3 ms·

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. > I had been approached many times by tech publishers to write books from scratch, but I never found the process and economic

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. > I had been approached many times by tech publishers to write books from scratch, but I never found the process and economics attractive. You might want to consider writing the book on leanpub, and then talking to a traditional publisher to adopt the book. At least that's my plan for https://leanpub.com/perl6 https://leanpub.com/perl6 (a publisher has approached me, though it's currently in a too early stage, so we've deferred further discussions until version 1 of the manuscript is ready). > Some of my biggest wins were the books I didn't write. LeanPub has a feature where you can cobble together a book title and a cover image, and it creates a landing page that collects emails from interested readers. I believe you need to create a book on leanpub for that, which now costs USD$99. Not terribly much, but a certain threshold that prevents me from just throwing out ideas like this.

braythwayt 10y ago
> I believe you need to create a book on leanpub for that, which now costs USD$99 Yes, that is a new "feature." However, IIRC, once you reach a certain threshold of royalties, the $99 is waived. So,if I were starting today, I still wouldn't pay it because my very first book would get me over the threshold. Now I had the benefit of having written a blog, so I had material and an audience. But these are important things to have even if you don't pay $99 to publish a book. If you want to write a book, or start a software side-project, it is enormously helpful to "prime the pump" by building your brand a little. Speak at conferences, write a blog, be a thoughtful contributor on social media sites where your eventual customers go for help. If you do those things, you needn't worry about the $99 for your first book, or whatever fee some captive app market charges you, &c. Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, but online reputations can be built over time by plugging away, a little like gold-mining in MMORPGs...

braythwayt 10y ago

> I believe you need to create a book on leanpub for that, which now costs USD$99 Yes, that is a new "feature." However, IIRC, once you reach a certain threshold of royalties, the $99 is waived. So,if I were starting today, I still wouldn't pay it because my very first book would get me over the threshold. Now I had the benefit of having written a blog, so I had material and an audience. But these are important things to have even if you don't pay $99 to publish a book. If you want to write a book, or start a software side-project, it is enormously helpful to "prime the pump" by building your brand a little. Speak at conferences, write a blog, be a thoughtful contributor on social media sites where your eventual customers go for help. If you do those things, you needn't worry about the $99 for your first book, or whatever fee some captive app market charges you, &c. Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, but online reputations can be built over time by plugging away, a little like gold-mining in MMORPGs...