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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?

#21

Post by dredmorbius »

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found in the same purse—honora y provecho no caben en un saco.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Authorship"

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Authorship

For professionals in technical fields where skills-assessment itself is expensive and uncertain, a book serves at a minimum as a signifier of one's own skill and ability. In exceptional circumstances, a book can lead to the author becoming part of both the skill-generating and certifying mechanism. Writing "the book" on a topic, and the teaching, lecturing, training, or technical leadership roles availed ... may ... prove worthwhile. Others then display their copies or familiarity of the book as evidence of their own ability. (Knuth, Gang of Four, Kernighan & Ritchie, etc.)

It's critical to realise that this signalling capability, as with attention, is a fundamentally rivalrous and finite space (perhaps not fully zero-sum), such that there can only be one truly leading authority or reference at a time. Though if like Martin Kleppmann you hit that spot, it can prove rewarding.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#22

Post by ghaff »

Jtsummers wrote: post #5
myself248 wrote: post #2

As far as I can tell, writing and publishing a dead-tree book is the best/only way to get on NPR. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only purpose dead-tree books serve anymore.

Technical books in print are generally better formatted than their e-book cousins (O'Reilly's digital library, Kindle) unless they're PDFs. This has a major impact on readability if there are significant amounts of diagrams or code samples or tables in the text.

When something isn't just flowing text, it can be a real crap shoot in ebook form. And, even if the formatting is fine, I often find technical or other reference books (e.g. cookbooks) generally work better in physical form.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#23

Post by rossdavidh »

"economically viable (it is possible to generate a reasonable level of income from it)."

The second part of that sentence, is not really the same as the first. By his own admission, his book is a real outlier on the high side (second highest in his peer group of O'Reilly books), and it only basically compensated for lost income. This strongly suggests that the median case, is you lose money.

Now, there are lots of other great reasons to write a book. The satisfaction of helping others, the space to focus and expand your thinking on a topic, the increase to your reputation, etc. But, "economically viable" doesn't really equate to "at least one or two people didn't lost money doing it".

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#24

Post by CrankyBear »

Miracles happen and sometimes a book, like this one, takes off. For the most part, it's not worth your time and energy. I've made far more money as an author of articles and as an expert witness than I ever did from my books, even though one did with quite well and was translated into Greek and German.

I'll also add that he must have one heck of a deal with ORA to get those kind of royalties because the standard ORA contract based on his sales, would not come to anything like that much money.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#26

Post by k__ »

booleandilemma wrote: post #9

Even if you earned $0 from your book, I'd say being able to tell people you wrote a book at interviews and on your resume, and even at parties, would make it worth it. And you'd be able to call yourself an author, how cool is that?

This.

I wrote a book about React and after that didn't get asked stupid interview questions anymore.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#27

Post by redisman »

alextheparrot wrote: post #3

Martin deserves every penny of his hard-work on Designing Data Intensive Applications. Experienced engineers can easily use the book as a reference and you can give the book to smart junior engineers to give them a great foundation. Honestly, the best technical book I’ve ever owned.

Absolutely. It's the only technical book I can't stop thinking about and going back to because of how impressive and informative it is.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#28

Post by bcherny »

CrankyBear wrote: post #24

Miracles happen and sometimes a book, like this one, takes off. For the most part, it's not worth your time and energy. I've made far more money as an author of articles and as an expert witness than I ever did from my books, even though one did with quite well and was translated into Greek and German. I'll also add that he must have one heck of a deal with ORA to get those kind of royalties because the standard ORA…

The 25/10 structure has been O’Reilly’s standard split for at least a few years, no negotiation needed.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#30

Post by ponker »

CrankyBear wrote: post #24

Miracles happen and sometimes a book, like this one, takes off. For the most part, it's not worth your time and energy. I've made far more money as an author of articles and as an expert witness than I ever did from my books, even though one did with quite well and was translated into Greek and German. I'll also add that he must have one heck of a deal with ORA to get those kind of royalties because the standard ORA…

Did the books get you the gigs as expert witness?
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