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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?

#271

Post by yodsanklai »

sdevonoes wrote: post #260
libraryofbabel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you find it unremarkable because you already know the material, or because the material isn't relevant to what you do? Anyway, some reasons: * Draws together a wealth of material on databases and distributed systems that wasn't explained in a systematic, accessible way anywhere else. It provides a map to someone coming to this hard-to-navigate area for the first time. * Great balance between being conversant with…

While I agree with all your points (I also think the book is a good one), I don't agree with the "level up" part. I don't see how, after reading carefully the book, any software engineer can "level up". If you don't have practical experience implementing (or dealing with, or maintaining) some of the scenarios the book talks about, then in no way one can "level up" just by reading the book.

The book provides tons of reference. I know that while reading the book, I experimented with many of the software described in the book. The author makes a good job at comparing various techs in putting them in context. This is very hard to do by just following a web of tutorials on the web.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#272

Post by fault_tolerant »

Also author of an O'Reilly book here, sold 7K+ paper copies, and about 10K+ ebooks over the year, been in Amazon best-sellers in several categories for quite some time.

Even though the book was not by any means a disaster, and has made me some money, I do not feel like this was a worthy time investment. Martin's book is one of the (few) books that are selling that well, and, let's face it: most of the books people write won't be best-sellers. Unless you can quit your job and focus on writing for at least a year, it's not likely to be of a quality that will make you money, and even then it highly depends on timing and reception.

I'm very glad it has worked out for OP: well deserved.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#273

Post by jzcoder »

pc86 wrote: post #269
coredog64 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my last employer there was a similar story. The candidate mentioned he had written a book on Flask. So the dev in the interview took that as an invitation to skip the warm ups and go on a deep dive into Flask internals. The author got extremely flustered and couldn’t answer.

Does the job they were interviewing for require a deep knowledge of Flask internals day-to-day?

I don't think this matters. If he strongly claims he is an expert on Flask, and I knew Flask, then I would test the depth of that knowledge. You can't validate every detail on their resume, but if you find they misled about this one fact, odds are they mislead on other facts you are not capable of validating.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#274

Post by kennethh »

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…

The point made here is important, publishers lose money on most releases but make a lot of money on the successes much like venture capitalists. The downside of each book is protected/limited but the upside is unlimited. So one book that sells 100.000 copies makeup for a lot of books that sell a few thousands.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#275

Post by nicbou »

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 don't need to turn it into a book. You can turn it into an online resource.

I help people settle in Berlin. I got tired of repeating myself, so I put my answers on a website and linked to it. Now it's my main source of income, and a well-known resource for expats.

I don't think any topic can be monetized with such ease, but it doesn't hurt to try. Even if you completely fail, you'll still help thousands of people who are googling their problems.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#276

Post by nicbou »

winter_blue wrote: post #206
aliceryhl wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the first step is too big or the end goal is too far, I cut the first step into smaller steps, and try to find a tempting intermediary goal.

Right now, I'm restoring an old motorcycle, and it's not going well. A bolt broke and I need to extract it from the engine I just reassembled.

My end goal now isn't to ride a shiny vintage bike, it's just to get it running. The first step isn't to extract the broken bolt, it's to open the engine again, a ten minute job.

Start small, set reasonable goals, and be careful about premature optimisation.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#277

Post by fault_tolerant »

Also author of an O'Reilly book here, sold 7K+ paper copies, and about 10K+ ebooks over the year, been in Amazon best-sellers in several categories for quite some time. Even though the book was not by any means a disaster, and has made me some money, I do not feel like this was a worthy time investment. Martin's book is one of the (few) books that are selling that well, and, let's face it: most of the books people write won't be best-sellers. Unless you can quit your job and focus on writing for at least a year, it's not likely to be of a quality that will make you money, and even then it highly depends on timing and reception.

I'm very glad it has worked out for OP: well deserved.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#278

Post by nicbou »

aliceryhl wrote: post #196
justinlloyd wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exp…

I'm definitely not putting things on my blog for google rankings or ads. Those sound like they would be really boring to spend my time on, and the ads are extra pointless because the government has put a cap on my income in exchange for being paid to be a student, and I'm already at this cap with my part-time software job. I will certainly try to see if I can repurpose some of my better responses to common questions…

Focus on Answering The Damn Question. In my experience, this is enough to attract traffic in the long run.

If that works, then you can start thinking about monetization. For now, just build something good amd see how it gets picked up.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#279

Post by nicbou »

sasaf5 wrote: post #220
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…

> Writing a blog post just takes energy in a way that writing on forums simply does not. The key here is the interlocutor. Trying to write an interesting post for a general reader is a dauting task hence the energy. Try to materialize that reader a bit more, even if mentally. Or write in dialog form :)

It doesn't have to be interesting if it solves a problem.

I write about health insurance and visas. My guides are not page-turners, but they're a welcome introduction to really complex matters.

Re: Writing a book: is it worth it?

#280

Post by nicbou »

6510 wrote: post #211
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…

I coin one rule for blogging: However you do it keep it consistent. If you do monthly long reads keep doing that. If you do short posts 5 times per day keep making them 5 times per day (its better to drop to 4 and make a buffer that auto publishes than to skip days) Forum discussions can be a mess of excess and ot information. You could easily cut and paste questions you've answered. (Sometimes modify them to fit how…

I disagree with this advice. I write articles when there is a need for them. Sometimes they are 2 months apart, and sometimes 2 days. I can't plan the problems I'll face and solve in advance.

I also spend a lot of time updating old articles with new information, and that new information trickles in at random intervals.

Most of your readers will find you through Google, when they're trying to solve a specific problem. They won't subscribe to your content or return without a specific goal in mind, so consistency is not that important.

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