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Writing a book: is it worth it?

martin.kleppmann.com

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Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#181

Post by jacques_chester »

brendangregg wrote: post #123
haswell wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I haven't written a book. > Also, you sound overly modest to me. This was my reaction as well. Absolutely no offense to the parent comment, but this sounds like a combination of being overly modest + getting bitten by dumb behaviors by bad companies. There's also a big difference between: - Strut into the interview. Drop a copy of your book on the table. "I literally wrote the book - hire me" And - "Tell…

Right; the person saying "I literally wrote the book - hire me" is saying it matters most, and I think that approach is likely to backfire. There are multiple problems with that attitude, including: 1) You probably aren't hired to write books, so what matters most is other things you'll be doing. 2) There are really good books and really bad books, so saying you wrote _a_ book doesn't carry the weight you may think.…

> You probably aren't hired to write books, so what matters most is other things you'll be doing.

This is true, but some employers will allow you to write on company time. As Kleppman notes, value created by books squirts everywhere, only some of it onto the author, which can be distinct from value landing on their employers.

I've been working on Knative in Action for the last year because Pivotal (now VMware) liked the idea that it would happen under their flag.

(Your books are quite excellent, by the way.)

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#182

Post by grawprog »

mooreds wrote: post #167
lentinjoseph wrote: post #113

I'm an author of 8 books in Robotics. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this. Pros 1) Great visibility in the robotics community 2) Started getting good consulting projects 3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income) 4) People start identifying me in conferences 5) Got the invitation to do research in good universities 6) Got good patience which is very useful while working with the robots 7) Knowledg…

I wrote a book, too (career advice for new devs). I had previously written a technical ebook (about Cordova) and wanted to write something that had a longer lifespan, but was still focused on developers. Writing a technical book was great, but, like you said, it became outdated very easily. That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book.…

>That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book.

I think this depends on the field and the audience. I'm not sure about other sciences but, when I was working in Biology and Ecology, there was much higher regard placed on people who'd been published in reputable peer reviewed journals than those that published books on topics.

It usually came down to the assumption that if someone published their research in a book rather than submitting it for peer review, it meant the quality of the research wasn't up to standards and likely would have been rejected and information from scientists published only in books is looked at as questionable and not really a good source to use as a primary reference.

That being said, the general public tends to place book published scientists in almost higher regard than many working scientists and will take information published in such form as undeniable fact.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#183

Post by lentinjoseph »

mooreds wrote: post #170
langitbiru wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can not fathom how you could write 8 books. I have written one book and got it published on Packt. It was a very tiring process. > 5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books) I feel you. I wrote a blockchain programming book. It was becoming outdated soon just after the book was being released. The pace of the blockchain technology is very fast.

Yes, I think if you are writing a technical book, it'd be better to focus on a more stable technology. That or plan for a revision or two after the initial release. And I can tell you, after I finished my book, I didn't want to think about the topic for a month or so. Can't imagine committing to a revision or two.

Doing revision of a book is OK. but the issue is, when we start writing a book, the version may be say 0.2, and when we release the book, the version may be 0.4. So the main thing is, the book got outdated in the release itself. So just think about our situation. Do we have motivation to write another book? I had this situation and I have changed the content of the book at the end of final edit. This is painful.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#184

Post by bambax »

Just finished my first novel (in French); will be sending it to publishers next week. If they reject it IDK what I'll do (dump it or auto-publish).

But, I'm super happy to have done it. I wrote poems and novellas when I was younger. A complete novel is something else entirely. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, the feeling of having done it is really great.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#185

Post by milancurcic »

lentinjoseph wrote: post #175
milancurcic wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Con 5), it's generally true with some exceptions. I wrote a Fortran book ( https://www.manning.com/books/modern-fortran ) and expect it to stay fresh for at least several years thanks to the slow pace and the unusually high maturity of the technology. On the downside, it's a relatively narrow niche so I don't expect high total number of sales. For instance, about 800 copies have been pre-ordered in the firs…

The issue is, if we are writting from 2020, we may publishing in 2021 or 2022. In the meantime, there may be lot changes in the technology that we are working on. So we may have to change lot of things in the book content even we finish all the chapters. This happened to me always. The version of software framework (ROS) is changing and to keep up the new version I will keep on changing all the chapters ( mainly comm…

Thank you! :) I totally get it. Same with my book: a new revision of the standard (Fortran 2018) was published half-way through the writing. However, thanks to the glacial pace of the Fortran standards development, I was able to plan for the additions to the language from the start.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#186

Post by jacques_chester »

csours wrote: post #134

Questions for the authors in this thread: If I'm thinking about writing a book, what stepping stones would you recommend? I'm thinking things like should I write a series of blog posts, do tech talks, etc. What resources were most valuable for you in writing your book?

Regretfully, I can only say that what seems to have worked for me was dumb luck. Difficult advice to reproduce.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#187

Post by mooreds »

grawprog wrote: post #182
mooreds wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a book, too (career advice for new devs). I had previously written a technical ebook (about Cordova) and wanted to write something that had a longer lifespan, but was still focused on developers. Writing a technical book was great, but, like you said, it became outdated very easily. That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book.…

>That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book. I think this depends on the field and the audience. I'm not sure about other sciences but, when I was working in Biology and Ecology, there was much higher regard placed on people who'd been published in reputable peer reviewed journals than those that published books on topics. It usually…

> I think this depends on the field and the audience.

Fair enough. I should have specified the "software engineering field" as the scope of my statement. I don't know enough about other fields (such as branches of science or history), and certainly writing a fiction book doesn't anchor you as an expert.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#188

Post by mooreds »

lentinjoseph wrote: post #183
mooreds wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think if you are writing a technical book, it'd be better to focus on a more stable technology. That or plan for a revision or two after the initial release. And I can tell you, after I finished my book, I didn't want to think about the topic for a month or so. Can't imagine committing to a revision or two.

Doing revision of a book is OK. but the issue is, when we start writing a book, the version may be say 0.2, and when we release the book, the version may be 0.4. So the main thing is, the book got outdated in the release itself. So just think about our situation. Do we have motivation to write another book? I had this situation and I have changed the content of the book at the end of final edit. This is painful.

That's a good point. That would be deflating to have a book where the code examples wouldn't work with the latest stable release. I guess this is where a self published ebook would be a better fit (plus automation to make sure that your code samples were up to date with the latest runtime).

I guess it depends on how much the technology evolves too. I think of my own experience in writing a book on cordova. The amount of work to revise it for new editions would be, I estimate, about 50% of the effort of a new book, just because there was significant overlap between the versions.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#189

Post by ghaff »

wiremine wrote: post #177
thewebcount wrote: post #168

It's really stunning to see the percentage take from writing a book vs. putting something on the app store. People complain about Google and Apple taking 30%, but for these books, they're taking 75% for electronic books and 90% for print! 30% doesn't sound so bad to me compared to that. (I realize for print their costs are higher, but still - 90%?)

My wife is a published author (and ghost writer) and my sister-in-law is a VP and acquisitions editor for a small publishing house. The different between 30% and 75% is mostly historical, and the app market vs. the publishing world run on different models: There is not really an equivalent of advances or physical publishing in the app world. Royalties and app revenue splits are are roughly equivalent, though. As an a…

>And you'd be shocked how many non-fiction books have a ghost writer

Not really. Whether it's writing ability or simply time a lot of successful people aren't really equipped to write a book from scratch. I assume a pretty common model is to conduct a long set of interviews, make some background and other material available, and the ghost writer creates a draft. Even if the subject wants a lot of direct involvement, starting out with a lot of content is a lot easier than a blank page.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#190

Post by leephillips »

wiremine wrote: post #177
thewebcount wrote: post #168

It's really stunning to see the percentage take from writing a book vs. putting something on the app store. People complain about Google and Apple taking 30%, but for these books, they're taking 75% for electronic books and 90% for print! 30% doesn't sound so bad to me compared to that. (I realize for print their costs are higher, but still - 90%?)

My wife is a published author (and ghost writer) and my sister-in-law is a VP and acquisitions editor for a small publishing house. The different between 30% and 75% is mostly historical, and the app market vs. the publishing world run on different models: There is not really an equivalent of advances or physical publishing in the app world. Royalties and app revenue splits are are roughly equivalent, though. As an a…

Plus the publisher sells the books to the bookstore at 1/2 the price on the cover.
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