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.
K&R has two editions. In 46 years. It’s $60 on Amazon today. It’s an outlier, sure. But it’s proof you can write on programming topics that are very sticky.
But regularly updating them also gives you the edge over established publishers who DON'T update them.
and its not too difficult to update books, as compared to updating videos.
Is anyone able to suggest software for writing technical books?
I write in GitHub flavored markdown (so that is readable on GitHub and I can reuse parts for my blog, etc). I use pandoc to generate pdf/epub versions [0] and mdbook to generate web version [1]
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.
Anyone that thinks renting houses is passive income has never done it.
Repairs, collections, advertising, evictions, etc.
Thank you for helpful tips! Solid advice: Write Short and Concise Books. Instead of writing a 500-page book selling for $50 (which probably few will buy), write a 100-page book and sell it for lesser which greatly increases the number of buyers! ...It fits in Amazon’s price range of $2.99 — $9.99 (gets 70% royalties for ebooks). Anything lesser or more gets 35% royalty. This is for the ebook version. Paperbacks have…
That explains why the entire market for depth content at a higher price has basically collapsed… what a shitty deal. Want to charge more than $10… that’s a pretty nice book you have there… shame if something happened to your royalties…”
i am really interested in history and i have spent a lot of time looking for a good book on a certain topic or time period and sometimes not finding anything. it turns out that its really hard to find books that are completely objective, well researched and also written well. there is a scarcity of these kinds of books especially for modern history. and so the idea struck me that maybe i ought to write a short histor…
> completely objective.
The really sad thing is that people have discovered that "completely objective" doesn't sell very well.
Taking an extreme view sells much better, but provides much less useful information.
Seems like a fair definition of passive income. Not sure why the commenter feels it's not.
The author wrote many technology introduction books over a period of six years. They probably have a limited lifespan. I think the comment is somewhat fair if overly snippish - “How I earn $27k per year writing books in my spare time” would have been more informative and accurate than calling this passive income. If the author stops writing books, will they earn another 160k over the next six years? I still think it’…
I didn't do anything this month.
So far royalties > $2,000. And I am thankful for it :)
> I wake up daily excited to write. When work is a dread, or when something unhappy pops up, some writing will always bring in positive energy into me. I don’t dread writing. In fact, I can’t stop myself from writing! I fear we are built different.
I wrote a book for O'Reilly. It was grueling and I really struggled with it. The only thing that worked was following the Jerry Seinfeld "Don't break the chain" rule: promise yourself you will write every day, and mark it on your calendar each time you do, and never let there be a gap. It doesn't matter from where you start. If you do this, you'll accomplish more than you ever thought you could. You aren't built diff…
Yes they are built different: one person has no struggles writing and actively loves it, cannot stop doing it; the other finds it effortful and painful. Those two people will have vastly different experiences writing the book. The former will gain energy and feel great, the latter will feel pressured and depressed. We are not all the same, we are all built different, don’t ignore this reality
Seems like a fair definition of passive income. Not sure why the commenter feels it's not.
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?
passive income requires ownership of some revenue producing assets, whether its land or digital content. If you just work for someone else, your trading time for money, no passive income.
i am really interested in history and i have spent a lot of time looking for a good book on a certain topic or time period and sometimes not finding anything. it turns out that its really hard to find books that are completely objective, well researched and also written well. there is a scarcity of these kinds of books especially for modern history. and so the idea struck me that maybe i ought to write a short histor…
Is it even possible to write a completely objective book about history?