energy and drive. It's just not passive in any sense of the word.

Passive income was never defined as "no work, receive income". It was, "work once, passive income later without extra work". As in, your full time employer will stop paying you if you stop working. Your books that you wrote some time ago will generate income in perpetuity without any extra work.

You still need to put in the upfront work of creating something. It just so happens that something can generate income for a long time without much, if any, upkeep. Think of it as a machine that prints money. You still have to build the machine, but afterwards you just have to change the oil once a year.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a fair definition of passive income. Not sure why the commenter feels it's not.

There's nothing passive about writing 78 books. That's what, approx 2k per book? If this were 20 years in the future since the books were written, sure. This is more just a person writing a ton of books for relatively little money. Please don't take it as any insult, I love the energy and drive. It's just not passive in any sense of the word.

It sounds even stupid to write programming books for passive income. You need to regularly update them in order to be able to sell them well.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels weird to call the entire profession of being an author passive income. Or put another way, If I give you two options: (1) Work 100 hours and I pay you $10,000 lump sum. (2) Work 100 hours and I pay you $100 a year (inflation adjusted) over 100 years Is one of those passive income while the other isn't?

Yes. Passive income can initially take work to build the income source. Most people consider rent to be passive income, yet people don't just magically own houses, they more often than not work to buy them.

People do magically own houses. It's called inheritance.

Re: I earned $160k in passive income from writing non-fiction books

#20
tl;dr Earned $26,000 per year writing 20,000–30,000 word books and selling them for $9.99. Split book into another $9.99 book if there is more to say.

This is actually pretty cool, if he didn't pick the maximum largest gross dollar figure they could find.

The primary takeaways are how to maximize Amazon's royalties and trend hopping. It actually does solve the problem of people publishing long-winded books in an area that has limited timespan of utility (programming, tech).

Helps people get to the point of what they are looking for and be in a mindframe to take it seriously, compared to ad garbage affiliate websites and long winded youtube videos or Udemy courses.

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