I wrote my first book for a traditional publisher. Later, with my second book, I decided to effectively self-publish, for two reasons: 1) the money is better an

I wrote my first book for a traditional publisher. Later, with my second book, I decided to effectively self-publish, for two reasons: 1) the money is better and 2) I wanted to be able to update my books whenever I had something to say. My first book, which was published in 2005, hasn't been updated once, even though I have hundreds of notes on the margins of my own copy. Talk about frustrating. The problem is that self publishing is a lot of work if you want to do it properly. It requires a large up-front investment, which is difficult to justify if you're only going to write a book or two. I spent months learning the publishing business, building the processes and the software. To support my continuous publishing ideas, I built a fully-automated workflow based around DocBook, from which I produce print, screen, and various other digital formats. While I enjoyed all of it, most people wouldn't. I was also lucky to have the support of my wife, who is actually managing the company, as well as the sales and marketing activities. Experiencing all this, we are now transforming our publishing company to to provide low-cost support to authors who wish to keep control and a big chunk of their royalties, but also to focus on writing (rather than publishing and the other repetitive activities). Lean is the word here, and we pass most of the savings to authors. That's where I think the future of technical publishing will be.