Designing Data-Intensive Applications might be the best (non-niche) CS book of the decade, and he definitely did create far more value than he captured. So I'm glad Mr Kleppmann at least kind of "broke even" compared to the alternative of working for a FAANG (his salary assumptions seem however rather low). I guess the main take away for mere mortals who consider writing a book and making money with it (as opposed to boosting their profile) is to under no circumstances publish with OReilly. Getting <10% vs 80%+ of revenue is just about viable for the 0.01%.
Writing a book: is it worth it?
151–160 of 299 posts
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#152I have spent probably thousands of hours writing random responses helping people on forums, just because its the thing that I do to procrastinate. For example, this year I wrote more than 4000 posts on https://users.rust-lang.org/ and 19000 messages on the help channels in a few Discord servers. I'm probably the world expert at spotting the mistake in small snippets of Rust code at this point. I honestly wish I was a…
Just spitballing, but how about just tentatively titling a book "Common Rust Mistakes". Then take those 4000 posts (congratulations and thank you, by the way) and group/fishbone them according to elements that you feel are appropriate. I hazard to guess there's a CMS or LaTeX/DocBook package or org-mode setting that would allow posting first draft notes as blog entries. If you need a forum conversation to focus your writing, imagining a Gentle Reader may help. Many writers also bend the ears of family, friends, and editors.
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#153Very different experience for me. Wrote a book about Redux ( https://leanpub.com/redux-book ) brought about $15K for 4 months of work. (Granted, did no marketing at all) It always feels strange to say "I wrote a book" and it never seemed to really impress tech people or cause an inflow of consulting work. But it is very fun and you get to really get into the tech (other projects, sources, blogs, testing ideas). Prob…
15k is pretty good for no marketing! i feel that self published book authors should all have a "marketing partner" since they all seem so shy about marketing
>should all have a "marketing partner"
The problem is that it's relatively easy to hire a marketing partner (does PR, etc.). But it will probably cost quite a bit more than your book advance. And most publishers these days aren't setting up book signings, sending out review copies, etc.
When I get pings to see if I want to review a book it's usually from a PR agency.
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
We hired this guy who wrote a book on the thing the team he was hired for managed. He was a nightmare. He was just insufferable. People would ask questions and he would suggest they read his book. He would mention his book in every meeting. He would tell people they couldn't do things they'd already done and then back-peddle that it wasn't possible when he'd written his book. It was just a huge drag. He managed to al…
Okay, well I guess that’s a bad experience. I don’t think it invalidates the fact the usually book authors should be somewhat knowledgable - of course it doesn’t automatically mean that all of them is good to work with.
Agreed, I just wanted to share my own experience and perspective
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#155I’ve been writing a book on cryptography called Real-World Cryptography[1] and targeting software engineers and students who are interested in applied cryptography. The book has already sold thousands of copies before even going in print (due to a blogpost I wrote on why I’m writing a book on cryptography[2]) which has added a lot of pressure on my plate.
The book is almost done at this point, but revising and polishing it will take a lot of time. I really wish I could take some time off for that like the author of the post did.
I can say that it has been a long journey, but I have learned so much along the way.
[1]: https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-cryptography?a_aid=...
[2]: https://cryptologie.net/article/504/why-im-writing-a-book-on...
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Society is still largely bound by the human intellect. So, I don’t think overall complexity is actually increasing significantly. It’s more a question of how obvious the complexity is.
How would you measure or disprove your hypothesis? Compared to what or when?
20, 50, and 100 years too seem like a reasonable point of comparison.
One simple approach is hand people old objective tests for subjects like math under the original rules. If people where simply becoming more competent in all areas then average scores should be higher today, but that’s not what happens.
Measuring complexity more specifically is probably easiest done by using equivalent jobs and compare how long each take to achieve competence. McDonald’s cooks take less time to train now vs the 1970’s, but I am not sure how that compares across industries.
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#157I have spent probably thousands of hours writing random responses helping people on forums, just because its the thing that I do to procrastinate. For example, this year I wrote more than 4000 posts on https://users.rust-lang.org/ and 19000 messages on the help channels in a few Discord servers. I'm probably the world expert at spotting the mistake in small snippets of Rust code at this point. I honestly wish I was a…
Are you on CodeMentor? Sounds like you should be!
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#158I have spent probably thousands of hours writing random responses helping people on forums, just because its the thing that I do to procrastinate. For example, this year I wrote more than 4000 posts on https://users.rust-lang.org/ and 19000 messages on the help channels in a few Discord servers. I'm probably the world expert at spotting the mistake in small snippets of Rust code at this point. I honestly wish I was a…
Take the essence of the question asked, or the non-working sample code given, take your response on the forum post, verbatim, and post that on your blog. Your blog is a marketing vehicle, you aren't necessarily doing it to rank high in google or get lots of traffic for ads. You're doing it so you have a single source of content you can direct someone towards and also identify yourself as a source of knowledge and expertise.
It is precisely what I have done in the past.
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#159He kind of touches upon it, but there is a lot of value in being able to go into an interview and literally being able to say about a topic "I wrote the book on it." It's a tremendous signal to have overcome the hurdles of getting a publisher to accept you and print your book with your name on it. I used to have several guys on my team that had published books- and they were great, and were constantly getting contact…
We hired this guy who wrote a book on the thing the team he was hired for managed. He was a nightmare. He was just insufferable. People would ask questions and he would suggest they read his book. He would mention his book in every meeting. He would tell people they couldn't do things they'd already done and then back-peddle that it wasn't possible when he'd written his book. It was just a huge drag. He managed to al…
Super side note - I'm rereading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2nd one in series) for fun right now, and this guys sounds exactly like Gilderoy Lockhart.
Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?
#160Recently I've been playing with the idea of writing a sci-fi book.
...and that's mostly it. I don't know what could be the next step, except actually writing the thing.
Are there websites/communities? I don't follow nor know of any relevant ones myself.
Start with short stories? Or something longer?
Self-publish whatever I write? Or start spamming "real publishers"?
When I was younger I read a monthly science fiction magazine in the library. That magazine had all kinds of short stories ranging from hardcore space sci-fi to some kind of horror fantasy things. Some stories were so interesting that it was a bit frustrating for the story to stop after only a few pages.