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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?

#201

Post by ausjke »

all books are having pdf/epub/etc format these days, means you can get most if not all of them online for free quickly which is discouraging, plus things move fast these days and book might be out of date soon, and it's easier to self-publish, I think the golden time of legacy book writing is probably gone.

What about some different models? While the internet/google presents everything, a well organized and to-the-point book still saves time and time is everything.

1. have your own website, and write online book only, ask people to pay for read?(free samples at the frontpage). 2. whoever paid can get automatic reminders on new releases, book updates 3. create a small forum on that site for questions and erratas. 4. give a link for whoever read your book somehow without pay, tell them if the book helped them to profit somehow, please press the donate button to show a little appreciation.

As there is no other costs involved(other than hosting fee), your book can be cheaper, to the point people might want to pay even though they can get a free version somewhere.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#203

Post by niedzielski »

TN1ck wrote: post #147
aliceryhl wrote: post #118

I 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…

You could easily write some posts using this: "Most common errors beginners make in Rust" You're like the world expert on this. "What people often get wrong about Rust" Maybe there are common conceptual issues you spotted? I'm not sure, but I would also imagine that you explained some things a few times in a more simple language, this could also be a great thing for a blog post. Instead of pointing them to a doc and…

I liked this comment because it felt immediately constructive and a great starting point to think about if nothing else. One of probably many examples of this list-based approach (for a different technical subject) is "50 Android Hacks" by Carlos M. Sessa. Avoiding common errors makes sense but are even more valuable when the warnings are paired with idiomatic alternative patterns.

https://www.manning.com/books/50-android-hacks

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#204

Post by andrewem »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #130
libraryatnight wrote: post #116

Earlier 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…

Similar experience here. We interviewed a guy who kept referring to his book on the subject, experience he gained during writing the book, and so on. We took the bait. > 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 This was the core problem: Modern technologies and frameworks move fast. His book was about the state of the art…

A former co-worker of mine recounted an experience with a person hired by his previous company who had written a book on software development methodology, Scrum or something. Evidently the way the author's employment worked is the company got the reputation benefit from having a famous expert on staff. In exchange he gave talks but didn't have to do any actual work for the company, and the company didn't have to follow his methodological orthodoxies.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#205

Post by ayewo »

st1x7 wrote: post #101
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.

Can someone expand on why the book is so good? I found it very unremarkable but it's recommended so much around here that I suspect that I've missed something important.

Experience = Expectation - Perception

where:

- if Expectation > Perception then your experience is +ve (e.g. surprise);

- if Expectation So the question I'd ask you is this: what were your expectations when you picked up a copy of DDIA?

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#206

Post by winter_blue »

aliceryhl wrote: post #193
mceachen wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're fighting activation energy. I'd find a way to make it cheap for you (in time and energy) to iterate such that the one-off content that you're providing can be used as stepping stones to a paragraph, and then a chapter, and then a book. As an example, I've written thousands (!) of customer support messages, via email, chat, or reddit, to help my PhotoStructure beta users. I've found that the second or t…

Yeah, it's definitely activation energy. Once I've actually started working on something, I can do anything, but damn, starting is tough.

Wow, I can relate to this so much.

What are some techniques anyone here has found to help push oneself to get started on things?

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#207

Post by _nrv9 »

brendangregg wrote: post #71
kevstev wrote: post #44

He 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…

I'm pretty sure if I showed up to a performance engineering job interview and said "I wrote the book on performance," as though that was what mattered most, I'd be shown the door. In my opinion it would be horrendously arrogant. In fact, I interviewed at Google while I was writing Systems Performance for Prentice Hall, and I never mentioned it in the interviews for that reason. In such interviews I'm focused on what…

Brendan,

I attended a talk you gave at AWS Re:Invent 2019. You need some serious, serious help.

No company should ever be speaking to you like that. You should be showing companies the door, not the other way around.

Early on in my career I learned most tech companies are absolute garbage and are not worth working for. You're worth a lot more than they are, brother.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#209

Post by tyingq »

j2kun wrote: post #199
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…

How did you get into the expert witness line of work?

I would guess it's mostly an amicable relationship with one lawyer that happens to have connections to other lawyers.

Do good once with a connected lawyer, and your name gets passed around.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#210

Post by coredog64 »

twirlip wrote: post #152
aliceryhl wrote: post #118

I 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…

There’s a decently well selling book on Python that is of the same format.
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