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Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

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Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#131

Post by [deleted] »

prawn wrote: post #39
patio11 wrote: post #14

What is a fair, market-rate deal for a first-time technical author writing about a popular subject? You're going to be shocked and dismayed by the offer they give you. Let's get that out of the way now. This is the model: they'll tell you to not do it for the money, in exactly those words, prior to explaining to you terms which imply that they're not doing it for ~92.5% of the money. You will likely be offered someth…

Had an experience that gels with this. Advance of $1k per chapter (I wrote 3 chapters of an 8-10 chapter book) then without the publisher pushing it aggressively, royalties beyond that were minimal. The content did not date too badly so much as the presentation of it did. Deadlines were brutal, especially incorporating edits and requests to expand/etc. That was a brain-melting experience. Sourcing and providing scree…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#132

Post by lentin »

I am the author of two books in Robotics. Here are the book websites

http://learn-robotics.com http://mastering-ros.com

The publisher was PACKT

Here are the details of PACKT perks which are given to me in a nutshell

Advance Royalty offered : $ 2.5 K to $ 3.5 K

Royalty share : 16 %

Writing time : 7 months -- 1.5 year

I am from India and i will say, if you can complete writing within less span of time, it will be great.

Note: Writing a book is boring and difficult task. It also consume high amount of time too. So be sure that, you can write book along with your job .

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#133

Post by asadjb »

amenghra wrote: post #50

I was a reviewer for a Packt book ( http://droppdf.com/v/UTl8X ). The review process was terrible, they ended up not taking my feedback into account and the book was published with lots of technical mistakes. The final book is essentially a random tutorial from pre-existing web content. Avoid them.

I just published a book with Packt (https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/django-project-blue...) and I'd like to add that what happens in the review process mostly depends on the author.

The way it worked for me was that they got the first draft of the chapter reviewed by a technical reviewer, and I got the comments. After that, it was all up to me. I chose to fix those mistakes, and some things I chose to ignore. I asked my editor to forward my comments to the technical reviewer, but I doubt that ever happened, since I never heard anything from the reviewer again.

Like it's mentioned in a couple of places in this thread, Packt isn't the best publishing company out there. Their editorial and review standards can be improved a lot, but I'm happy that I got a chance to get my name on a published book because of them.

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#134

Post by asadjb »

timbutlerau wrote: post #74

As someone who's currently 1/3 of the way into doing exactly what you've been asked... I'd advise you to really strongly consider the time it takes. I was wrong by a factor of 4. Thinking I could spend an extra few hours a week takes hours a night. Expect no support, their staff are only there are a conduit to move things around. The other thing that shocked me is how crude it all is. The publisher I'm engaged with o…

100% this.

What I thought would be a quick few hours a week thing turned into taking up all of my free time over the weekends. And writing the first draft isn't even the most difficult part. In the review stage, you'll be revisiting stuff you wrote more than 5 months ago and we amazed at what a poor job you did then. Of course, time constraints make it impossible to re-write the whole thing, which is something we programmers like doing so much! So you do the best you can and move on.

And the tooling is non-existent. Word documents and emails are what I had to deal with. There were multiple instances in which I was editing the wrong version of the chapter, or the editor was looking at an older version, etc. I hope better tools exist for this process.

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#135

Post by julian_t »

calcsam wrote: post #12

Most technical authors don't write a book for the money -- they write a book for the prestige (and proportionally higher consulting rates).

Absolutely. When I was starting out on my own I got the opportunity to write for Wrox Press. When talking to clients and going for contracts, it was definitely worth more than being one more guy with an MCSD.

Also, as Dr Johnson noted, writing a book is an excellent way to find out how little you know about a topic ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#136

Post by julian_t »

MarcScott wrote: post #23

I wrote a kids programming book. £1.5k advance and 8% royalties if I remember correctly. My biggest takeaway, is forget your tool chain. I wrote it in org mode, and exported to Libre Office and then Word. As soon as the first draft was returned I ended up battling with Word the whole time, for edits and redrafts. Also, designers don't read code like programmers. Indentation was often messed up, incorrect quotes used…

I'm starting a self-publish project, and am looking at using Pollen[1] along with some CSS based on Edward Tufte's ideas[2].

I'm not a designer by any means, but I'm having fun with this, and the result is looking pretty reasonable so far. (And learning one programming language while writing a book on another is kind of cool)

[1] http://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ [2] https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#138

Post by clifanatic »

spdustin wrote: post #128
clifanatic wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest benefit comes from listing "author of [book you can buy at bookstore]" on your CV What about "[book you could buy at bookstore at one point, but not any more]"?

I guess that would depend on if the book is still relevant to and likely to be owned by the person you're pitching. Or, of course, you're making a glib commentary about retail bookstores, in which case, s/bookstore/amazon\.com/g .

> s/bookstore/amazon\.com/g

Well, anybody can self-publish on Amazon (and I do mean anybody, including the completely illiterate), so I'm not sure that's a very high bar.

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#139

Post by julian_t »

ghaff wrote: post #57
martinpw wrote: post #53

I did a book a couple of years back. Motivations were: - I have been working in a particular speciality long enough that I felt I had something worth sharing with others, and was also lucky enough to be in a company that allowed me to write about the work we had done. - Just having done it, being able to see a book with your name on it on the shelf, give it away to friends and family etc. Some observations: - I did t…

>You will get completely sick of reading and rereading the text, while still finding more errors. To this point, you must must must have a paid copyeditor as part of your publishing process. Technical reviewers, friends and family, etc. can't be counted on to read carefully enough to catch editors even if they're decent writers.

Er... catch errors?

(Available for hire as copy editor...)

Re: Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

#140

Post by amouat »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #121
amouat wrote: post #81

I wrote "Using Docker" for O'Reilly recently. My thoughts: - I wouldn't bother with the advance. It was a pitiful amount of money and was paid in instalments that I constantly had to chase. Instead see if you can negotiate a better royalty rate (as your first book, I don't know if this will happen). Supposedly I was lucky to get advance at all, not sure how true that is. - Another commentor mentioned the free books t…

> I wouldn't bother with the advance. It was a pitiful amount of money and was paid in instalments that I constantly had to chase. Unless you need the prodding to help you actually get the book done...

Not sure what you mean. I had to chase O'Reilly, not the other way around, which was just a pain.
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