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The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

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131–140 of 151 posts

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#131

It's some awesome, that a lot of people here wrote a book. I would like to write one too, but I think, that I don't have enough experience, or it will suck.

Start writing a blog, now. That will:

1. Give you practice finishing smaller written works before you work your way up to a much larger book project.

2. Let you practice all of the various skills in writing.

3. Improve your writing/marketing based on the feedback you get from people. Publishing on the web is a fantastic feedback loop for learning what resonates with people and what doesn't.

4. Build an audience for your writing. Set up an email list and put a link to it on your blog.

The way you get experience writing is the way you get experience in any other artistic pursuit: practice and feedback.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#132
post #14

I've been pitched to write books a few times, by editors at reputable technical publishers. (HN readers would recognize the names of the publishers.) One of them told me up front that I would be offered an advance of $8K, that it would take 3-6 months to write the book, and that I shouldn't count on earning back the advance. She was clear that the benefits of authorship were reputational. (The price wasn't why I turn…

> the benefits of authorship were reputational LOL. I published a book through Wiley about 8 years ago. I got an advance which I did earn back, and I'm still earning a small bit on sales every year. Reputational? The only time it's ever come up was when I was interviewing for the job I have now and one of the interviewers asked, "oh, I notice you wrote a book about SSL. Do you know stuff besides SSL though?"

Did you continue the interview? That is a pretty big red flag for that interviewer.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What niche? It’s almost a disservice to your niche not to mention it by name! The books too

Microsoft Lync/Skype for Business development. Michael Greenleaf has written a couple books, and there are maybe a double handful of people blogging about it.

What’s your plan for Skype for Business getting canned? Teams development?

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#134
> This breaks down to we each get $.99 for a physical book and $.46 for an ebook.

Isn't this just a huge rip off of the authors. They'll probably make way more money if they did a humble bundle or just ask readers to pirate the book and send them a $5 in bitcoin or something.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#135
post #31

TLDR; the books on specific tech is lighly sold, gets out of date fast and publishers are ripping off authors by throwing them 10% revenue share. Because we co-authored the book we each got 5% of revenue for physical books and 12.5% for ebooks and digital access (10% and 25% for individual authors). So far I have received $539 over 5 months. On average, the book has sold 222 copies per month which is greatly skewed b…

Isn't the typical rate for royalties around 10%? Given that it's 'specific tech' that is not likely to be sold as much, 10% is pretty good.

Typically I expect 70:30 split between creators and distributors for the information products. Information product typically have negligible manufacturing cost and most of the price is paid by the customer is purely the information value. Less than half of other way around is ripping off creators in my view.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#136
post #105

> The contract stipulated that Kris and I own the copyright for the content, but O'Reilly has exclusive rights to use the content any way they see fit throughout the world now and in the future for the duration of the copyright. I'm a little confused by this. Can Justin and Kris use the content they own? Or does O'Reilly's exclusive use rights supersede their ownership?

author I'm not sure on this, but I don't think we can. I'm sure if I asked to quote parts of the book they would give me a free license to use the quotes but the contract says O'Reilly gets exclusive usage. FWIW O'Reilly also filed the copyright on our behalf. I never had to do anything to get the book content copyrighted.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#137
post #106
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self publishing is awesome because you keep all the money, but it takes years to build an audience. I can totally relate to that. Some things about self-publishing were much easier than others. Building an audience is hardest so far. Experimented with Google and Facebook ads, stopped because it was too expensive. Right now, I am only doing content (blog posts, ...) and Twitter. Sales are low, but I am not losing mone…

I love the design of your site. Did you do it yourself? Did you get the illustrations from an artist you followed or something like UpWork?

A designer I know IRL helped me with the design. I also had a professional copy writer I know IRL help me with the German texts (not the English ones, though). Paid both of them, of course, but that was not too expensive, since they only helped, and I did a lot on my own before and after their involvment.

The Artist is Irina Linuza. Found her on upwork, and was very happy with her way of working from the start: https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~01678d123d582fc42e... That was more expensive, since the illustrations are so detailed. Simpler ones would have been cheaper, of course, but that's not what I wanted.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Lync/Skype for Business development. Michael Greenleaf has written a couple books, and there are maybe a double handful of people blogging about it.

What’s your plan for Skype for Business getting canned? Teams development?

That's many years down the pike, honestly. We still see a lot of customers using Lync 2010. People do not move fast in this segment.

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#139
post #129
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you recommend someone with a limited audience go about becoming an O'Reilly author?

In my case, I stumbled into it. I went to Google I/O and talked to someone who already had written several books for O'Reilly. He proposed the book to them long before I got involved. Honestly, the hacker in me thinks that finding a list of people who have already written for O'Reilly and then seeing if you can help them complete a book in progress might be a good way to get into the oreilly ecosystem. I proposed a b…

> I did have three years of hard work for very little money. Be prepared for that!

Oh my wife and I own a gym so I am very familiar with working a lot and getting little to no money in return haha

Re: The Economics of Writing a Technical Book

#140

> This breaks down to we each get $.99 for a physical book and $.46 for an ebook. Isn't this just a huge rip off of the authors. They'll probably make way more money if they did a humble bundle or just ask readers to pirate the book and send them a $5 in bitcoin or something.

Keep in mind this is for first-time, untested authors. The publishers are spending what, $10k or more on publishing and order fulfillment? Payroll or contract rates for graphic design, editing, reviewing, etc?

Yes the ebook split seems much lower than expected, but the book is also cheaper.

If you have a proven track record of writing books people want to pay $60+ for I'm sure you can negotiate better deals as time goes on, including advances.

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