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

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

#181

Post by rexreed »

bilekas wrote: post #176
rexreed wrote: post #175

I think the word "passive" doesn't mean what he/we think it means. I had thought it meant the opposite of active, where active is an adjective that implies "action", which means actively doing something. Writing dozens of books over many years for about $10k/book sounds like a long, hard, very active slog. Not at all what I would consider passive income. Perhaps this should be called "My $160k side gig as a book writ…

I kind of agree, but at the same time, they only need to be written once and then he can 'sit back'. Infact, they're written before any income so technically you could say he did a lot of work and can sit back now. Semi-Passive maybe. The only 'true' passive income types I can think of is just inheriting a huge amount and having it sit earning interest ?

To me that sounds like doing all the work upfront for a later, undetermined, and potentially negative return on time. That's opposed to doing the work and realizing the benefit more contemporaneously with that work. Regardless, it's still active work with the return shifted in time. Sounds riskier to me to put all the work upfront without any guarantee of return, especially if that works is particularly intense and active.

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

#182

Post by e12e »

TrackerFF wrote: post #137
simonjgreen wrote: post #115

Writing (from a quick skim check) at least 16 books over a period of 6 years, and earning money from that, is not exactly what I'd call "passive income". And given the topics are mostly (all?) about niches in current technologies they also won't continue to deliver passively forever. A more appropriate title and angle might be "How I've earned $10k/book and manage to keep writing more while maintaining a day job". (W…

Some quick napkin-math I found 17 books where he was author and co-author, all books sum up to 2924 pages. I'm sure some of these books have lots of overlap - for example, I found three books which included "React hooks" in them, so I'd assume that he copy/pasted some pages. But for simplicity and worst-case scenario, let's assume 2924 unique pages, and subtract say, 200 blank pages and similar, so 2724 unique pages.…

> Let's further assume that he spent one hour on each page.

That seems extremely low for finished, post-edit text? I would estimate one work-day per page is more likely?

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

#183

Post by SilasX »

Namari wrote: post #124
tgv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive income: income not related to current/recent work. Writing is a bit like an investment. It can pay off later.

Passive income is income that can be earned automatically with minimal labor to earn or maintain. I guess you can't really call that passive if you spend time working for it. It's not like an investment that you buy once and gives your income each month. PS: Sadly writing can pay off as much as giving you nothing (money wise).

Yeah it's kind of tricky to classify this on the passive/working[2] income scale, and I'm not even sure it's a useful classification at that point. But here's how I'd think about it.

Imagine you work a legit, regular job. Obviously, that's not passive income. But say you get a deal[1] that, for every year where you defer receiving the salary from the employer, you get a 10% bonus (compounded like interest).

The correct way to look at that, IMHO, would be "The original salary is working income, the additional gains from deferral are passive income."

Then apply that to the case of these writing royalties. Which part is what? Well, he worked to write the book, but received income over several later years.

So then I'd break it into:

a) "the hypothetical amount he could have sold the IP to a publisher for when he finished it", which is rightly called working income.

b) any gain above that amount that he received via the royalty deal, which would be passive income.

(This is probably 100% unrelated to how the IRS would classify it.)

[1] which, for simplicity, we'll assume is trustworthy and above-board, even though an offer like this probably wouldn't be in practice.

[2] In common parlance, I think "working income" would be called "earned income" but I don't like that phrasing and so avoid it here.

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

#184

Post by latexr »

xrd wrote: post #35
instagraham wrote: post #31

> 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…

> the Jerry Seinfeld "Don't break the chain" rule

Jerry Seinfeld, by his own admission, didn’t invent that: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry_seinfeld...

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

#185

Post by impostervt »

Seems like some in the comments are having a hard time calling the author's income "passive".

Just an alternative - if you can find a profitable niche, you can have the book ghostwritten. A non-fiction book of around 30k words (~110 - 180 pages, depending on trim size) can be produced for $1000 (or less, if you can find a diamond in the rough on upwork). The cover can run anywhere from $100 - $800 depending on the quality you want.

So, from $1000 - $2000 you can basically have a book written for you. Choose a pen name and sell it on Amazon.

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

#186

Post by pc86 »

The thing that always bothers me about these articles, and I completely accept it may just me reading into it what I want to see, is I immediately assume the dollar figure is annual. $160k/yr sounds like great passive income. You could certainly stop working a 9-5 and build out a really great lifestyle business.

But then I look at the article. Oh, it's over six years? Okay, $26k/yr is a lot less and all of a sudden it's a big risk to try and turn that into a real business. Wait, what's that in the screenshot? 78 books? $341 per book, per year. And my thought goes from "that sounds like a great little business!" to "fuck that" within about fifteen seconds.

And such is the lifecycle of these "how I made $n doing x" articles. Great claims that when you dig into them, the resulting wisdom is basically "do a lot of work, and have a little bit of luck. And don't forget the marketing!"

I don't mean to tear down what the author did by any stretch, it's impressive regardless of the time frame. But if you're already making $150-200k/yr from a tech job, do you really want to bust your ass for another couple grand?

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

#187

Post by pc86 »

giantg2 wrote: post #165
TrackerFF wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick napkin-math I found 17 books where he was author and co-author, all books sum up to 2924 pages. I'm sure some of these books have lots of overlap - for example, I found three books which included "React hooks" in them, so I'd assume that he copy/pasted some pages. But for simplicity and worst-case scenario, let's assume 2924 unique pages, and subtract say, 200 blank pages and similar, so 2724 unique pages.…

The thing that is often missed with opportunity cost is whether more work feasible. Most of us are salaried. Most of us have contracts/policies that say working for another company has to be approved. Even if you find another job, will they actually pay that much and will the hours be flexible enough to rival writing? It's not really lost opportunity cost if the opportunity doesn't exist.

Do most employer policies really require explicit approval for moonlighting? I'm on job number seven, not counting a 4-5 year stint freelancing full time, and none of them required approval. A couple required notification but several didn't mention moonlighting at all beyond the typical "only do work stuff on work machines."

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

#188

Post by thenerdhead »

Lots of negative comments here about not making much money for the effort that goes in.

Have people considered that perhaps the author enjoys the process and it's a win-win given they learn new stuff, get to teach that stuff, and make a little cash on the side too?

OP has written 78 books. That's 78 more attempts than most people and it's like the Ray Bradbury quote:

"Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."

Given the stats on going viral, this person is well on their way to writing a book that may one day make the same money of all the others combined with a little luck.

Lady luck fortunes the one who tries at the end of the day.

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

#189

Post by rmah »

thenerdhead wrote: post #188

Lots of negative comments here about not making much money for the effort that goes in. Have people considered that perhaps the author enjoys the process and it's a win-win given they learn new stuff, get to teach that stuff, and make a little cash on the side too? OP has written 78 books. That's 78 more attempts than most people and it's like the Ray Bradbury quote: "Write a short story every week. It's not possible…

Have people considered that perhaps the author enjoys the process and it's a win-win given they learn new stuff, get to teach that stuff, and make a little cash on the side too?

It's hardly out of bounds to think the primary objective was to make money. when the headline is "How I earned $x...".

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

#190

Post by lostmsu »

pc86 wrote: post #186

The thing that always bothers me about these articles, and I completely accept it may just me reading into it what I want to see, is I immediately assume the dollar figure is annual. $160k/yr sounds like great passive income. You could certainly stop working a 9-5 and build out a really great lifestyle business. But then I look at the article. Oh, it's over six years ? Okay, $26k/yr is a lot less and all of a sudden…

To summarize a bit further, the income is not passive at all.
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