4 ms·
I have quite a few friends who have written technical books, universally they say that the money isn't worth the huge amount of time it takes. So you either do
by Eridrus 8y ago
I have quite a few friends who have written technical books, universally they say that the money isn't worth the huge amount of time it takes. So you either do it for the prestige, or because you want to share your knowledge.
There's something to be said about low five figures being meaningfully different from zero, but we already have plenty of people sharing knowledge for free, so I'm still pretty convinced this doesn't matter.
IMO books need to become more collaborative affairs, rather than spewing out ever more of them. We already have a lot of books that overlap in completely unclear ways, and what we actually need is a way to integrate this knowledge.
- barry-cotter 8y agoHave any of your friends self-published? That seems to be the way of at least possibly making some real money off of publishing a technical book, particularly if you have some added value content you can sell with it as a more expensive package, like a video course, extensive sample code or cheat sheets.
- Eridrus 8y agoNo. Most of them have had good things to say about their editors too. And again, they are not doing with a profit motive in mind, and self-publishing can conflict with other goals, e.g. prestige. Publishers also help your book stand out from the Pakt hordes. Not that all of Pakt is bad, but a lot of people are unwilling to even look at books from there.