51–60 of 299 posts
I think he’s underestimating his salary and stock value.
Most Silicon Valley engineers at his level would make more than $200,000 a year with stock and salary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I wrote a book about React and after that didn't get asked stupid interview questions anymore.
Surely that doesn't work if it's 'just' some self-published book the interviewers haven't heard of? I don't mean any disrespect to yours at all (since I've never read any book on React, so I can say with certainty not your (unshared name) book on React) but anyone can write a bad book and start selling (or rather, 'offering for sale') PDFs/ePubs on their website ( I've thought about doing it!) that shouldn't make the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> mainly just organizing blog posts Were these your own blog posts, or posts from other folks? If the former, you should include that time as time it took to write the book!
They're my blog posts and that's a good point. I can generally write a blog post in a few hours. Martin's book is clearly a masterpiece and mine isn't. Just though I'd chime in and let folks know that writing a book doesn't have to be a 2.5 year full-time commitment.
Another book was from scratch and I did spend a fair number of work hours on it--with the OK of management--supplemented by some (but not outrageous) nights and weekends. It probably ended up being like a part-time job for about 6 months plus additional time spent back and forth with the editor--which wasn't actually a lot.
"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 ot…
"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 ot…
(With the most obvious exception being if you're a public figure of some sort.)
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…
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.
I wrote a book back in 2000 and it's one of those glad-I-did-it-but-never-again experiences. I think the author nailed it with, "I strongly recommend that you estimate the value of your future royalties to be close to zero." Do it as a way to give back / contribute to a topic you are passionate about, do it for the amazing learning experience, do it for the challenge. And then if you also make some money off it, that…
I'm not sure where I first heard this, but I feel it, even as I think about writing more: "everyone loves having written a book, not so much writing a book."
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 think it's probably good to go into the project with an idea of why you're doing this. Are you creating what's basically an extended business card? Are you trying to help a particular kind of person that you know very well? Or are you chasing the goal of matching up a slice of knowledge with an eager audience?
There are other goals. For instance, a lot of disparate experiences in your career can come together to help on a certain section you're working on. This allows you to personally gain some synthesis from your experiences you might not otherwise. You can find new depth in ancillary areas as you go through and footnote, adding more depth to the things you're talking about both for yourself and the reader.
It's good to have those goals, even if you end up delivering a different kind of book than you had planned, because as a sole author something's got to keep you motivated for years. This isn't a software project, a job, or even a romantic commitment. Whatever you write, if it's worth writing, becomes a part of you. Like one of the other commenters says, if you have people on your team with published books they're likely to be busy responding to and helping folks interested in those areas. That doesn't go away simply because you move on.
Probably the best advice I can give for new authors is that it should be a lot of work, and once you finish each phase you'll say to yourself, "Now comes the hard part". This essay writer gave 50 presentations. Wow! That number of public appearances alone is a non-trivial amount of work. Don't forget contacting bloggers, podcasts, tech publishers, and so on. No matter where you are in the process, next up is the hard part.
None of that is any reason not to do it, of course. You just should be aware that if you're going to do a good job it's a major commitment. Prepare your outlook accordingly.