I self-published a programming book, here's my story
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I self-published a programming book, here's my story
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Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#2Just curious here: Are all publishers interested in proposals from first time authors?
How hard it is to get a publisher interested in promoting your book?
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#3As soon as I read his opening piece I thought 'this guy needs to use LaTeX', so I'm glad that he did in the end. I've benefited a lot from the stories and comments here at HN, so I'd like to offer my help in getting you started with LaTeX if you'd like to do something similar.
I'd say that the major of downside of LaTeX is that it's not very accessible. One of my goals at the moment is to improve that, and that's part of my motivation for working on ShareLaTeX [1], which is probably one of the easiest ways to get started with LaTeX (I am of course biased.) We've cut out all of the installation and configuration needed to set up LaTeX, so you can dive straight in.
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#4Just curious here: Are all publishers interested in proposals from first time authors? How hard it is to get a publisher interested in promoting your book?
All the publishers that I've been in contact, where I initiated the contact, they wanted proposals that followed a certain guideline. The guideline can be different from publisher to publisher. Some publishers don't even respond if they don't like your initial presentation/idea.
I've been contacted with publishers after publishing this book where they had a plan for the entire project but the royalties aren't even worth comparing against self-publishing or where you initiated the contact with a "big" publisher.
If you have a good idea and have written a Chapter that is based in the middle of the book containing about 30 pages, then I don't think it's too hard getting a publishers attention. Or do you mean if I wanted to get a publisher to promote the book now afterwards?
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#5As soon as I read his opening piece I thought 'this guy needs to use LaTeX', so I'm glad that he did in the end. I've benefited a lot from the stories and comments here at HN, so I'd like to offer my help in getting you started with LaTeX if you'd like to do something similar. I'd say that the major of downside of LaTeX is that it's not very accessible. One of my goals at the moment is to improve that, and that's par…
Thanks for the input!
The biggest problem I had with LaTeX was after the book was done and I wanted to get it ready for Kindle and Epub. Luckily I found tex4ht which compiles LaTeX to HTML/XML which I just needed to write CSS for.
Writing the book using LaTeX is one of the best decisions that I made.
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#6How have your e-book sales compared to your print ones?
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#7How have your e-book sales compared to your print ones?
Since the e-book is included when you purchase the printed copy, the printed versions have sold better because you get everything.
Maybe 1/3 is plain Kindle/PDF sales and the rest is printed.
When it's time to write the next book I will certainly be targeting all the different formats again because everyone likes to read differently. A lot of the printed sales haven't even requested the e-book.
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#8Just curious here: Are all publishers interested in proposals from first time authors? How hard it is to get a publisher interested in promoting your book?
All the publishers that I've been in contact, where I initiated the contact, they wanted proposals that followed a certain guideline. The guideline can be different from publisher to publisher. Some publishers don't even respond if they don't like your initial presentation/idea. I've been contacted with publishers after publishing this book where they had a plan for the entire project but the royalties aren't even wo…
Yes, I was mainly interested in the promotion part. For instance, if I want to target US market, but I'm not from US.
I realize that there are many factors, like for instance you background, qualifications, etc. But I was particularly interested in this aspect. Every author publishes their first book at one point, right?
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the publishers that I've been in contact, where I initiated the contact, they wanted proposals that followed a certain guideline. The guideline can be different from publisher to publisher. Some publishers don't even respond if they don't like your initial presentation/idea. I've been contacted with publishers after publishing this book where they had a plan for the entire project but the royalties aren't even wo…
Yes, I was mainly interested in the promotion part. For instance, if I want to target US market, but I'm not from US. I realize that there are many factors, like for instance you background, qualifications, etc. But I was particularly interested in this aspect. Every author publishes their first book at one point, right?
Right! As far as I know either you go all-in with a publisher or you don't go with them at all. So they won't help you promote the book if they haven't helped you published it.
However, CreateSpace that I've used to self-publish the book has options for expanding distribution to other channels such as book stores in U.S. That requires that the book store buys the books, so you're still back to square one; getting them to know you exist.
Technology books are a bit different from "Normal" books from that I've heard. If you publish a normal book the publisher want the entire book before they make a decision. As for techical books they just want a chapter or two before they say yes or no to your book. If you go with a publisher they will help you with everything from proofing to marketing in all different channels and you will sell a lot more books but get a lot less royalties.
What I did to enter new markets such as US and Spain was that I sent some free copies to influential people that I knew liked to read and talk about technology books. If they liked what they read they would talk about it, if they didn't they would at least know who I was. This of course requires that you pay for the marketing yourself.
Hope this answered the question, sort of!
Re: I self-published a programming book, here's my story
#10My only concern about all this Markdown, Latex etc. is "spell checking". I'm Turkish and written several books (jQuery, php, javascript) but all of them were written in Microsoft Word because only Word has the most comprehensive spell checking for Turkish.
Can someone suggest me a good Latex editor with good spell-checking (other than English)?