Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

greglim81.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 229 posts

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

#171

Post by Mvandenbergh »

nickjj wrote: post #151
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.…

> $160k / 2724 pages = $58.73 in revenue pr. page. It likely ends up being a lot higher revenue depending on the author's life style. Books and courses potentially have a lot of "back-end" value from opportunities that come up through folks finding you through your book / course. Here's a couple of excerpts from writing blog posts and making a few video courses over the last 5-6 years: Wrote a blog post about Flask t…

I think it can be difficult to calculate the actual added value on this basis or at least, I've found it hard to do so for my own blogging which has also led to substantial paid work.

That's because, although I can trace specific projects and therefore specific revenue to things I've written, I don't know what the counterfactual would have been. Would I have ended up doing another, similar, project instead? How much of a premium can I charge because of the channel through which the work came in?

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

#172

Post by Shugarl »

ChrisRR wrote: post #100
hambes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put in work once, get paid over a long span of time in a way that is not proportional to the effort you put in at the start. Like any other passive income.

Except he's working every day over 6 years. That doesn't sound very passive

For _multiple_ books. A book he wrote 6 years ago can still earn him some money, without him touching it.

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

#174

Post by Hnrobert42 »

notum wrote: post #164
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…

Which is what explains this poor attempt at advertising. The post and this thread are more about showcasing his books, less so about income. Passive or otherwise.

Interesting. I didn’t look up his books or even think about that. I did however start to think about a book I could write. Maybe this was an advertisement, but that’s certainly not all it was.

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

#175

Post by rexreed »

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 writer"

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

#176

Post by bilekas »

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 ?

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

#177

Post by swader999 »

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.…

And he's probably pretty dam good at this, lucky and well connected. Articles like this imply everyone can do this which isn't true.

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

#178

Post by tzury »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #162
tzury wrote: post #160

What am I missing? 78 books totaling $160k makes it ~ $2K per book. If it takes 2 days to write a book, this is not passive income rather belated income.. If it takes more (and it should if you want the books to bring value), then simple programming is more profitable.

You're missing that it's recurring income over time, done on top of a day job. If the author was a developer, they would probably be making MORE money from being a prolific book author. You're also assuming that people make $1000 a day doing "simple" programming. 99% of developers do NOT work for VC funded companies or FAANGs.

A. Very low income comparing to 100s of hours invested per book.

B. Books about those framework are short-lived ones, given trends and versions are changing rapidly.

C. Not everyone are working for a vc funded or FAANGs, but one with such capabilities can definitely work for such.

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

#179

Post by nickjj »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #171
nickjj wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $160k / 2724 pages = $58.73 in revenue pr. page. It likely ends up being a lot higher revenue depending on the author's life style. Books and courses potentially have a lot of "back-end" value from opportunities that come up through folks finding you through your book / course. Here's a couple of excerpts from writing blog posts and making a few video courses over the last 5-6 years: Wrote a blog post about Flask t…

I think it can be difficult to calculate the actual added value on this basis or at least, I've found it hard to do so for my own blogging which has also led to substantial paid work. That's because, although I can trace specific projects and therefore specific revenue to things I've written, I don't know what the counterfactual would have been. Would I have ended up doing another, similar, project instead? How much…

> I don't know what the counterfactual would have been

I don't think anyone can answer that.

If you take this line of thought to completion then nothing is quantifiable because there's too many ways for events to have an unpredictable outcome when measured over time. For example, you could start walking outside on a windy day, wave at your neighbor without stopping, eventually reach train tracks, pause for 2 minutes to wait for the train to pass, continue walking and then get hit in the face by a $20 bill that happened to get lifted up by a wind gust. If you talked for 5 minutes with your neighbor instead of just waving you wouldn't have picked up $20 because the $20 would have blown away by the time you got there.

Since your life is a series of non-editable events there's no way to know what would have happened in both scenarios. Or to relate it back to this example, writing blog posts, books or courses. The only thing you can do is make decisions that you think will be beneficial for you based on whatever criteria you feel is important. I can say at least in my case, writing these posts and making those courses produced a beneficial outcome and tons of other folks have said similar things about writing.

One thing I've learned is you can't discount great things from happening when doing things that feel minor. It's like the butterfly effect. Someone reading 1 sentence in a blog post you wrote 2 years ago could result in you getting a personal tour from the senior astronomer at SETI's headquarters[0]. Completely unpredictable.

[0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/coming-back-to-cloud-field-da...

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

#180

Post by pjc50 »

emteycz wrote: post #156
pjc50 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hear my author friends gathering to beat you to death with hardbacks at the suggestion that writing a book is "doing nothing".

I can hear my author friends gathering to beat you with hardbacks at the suggestion they're wage-slaving, too! More seriously, I agree it's hard to write a book - but I don't think you can claim it's just like normal job when you wrote it in 3 months and it keeps earning you money for years and it's more than a full-time job would earn you.

> I don't think you can claim it's just like normal job when you wrote it in 3 months and it keeps earning you money for years and it's more than a full-time job would earn you.

No, but that definitely puts you in the 1% of authors!

Post reply on HN