22 ms·

Writing a book: is it worth it?

• geerlingguy 6y ago
  My favorite line in the post, and one that inspires my own efforts lately: > How to be a 10x engineer: help ten other engineers be twice as good. Producing high-quality educational materials enables you to be a 300x engineer.
  • Jtsummers 6y ago
    That sentiment (though I didn't think of it in quite this fashion) is why I set up a bi-weekly project management meeting at my last office, and tried to set up something similar for technical people. The PM meeting was not a status reporting meeting. It had no management beyond the PMs (that is, no supervisors proper). The entire purpose was to facilitate sharing information across project boundaries (technical, procedural, or even just a chance to vent). I considered it to have "paid for itself" after two PMs discovered that another PM had already solved a procedural problem (how to get something done, not a technical problem) that they'd been stumbling over for months. That was also the day the PMs stopped complaining about the (non-mandatory) meeting that I'd set up for them. Another time, a PM discovered that another project had exactly the test capabilities they needed (but because of physical separation was totally unaware of this test lab tucked into a corner). Saved a lot of time and money that day, and the project ended up ahead of schedule in that aspect (not sure if they kept that lead, I left shortly after). I wish I'd been able to get the technical meeting going, but management wasn't willing to give people the hour I asked for and "lunch & learn" only works for the motivated when you aren't getting paid and you aren't getting training credits towards some certification.
    • klenwell 6y ago
      > That sentiment (though I didn't think of it in quite this fashion) is why I set up a bi-weekly project management meeting at my last office, and tried to set up something similar for technical people. At my last office, I set up something very similar for our org with similar success. Your PM procedural problem case is a perfect example down to the complaining about having to attend a meeting they weren't required to attend. Enter new management. After 8 weeks of ice-breaking meetings in triplicate and taking cues from all the wrong people, the first concrete thing they did that touched me was cancel that meeting. I found new employment shortly thereafter. It's now an essential part of my repertoire. For technical people? Well that's mostly my team. We have a Trello board where anyone on team can drop RFC cards. Members of my team meet every couple weeks to review and discuss. It's visible to the whole org if anyone else is interested. (Generally, they aren't.)
      • Jtsummers 6y ago
        I wanted the technical meeting because that was actually the weak spot for the org. Each team was isolated from each other to a greater than necessary degree. And no team was really "world class". But several had a phenomenal grasp of some aspect of development that the others lacked. I wanted to breakdown the, largely, artificial barrier between teams and better spread this knowledge and capability. In the end, I quit before I could realize that, and what did happen (after I left) was more like you describe. Several teams basically did what you describe and set up their own internal learning and instruction approaches. But that doesn't help across the org, the bad teams are still bad. And the problem, mostly, wasn't the people but the time. They needed an opportunity to step back and think, and the firefighting they'd gotten stuck in was neverending. An hour every couple of weeks to hear and learn from others would've benefited them greatly.
  • Thaxll 6y ago
    Writing a book does not add value to your employer, enabling engineers in the world is one thing but it does not affect your day to day job or people arround you.
    • ticmasta 6y ago
      yes, why would an employer want employees who have the capability to write a book on the payroll? That's time that could be spent heads-down coding! </s>
      • Thaxll 6y ago
        I'm answering to the 300x engineer quote, an x engineer is in the scope of an employer.
        • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
          An employer would LOVE to have a 300x engineer on board. I mean take someone like Martin Fowler who wrote a number of highly influential book and a great website. Every time you look for him, you'll find his company or employer, ThoughtWorks. He and his work have put that company on the map as one of the top consultancy firms; he and his work educate everyone that works for that company, they follow his teachings and mindset, and become "10x" because of it. Companies would be DESPERATE to hire him. Maybe not the kind of employers you think of, no, and maybe you wouldn't hire him for his 'output', but that's a very superficial way to look at it.
  • chasd00 6y ago
    i logged in only to mention "How to be a 10x engineer: help ten other engineers be twice as good." is fantastic! That's going in one of my sigs.
  • imtringued 6y ago
    I agree with the former statement but once you have reached a 300x productivity multiplier you are no longer an engineer. You're primarily a teacher who communicates via books.
• myself248 6y ago
  As far as I can tell, writing and publishing a dead-tree book is the best/only way to get on NPR. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only purpose dead-tree books serve anymore.
  • Jtsummers 6y ago
    Technical books in print are generally better formatted than their e-book cousins (O'Reilly's digital library, Kindle) unless they're PDFs. This has a major impact on readability if there are significant amounts of diagrams or code samples or tables in the text.
    • Shared404 6y ago
      I've also found some physical books nicer for reference then their digital versions.
      • OJFord 6y ago
        I sometimes think 'I really prefer physical books, if only they had Ctrl-F' - but actually, in reality, it's often so much easier to leaf through and find something (from rough memory of where it was, skimming, jumping around, ..) than it is to search digitally (get the search term right, see results with little context, find it's impossible to search for part of an equation or the text in a diagram, or oh damn it was rendered as an image).
    • ghaff 6y ago
      When something isn't just flowing text, it can be a real crap shoot in ebook form. And, even if the formatting is fine, I often find technical or other reference books (e.g. cookbooks) generally work better in physical form.
  • henrik_w 6y ago
    I much prefer physical books to e-books, especially for technical ones. I learn much better from a physical copy - flipping back and forth, checking where the current section fits into the bigger structure etc I find to be easier. I also like to underline and write notes in the margins - again, I prefer this in a physical book.
• alextheparrot 6y ago
  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.
  • henrik_w 6y ago
    I agree - a fantastic book! I have written a longish summary/review of it, including the reasons why I liked it so much: https://henrikwarne.com/2019/07/27/book-review-designing-data-intensive-applications/ https://henrikwarne.com/2019/07/27/book-review-designing-dat...
  • redisman 6y ago
    Absolutely. It's the only technical book I can't stop thinking about and going back to because of how impressive and informative it is.
  • _____s 6y ago
    Agreed. I'm reading it just now and it is really high quality. Just the chapter on transactions is probably the best explanation of a single topic that I've read in any technical book. It's really good for such a complex topic—thorough while still being very readable!
  • ponker 6y ago
    I mean if you agree with the math of creating $80m in value it would be hard to argue that he doesn't deserve $500K of that.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    > the best technical book I’ve ever owned. Second-best, second only to Aurélien Géron’s machine learning book. ;)
  • st1x7 6y ago
    Can someone expand on why the book is so good? I found it very unremarkable but it's recommended so much around here that I suspect that I've missed something important.
• dbrueck 6y ago
  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's just icing on the cake.
  • steveklabnik 6y ago
    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."
    • mtlynch 6y ago
      I've heard it as, "I hate writing but love having written." The source is apparently unclear: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/18/on-writing/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/18/on-writing/
      • steveklabnik 6y ago
        Even better, guess I need to work on my writing :) For me, I do like writing, it's just... really really difficult. That's part of what makes it so worthwhile.
      • twox2 6y ago
        "Everyone one wants to have written, but no one wants to sit down and do the work to write." Is how I heard it.
        • User23 6y ago
          That's how I feel about lifting heavy weights. There's certainly a general principle to be found here. One piece of feedback I got from someone I respect very much is, "read less and write more." So far that's been limited to quality documentation and Tufte style presentations, but I can definitely see the appeal of writing a book even if I don't make a penny off it.
• booleandilemma 6y ago
  Even if you earned $0 from your book, I'd say being able to tell people you wrote a book at interviews and on your resume, and even at parties, would make it worth it. And you'd be able to call yourself an author, how cool is that?
  • k__ 6y ago
    This. I wrote a book about React and after that didn't get asked stupid interview questions anymore.
    • OJFord 6y ago
      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 them an automatic authority on the titular topic though.
      • User23 6y ago
        Check GP's profile. The info you're asking about is there.
        • OJFord 6y ago
          I'm not really asking for any info, I'm assuming that if that's really worked as described for k___, then their book is well known or regarded in React circles, and that's why. I don't think that's a good reason to do it, because well-regarded authors didn't become so by writing any old book - they either already were, or they wrote a bloody good one.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        I don't disagree in that a publisher provides some quality floor and they presumably wouldn't have taken your book on if they already have a superior library on the same topic. That said, put a self-published book on your site and someone can tell pretty quickly from a few minutes with the PDF if it's obviously bad. (Honestly, if I'm doing a book primarily for reputational purposes and I self-publish, I will (and have) just given it away for free.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ghaff 6y ago
  >The combination of talks and the book have allowed me to establish a significant public presence and reputation in this field. I now get far more invitations to speak at conferences than I can realistically accept. Conference talks don’t generate income per se (good industry conferences generally pay for speakers’ travel and accommodation, but they rarely pay speaking fees), but this kind of reputation is helpful for getting consulting gigs. This has been the real value of writing books--especially through a known publisher--for me. (I'm updating one at the moment.) Even if you're not a consultant, publishing a book on some topic still can give you cachet--and, in fact, because of the research you did, you probably are pretty expert on the topic even if you weren't before. I agree that the expected future value of royalties isn't much--but there are other ways to earn money related to a book.
• andreygrehov 6y ago
  > The personal growth that comes from taking on such a challenge is also considerable. And there is no better way to learn something in depth than by explaining it to others. I second. If you can't explain it, you don't understand it well enough. I'm the author of a YouTube course "Dynamic Programming for Beginners" [0]. Helping people to better understand the topic is a pure joy by itself, but it's also extremely rewardable for an author in terms personal growth. If you want to understand something, start teaching, you won't regret. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVrpF4r7WIhTT1hJqZmjP10nxsmrbRvlf https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVrpF4r7WIhTT1hJqZmjP...
• dredmorbius 6y ago
  Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found in the same purse—honora y provecho no caben en un saco. -- Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Authorship" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Authorship https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Authorship For professionals in technical fields where skills-assessment itself is expensive and uncertain, a book serves at a minimum as a signifier of one's own skill and ability. In exceptional circumstances, a book can lead to the author becoming part of both the skill-generating and certifying mechanism. Writing "the book" on a topic, and the teaching, lecturing, training, or technical leadership roles availed ... may ... prove worthwhile. Others then display their copies or familiarity of the book as evidence of their own ability. (Knuth, Gang of Four, Kernighan & Ritchie, etc.) It's critical to realise that this signalling capability, as with attention, is a fundamentally rivalrous and finite space (perhaps not fully zero-sum), such that there can only be one truly leading authority or reference at a time. Though if like Martin Kleppmann you hit that spot, it can prove rewarding.
  • Retric 6y ago
    Specialties are fractal. It’s much easier to be the expert on something that 1,000 people do than something 1,000,000 people do. However, by making expert knowledge accessible it’s likely that far more people discover they really should be doing whatever it is you’re an expert at.
    • dredmorbius 6y ago
      Sure. But the skill remains in competition with all other skills --- some specialisation or specialisations must shrink for another to grow. With a century of universal compulsory education, US adult literacy rates have difficulty cracking 91%.[1] That's about 10 million people with no effective English literacy. (Some are literate in other languages.) Some other industrialised countries see similar results, though most fall at 98% or higher by UNESCO rankings.[2] And even basic literacy expresses a minimal language and cognitive capability. Skill itself is finite. Over half the population, and over 2/3 in most surveyed industrialised countries, have poor, "below poor", or no computer skills at all, by an OECD survey. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ The population with the demonstrated capacity to aquire any advanced computer skills seems to be about 5--10%, and this competes with all other high-skill, technical, or professional occupations. Increasingly it's a prerequisite for them, possibly shrinking that pool. Again, the larger point is that attention, a key component of skills acquisition, is rivalrous, in both individuals and populations ________________________________ Notes: 1. NCES reports 4% "could not participate", 4.1% "below level 1', and 12.9% "level 1", or 21% "low English literacy" ages 16--65, in 2012 and 2014, a level insufficient "to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences". https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp 2. Rankings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_...
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  "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 other great reasons to write a book. The satisfaction of helping others, the space to focus and expand your thinking on a topic, the increase to your reputation, etc. But, "economically viable" doesn't really equate to "at least one or two people didn't lost money doing it".
  • User23 6y ago
    It's very difficult for accomplished person in the tech field to find an activity that pays better than just getting a job at a top tier company. People who choose to do something else must have other reasons.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Another way to look at it is the answer to "Ask HN: I'm looking for a side project or job to make me extra money" is almost certainly not "Write a book!" (With the most obvious exception being if you're a public figure of some sort.)
• CrankyBear 6y ago
  Miracles happen and sometimes a book, like this one, takes off. For the most part, it's not worth your time and energy. I've made far more money as an author of articles and as an expert witness than I ever did from my books, even though one did with quite well and was translated into Greek and German. I'll also add that he must have one heck of a deal with ORA to get those kind of royalties because the standard ORA contract based on his sales, would not come to anything like that much money.
  • bcherny 6y ago
    The 25/10 structure has been O’Reilly’s standard split for at least a few years, no negotiation needed.
    • giovannibonetti 6y ago
      What does 25/10 mean in this context?
      • langitbiru 6y ago
        From the article: "that I get 25% of publisher revenue from ebooks, online access, and licensing, 10% of revenue from print sales..."
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • ponker 6y ago
    Did the books get you the gigs as expert witness?
  • erikbye 6y ago
    Your book titles?
  • wtetzner 6y ago
    > For the most part, it's not worth your time and energy. I'd revise that, and say it's not worth your time and energy if the goal is to make money from it. There may be other goals (e.g. to evangelize and popularize some piece of technology, or maybe to make certain tech more accessible).
• hikerclimb 6y ago
  Writing a book isn’t worth it... who wants to put in that much effort.... to write down your thoughts...
• personjerry 6y ago
  I saw a related Stackexchange post the other day: https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/52772/everyone-has-a-book-in-them-but-in-most-cases-that-s-where-it-should-stay-does https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/52772/everyone-h... Tl;dr: Q: Should I write something if I kinda want to? A: Write it. Even if it's just for you.
• theodric 6y ago
  If you weren't going to do it anyway, no.
• phtrivier 6y ago
  > A lot of money, but I also put a lot of time into it! I estimate that I spent about 2.5 years of full-time equivalent work researching and writing the book, spread out over the course of 4 years. Of that time, I spent one year (2014–15) working full-time on the book without income, while the rest of the time I worked on the book part-time alongside part-time employment. Is it too creepy to wonder how the author sustain himself during the "full-time without income" part ? (Did he start saving earlier on to get a big safety cushion, did he get an advance, etc ?)
  • mac01021 6y ago
    I think if you're a senior software engineer at LinkedIn in silicon valley for a couple of years and then don't have enough to sustain yourself without additional income for a year after that then your lifestyle must be quite extravagant.
    • phtrivier 6y ago
      Sure ! To clarify, that's also my assumption, but I was wondering if he specifically decided to save money to prepare for the "writing" period ; or he if "accidentally" ended up with enough money to spare a year of full-time employment. In any case, good for him, of course, no jalousy implied ! (Also, as for the "your lifetime must be quite extravagant"... Again, "fair enough", but apparently the whole "FIRE"[1] movement might beg to differ ;) ) [1]: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
  • ghaff 6y ago
    An advance probably isn't going to be much more than beer money. It's not unreasonable to imagine though that a West Coast developer could have some savings. That said, given his comments about finances (which are spot-on), it does seem like sort of a leap to take 1+ year off. Nothing wrong with taking some extended time off, but most wouldn't use it to write a book full-time. Of course, going in he may have had unreasonable expectations which were indeed met.
• MrPowers 6y ago
  I wrote two books this year, Beautiful Spark being the more popular of the two: https://leanpub.com/beautiful-spark https://leanpub.com/beautiful-spark My book writing experience was much different: * just took a few weeks of part time work, mainly just organizing blog posts * Leanpub pays much higher royalties (80%) Books are a great way to learn more about the topic and help others. It makes training and employee onboarding a lot easier. You can tell folks to read a chapter and then review. Books aren't a great way to make money, but they're fun to write and a great way to give back to the programming community.
  • rco8786 6y ago
    > 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!
    • MrPowers 6y ago
      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.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        The first book I wrote incorporated a lot of existing blog posts. There was still a lot of glue to write, holes to patch, and various updates/fixups. 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.
  • UncleOxidant 6y ago
    Just curious: what kind of software did you use to write your books?
• nottorp 6y ago
  A tech manual, he means?
• kevstev 6y ago
  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 contacted about other jobs, and even to write other books. They all said the actual book itself made them no money beyond their initial (small-hardly five figure) advance, and in terms of dollars per hour they probably would have been better off getting a fast food job, but it opened up a lot of doors and made them at least a little bit "internet famous."
  • markshead 6y ago
    Just having a book that you've written on any topic listed somewhere on your resume is nearly always a positive. It is kind of like having a college degree in that it shows you can start something and finish it.
    • ticmasta 6y ago
      way more people finish college than publish a book though. It's a higher-level signal IMO, even a self-published book is a massive accomplishment that shows huge dedication.
  • franze 6y ago
    If you do any kind of consultancy, writing and publishing a big is part or the normal careere path.
  • rllearneratwork 6y ago
    another good way to become a little bit "internet famous" is to create and maintain a useful open-source project. IMHO, this is more future proof in the technology space since you can gradually evolve a project but a book can become obsolete if it focuses on a specific technology rather than fundamentals.
    • 6y ago
• ponker 6y ago
  “A Career in Professional Basketball: is it worth it?” by Lebron James.
• jedberg 6y ago
  > because the income that this work has generated is in the same ballpark as the Silicon Valley software engineering salary (including stock and benefits) I could have received in the same time if I hadn’t quit LinkedIn in 2014 to work on the book 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.
  • snypox 6y ago
    I think so, too. But on the flip side he wrote probably one of the best CS book of the previous decade. :)
• DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  I'm on my third. It's definitely worth it, but it's also, if done well, a long, hard haul. 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.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• aazaa 6y ago
  > It would be interesting to compare it to working on open source software, another activity that can have significant positive impact but is difficult to get paid for. I don’t have a strong opinion on this at the moment. Does anyone have views from having tried to do both - book and open source project?
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  It's been noted before that these highly specific niche titles can do very well. You need a topic where the people who work in it are well paid, even by SV standards, and you can save them a lot of time and effort by condensing the state of the art into actionable information and examples. So this is not "writing a book" - this is writing a book for a niche market that will pay well for non-obvious high-value technical content. Something like "Xcode for Beginners" will not be nearly as successful - especially not now that app dev is so established. Even though Xcode has a lot of quirks, the features and the build process aren't too much of a mystery and most people in the industry will be able to work out the essentials for themselves.
• inglor_cz 6y ago
  For the last two years, I was able to make ends meet writing books, even though the Czech market is rather small (10 million speakers). The key was having my own e-shop and a set of readers who come to read the blog. Once people buy directly from you, the whole balance shifts. Normally, distributors and bookshops take a large cut before sharing a slice of profit with you. Avoid them and the whole thing turns profitable.
• CalChris 6y ago
  Shamelessly plagiarizing from the Is Y Combinator worth it? comments. Gist: Writing a book is worth it. But, it depends more on you than on the book. Isn't that true for pretty much everything in life? Yes. That doesn't change the truth of it.
• Murkin 6y ago
  Very different experience for me. Wrote a book about Redux (https://leanpub.com/redux-book https://leanpub.com/redux-book) brought about $15K for 4 months of work. (Granted, did no marketing at all) It always feels strange to say "I wrote a book" and it never seemed to really impress tech people or cause an inflow of consulting work. But it is very fun and you get to really get into the tech (other projects, sources, blogs, testing ideas). Prob would do again one day
  • ticmasta 6y ago
    Do you think the lifespan of the topic or the delivery platform impacted your returns? I don't buy a lot of books anymore but used to drop 40-50 bucks on an O'Reilly book that would be used for years. My LP purchases probably top out under $10 and are for more immediate, short-lived topics (which seems to be what the platform targets with it's digital & updated content focus)
    • Murkin 6y ago
      It's easy to use LP but getting into O'Reilly is not that simple. If we could, we would of published with them instead
  • swyx 6y ago
    15k is pretty good for no marketing! i feel that self published book authors should all have a "marketing partner" since they all seem so shy about marketing
    • ghaff 6y ago
      >should all have a "marketing partner" The problem is that it's relatively easy to hire a marketing partner (does PR, etc.). But it will probably cost quite a bit more than your book advance. And most publishers these days aren't setting up book signings, sending out review copies, etc. When I get pings to see if I want to review a book it's usually from a PR agency.
      • 6y ago
• jawns 6y ago
  I'm a software engineer and the author of four books, but none are about software. (Three are pop-sci and one is pop-stats.) First book (2013) did extremely well and continues to sell well. Lots of good press, translated into multiple languages, excerpts in a national magazine, promotion on a network TV show. Second book (2014) tanked hard. Third book (2019) looked like it would suffer the same fate as the second, but sales have been slowly inching up. Fourth book (2020) has seen abysmal sales, likely because of the pandemic, but it's a direct sequel to the first book and there are opportunities for cross-promotion, so I'm hoping sales eventually pick up. I've been fortunate that throughout the course of writing these books, I've had a full-time job that pays the bills, so any advances or royalties have been gravy. But if I could give advice to those who are interested in writing a book, it would be this: * Unless this is purely a vanity project, do not go in the red. I would not have written my books if I hadn't gotten book deals. I wouldn't have put myself in the red by hiring an editor, a proofreader, an illustrator, a designer, a publicist, etc., which is what you likely will have to do to produce a quality book when self-publishing. A "you have to spend money to earn money" mindset is not the best mindset to have in a category where relatively few books succeed. * Publishers these days aren't looking for good writers or great writers. They're looking for marketable books in established categories written by half-decent writers with solid platforms. There are certainly exceptions to that, but you can't hurt your chances by strengthening your platform or doing your own market research before even approaching an agent. (By platform I mean a built-in audience -- people to whom you can market the book. For better or worse, this means having lots of newsletter subscribers, YouTube subscribers, a big social media presence, blog readers, etc.) * If you are an introvert, you will likely find being an author uncomfortable. You might have no problem with the often solitary task of writing the book. But the hardest part (and potentially the most time-consuming part) of being an author is not the writing itself but the marketing and promotion that comes afterward. Don't expect to be able to lean on your publisher for this. After a brief promotional blitz around pub day, you're likely on your own. * There is a quote attributed to a number of famous writers: "I hate writing, but I love having written." I can all but assure you that if you're working on a book of any decent length or depth, you will reach an "I hate this" moment. But once the book is published, for the rest of your life you get to say that you're an author. It's a pretty cool feeling.
  • 6y ago
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I wrote a book once. I could do it again, but I haven't found a reason. It's a hell of a lot of work. I think one thing that helps, is to have a "timeless topic." People still read Knuth's stuff, and Steve McConnell's Rapid Development is just as valid today, as it was, 25 years ago.
• syspec 6y ago
  Martin Kleppmann is a great speaker, if you have a chance watch any of his talks on youtube. The book itself is also great, it gives an amazing lay of the land when it comes to databases / database methodologies and algorithms.
• lentinjoseph 6y ago
  I'm an author of 8 books in Robotics. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this. Pros 1) Great visibility in the robotics community 2) Started getting good consulting projects 3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income) 4) People start identifying me in conferences 5) Got the invitation to do research in good universities 6) Got good patience which is very useful while working with the robots 7) Knowledge also doubled (I have to do a lot of homework in order to write things in the book). 8) Self-satisfaction to became an author Cons 1) Time consuming 2) Need full-time dedication 3) Royalties are very low (only 17% of the book price) 4) Books will easily come online for free download. This will definitely demotivate us to write another book. 5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books), so you may have to update it by writing a new edition. 6) Getting good income from books is like getting a lottery. It will only happen to a few people. The list goes on. Just want to share my list of my books here https://robocademy.com/product-category/robotics/ https://robocademy.com/product-category/robotics/
  • ArcMex 6y ago
    How much and what ways did your motivations change from writing book 1 to say book 4? At that point, what's keeping you going the most? By the time you sit down to plan book 8, what's going through your mind especially when you factor in the cons? Thanks.
    • lentinjoseph 6y ago
      Interesting question. Here is the story. I got an invite to write a book in 2014. Initially i thought it was very easy and can complete within 3 months. By this assumption, i agreed and start writting. When I start writting, i understood that, it is not easy at all. As a first time author, i was litterally struggling. The only factor that pushed me was, I already spent months for this, so If leave the project, I will lose that months. So I kept going. After 1.5 years, my first book poped up and it was well recieved. Immediately after that, I got the next invitation to write second book. The thing is, the book subject was very good. So I agreed again by understanding all the cons of writting. I have spent 6 full months (full time for completing the next book. And I am keep on getting invitation and because of the experience of first book, I could easily draft the other books. It was a tough time for me too. Only less income, but only motivation was, I am doing something challenging and I am learning lot of stuff, also I am writting about the technology I like the most. These factor pushing me for writting me again :) Sorry for the typo and grammatical errors. :)
• aliceryhl 6y ago
  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/ 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 able to channel this incredible amount of writing into blog posts or a book, but I don't know how. My blog has had one post in the last three years. Writing a blog post just takes energy in a way that writing on forums simply does not. It's always been this way too. For example, in high school, I spent the time on https://math.stackexchange.com/ https://math.stackexchange.com/.
  • justinlloyd 6y ago
    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 expertise. It is precisely what I have done in the past.
    • aliceryhl 6y ago
      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 as blog posts.
      • abrookewood 6y ago
        So don't do it for ads, but you should do it for ranking. You have a large body of content waiting to be exposed and once it does, if you later decide to write a book or do conferences or do training, then your blog will help you achieve that. You should be rewarded for the effort you have put into helping other people.
• vmception 6y ago
  No. Its not. Do anything with photos and color and try to do anything outside of platforms and its worse. Platforms can help with distribution and mitigate inventory storage but your yield gets so small
• csours 6y ago
  Questions for the authors in this thread: If I'm thinking about writing a book, what stepping stones would you recommend? I'm thinking things like should I write a series of blog posts, do tech talks, etc. What resources were most valuable for you in writing your book?
  • jeromecornet 6y ago
    It depends on your goals for your book; are you trying to make money, to be known in the domain, etc... ? For me, I was working on a wine-related software project but I had all of these notes that I had accumulated over the years and I felt like they needed to be better organized. My original plan was to write a series of blog posts, but I ended up self-publishing the book on Amazon (under the title Essential French Wine) and it's had a modest success (but quite unexpected since I didn't put any effort into marketing it). So if you are just trying to write a book just go and do that, don't waste time on other things... On the other hand if you are trying to know good strategies for book marketing or to get published, I don't think writing should be your primary concern but rather getting yourself known (building an audience) and that depends very much on where your audience hangs out.
  • jacques_chester 6y ago
    Regretfully, I can only say that what seems to have worked for me was dumb luck. Difficult advice to reproduce.
• ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
  It ofc worth it if u know how to write... How to align words... :)
• sizt 6y ago
  There is this thing called the internet. It is IVAM. Interactive, visual, audible and modifiable. Kinda like CRUD. It also doesn't kill trees. Now what about books again?
• patrec 6y ago
  Designing Data-Intensive Applications might be the best (non-niche) CS book of the decade, and he definitely did create far more value than he captured. So I'm glad Mr Kleppmann at least kind of "broke even" compared to the alternative of working for a FAANG (his salary assumptions seem however rather low). I guess the main take away for mere mortals who consider writing a book and making money with it (as opposed to boosting their profile) is to under no circumstances publish with OReilly. Getting <10% vs 80%+ of revenue is just about viable for the 0.01%.
• baby 6y ago
  I’ve been writing a book on cryptography called Real-World Cryptography[1] and targeting software engineers and students who are interested in applied cryptography. The book has already sold thousands of copies before even going in print (due to a blogpost I wrote on why I’m writing a book on cryptography[2]) which has added a lot of pressure on my plate. The book is almost done at this point, but revising and polishing it will take a lot of time. I really wish I could take some time off for that like the author of the post did. I can say that it has been a long journey, but I have learned so much along the way. [1]: https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-cryptography?a_aid=Realworldcrypto&a_bid=ad500e09 https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-cryptography?a_aid=... [2]: https://cryptologie.net/article/504/why-im-writing-a-book-on-cryptography/ https://cryptologie.net/article/504/why-im-writing-a-book-on...
• jnurmine 6y ago
  Recently I've been playing with the idea of writing a sci-fi book. ...and that's mostly it. I don't know what could be the next step, except actually writing the thing. Are there websites/communities? I don't follow nor know of any relevant ones myself. Start with short stories? Or something longer? Self-publish whatever I write? Or start spamming "real publishers"? When I was younger I read a monthly science fiction magazine in the library. That magazine had all kinds of short stories ranging from hardcore space sci-fi to some kind of horror fantasy things. Some stories were so interesting that it was a bit frustrating for the story to stop after only a few pages.
  • muffinman26 6y ago
    Good places to start for writing fiction: - Writer's Digest publishes large yearly lists of places to submit books and short stories. - The Writing Excuses podcast covers all steps of the writing process, from research and planning to publishing with an agent or going the self-publishing route. The speakers cover a wide range of strategies on each topic. - writing.stackexchange.com is a relatively useful resource on a range of writing and publishing topics
    • jnurmine 6y ago
      Thank you!
• thewebcount 6y ago
  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%?)
  • ghaff 6y ago
    (In theory) publishers are doing more for you than Apple is. At a minimum they're providing some level of editing services and (maybe) validation of a quality floor. They also have distribution deals that you mostly can't get on your own. Remember too that publishers aren't seeing a big chunk of the list price which is going to discounts and middlemen of various sorts. That said, publishers in general don't do as much as they used to and independent publishing will be the right answer for many people--understanding they'll probably have some money out of pocket to make up for the services publishers provide.
  • jacques_chester 6y ago
    Typically your royalty is calculated against the final sale price of the book -- after publisher and retailer have taken their cut. Usually the retailer takes the biggest cut.
    • wiremine 6y ago
      > Usually the retailer takes the biggest cut. Retail markup is usually 35% to 55%, but what a lot of people don't realize is that retailers usually have a method of returning their unsold stock, which the publisher is on the hook to liquidate somehow.
  • wiremine 6y ago
    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 author, your leverage on advances and royalties is your personal brand equity. "Becoming" by Michelle Obama is almost an automatic winner due to her brand. If you're not well known, your publishing deal is abysmally standard. It costs some money to print and distribute a physical book vs. a digital book. This is slowly changing as digital distribution flexes up. But print is still the preferred model for people. [1] And there are additional layers of writing a book in the traditional model: acquisitions, developmental and copy editing being some of the big ones. And you'd be shocked how many non-fiction books have a ghost writer. Finally, there's the reality that the publisher is taking a risk: their high percentages are covering all the books they took a loss on. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell-e-books-and-heres-why.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell...
• simonw 6y ago
  I have a total cheat for book writing: find a project where you can contribute a single chapter. It's an order of magnitude less work then writing a full book, and you get to add "author of a book on X" to your resume. It's pretty much the other end of the scale in terms of overall benefit from what Martin is describing here, but it's worth remembering that it could be a much less stressful and time consuming opportunity.
  • leephillips 6y ago
    Except that would be untrue. You would not be an “author of a book”, but an author of a chapter. Which is still a nice thing for the résumé. But if you overstate anything and are found out, that will be fatal poison, and a stain that could follow you forever.
    • simonw 6y ago
      Sure, you don't mislead people like that. "An author of X" is the language I use.
      • leephillips 6y ago
        Oh, OK. Sorry if I misinterpreted. (Usually on CV publication lists people have a section for books and a separate one for book chapters.)
• filmgirlcw 6y ago
  I had a contract to write a book about Google Wave. I was almost finished with it when Google decided to kill the project. I got a kill fee (which was almost nothing) and a great story to tell, but it taught me a good lesson about how to balance an advance vs going for more residuals on the backend (this is true primarily for technical books. For traditional publishing, get as big of an advance as you can get). The secondary lesson was to not sign contracts for books about Google products (only slightly joking), or really any upcoming product or language without understanding the risk you as the author take if the project is canceled or delayed or there is some other fundamental change. I was 25 when I got the Wave book and it was a lot of work and research for nothing, but I can look back and laugh at the experience. I’ve turned down technical books over the last few years, just because unless you sell 100,000 copies, it can be hard to make the economics work — unless I would be willing to take it on as a side-gig. That said, if it is a hit, the speaking fees/workshops/consulting options from that book can pay dividends, as I’ve seen from many of my friends.
• bambax 6y ago
  Just finished my first novel (in French); will be sending it to publishers next week. If they reject it IDK what I'll do (dump it or auto-publish). But, I'm super happy to have done it. I wrote poems and novellas when I was younger. A complete novel is something else entirely. Even if it doesn't go anywhere, the feeling of having done it is really great.
  • leephillips 6y ago
    Congratulations. But don’t dump it! It costs nothing to distribute electronic versions from your own website.
  • asicsp 6y ago
    Please consider self-publishing or putting it on your own blog. Share it on your social media, here on HN, reddit (there are specific subreddits for self-pub, free books, kindle unlimited, etc) and so on. You never know, even a single heartfelt review will be worth the effort. As a reader, I try to help out lesser known authors, here's an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/izhhoa/hardest_of_hard_modes_a_tale_of_two_books_with_0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/izhhoa/hardest_of_...
• j2kun 6y ago
  Self publishing (which I did) means you don't nearly need as much sales to make writing a book financially viable. If you self-publish through Amazon you get 40%+ royalties, and selling 10k books would net six figures. With a publisher (as Keppmann writes), you really need 5-10x as many sales for it to be a success.
• ausjke 6y ago
  all books are having pdf/epub/etc format these days, means you can get most if not all of them online for free quickly which is discouraging, plus things move fast these days and book might be out of date soon, and it's easier to self-publish, I think the golden time of legacy book writing is probably gone. What about some different models? While the internet/google presents everything, a well organized and to-the-point book still saves time and time is everything. 1. have your own website, and write online book only, ask people to pay for read?(free samples at the frontpage). 2. whoever paid can get automatic reminders on new releases, book updates 3. create a small forum on that site for questions and erratas. 4. give a link for whoever read your book somehow without pay, tell them if the book helped them to profit somehow, please press the donate button to show a little appreciation. As there is no other costs involved(other than hosting fee), your book can be cheaper, to the point people might want to pay even though they can get a free version somewhere.
• greg7mdp 6y ago
  Funny coincidence... I just ordered a copy of this book yesterday after reading https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/ https://josephg.com/blog/crdts-are-the-future/. I might not be the only one.
• non-entity 6y ago
  Jdkvpekqgh
• hgs3 6y ago
  I wrote a fiction book when I was a teenager. It didn't make me rich, but it forced me to be more social, like at various writers venues or at my own book signing.
• stanrivers 6y ago
  "Writing a book is an activity that creates more value than it captures. What I mean with this is that the benefits that readers get from it are greater than the price they paid for the book. To back this up, let’s try roughly estimating the value created by my book." This is the key - you need to create more value for your customer than you are asking them to pay you. If you do that, you will never be want for income because people actually value having you around. Otherwise, you are just a rent extractor.
• Daub 6y ago
  I was second author of a book on computational aesthetics and first author of a book on drawing. As the only native English speaker, I did all of the final re-write of both. For me also it was a turbo-boost to my ability to write. I thought I could write before I started those books. I was wrong. For this alone it was worth it.
• Procrastes 6y ago
  I also wrote a book with O'Reilly and have collaborated on several more with other publishers and indies. I have to say working with the folks at O'Reilly was my best publishing experience by far. Even if I didn't get an animal cover. Not that I'm complaining... but you know, maybe a bat or a weasel or something would have been nice, just sayin'.
  • siltpotato 6y ago
    They ripped you off in the severest. Next time hit them with DROP TABLE animals;. https://github.com/thepracticaldev/orly-full-res/blob/master/droptableanimals-big.png https://github.com/thepracticaldev/orly-full-res/blob/master...
  • tyingq 6y ago
    So that now has me curious on the politics of O'reilly, and who gets an animal cover. Would you be willing to share the experience?
• atum47 6y ago
  As a personal goal: yes, very rewarding. The signing night is also very pleasant. You get to meet a lot of people. As a money maker: no. Not even close.
• angst_ridden 6y ago
  Like everything, the answer is "it depends." I wrote a book a decade or more ago on an F/OSS project I was involved with. The advance worked out to about $2/hour, and I've never sold sufficient copies to go beyond that. That being said, it was always intended more as a labor of love and a way of promoting the project than it was a way to make money. Sadly, there was a political battle within the project's core team, and the fundamental API of the project changed around in a non-backwards-compatible way. That rendered my book semi-obsolete within months of publishing. I left the project shortly thereafter. While those externalities don't bear directly on the book-writing experience, they may be things to keep in mind: stability of the subject you're writing about, general versus specific applicability, and the health of the community you're writing for.
• cable2600 6y ago
  Fiction books are not worth it. Technical books are if you write it like a cookbook and list things they need to have in order to do the things you write about doing.
• philistine 6y ago
  I wrote two useless books no one should read. I love them with all my heart and they make me feel great about myself. Case closed.
• beezle 6y ago
  Worth is an interesting thing. I wrote and published a very niche book that was, for all intents, a mind dump of my experiences doing a particular volunteer, non-tech job over a three year time span (now eight). The value to me was the cleansing nature of putting it all down on paper. I knew I was never going to get rich from it, but felt the many hours I spent doing this job would be wasted if I did not make an effort to pass along to others what had been learned. That it sells 200 copies every year still amazes me.
• watersb 6y ago
  I made about $0.03 per hour from my book. BUT I wrote the book at a time when I wanted a change in my career. I had been doing Network administration and tech support and simple repair work, but I wanted to switch into software development. The book got me interviews. And my life was very different after that.
• bonestamp2 6y ago
  You don't write a book to make money from the book. You write a book to make money from the aftermath. My best friend has written a couple of NYT best sellers and a number of others that weren't best sellers. Even after his first best seller, his next advance was only around $100K. For about 6 months work (over a 1 year time period), that's not a great wage for many of the engineers here. But, he makes over $1 million/year on the aftermath (mostly speaking).
• asicsp 6y ago
  >The feeling of knowing that you have helped a lot of people is gratifying. The personal growth that comes from taking on such a challenge is also considerable. And there is no better way to learn something in depth than by explaining it to others. An apt conclusion that resonates well with me. >My contract with the publisher specifies that I get 25% of publisher revenue from ebooks, online access, and licensing, 10% of revenue from print sales, and 5% of revenue from translations. Self-publishing is relatively new compared to the history of traditional publishing. If someone wishes to write a book and hasn't been able to land a deal with a publishing company, I'd definitely suggest self-publishing. Returns are much higher and you retain the rights to do interactive course, translations, video course, etc. The downside is that you have to do marketing, get reviewed, etc all by yourself. One of the main reasons self-publishing is attractive to me is that I can easily update for newer versions and I can give them away for free whenever I want.
• user5994461 6y ago
  I wonder how the economics have changed between when this book was written (2014) and today? For reference, there are twice as many books published last year than in 2014. It's cumulative of course, you're competing for limited readers against every book written every year since the dawn of time (unless you're writing on a brand new subject).
• johnadams283475 6y ago
  As a young author, I'm always thinking about the process of writing a book. At some point, someone needs to write this book, a long book with lots of little details. I'm thinking: I don't want to write it, but it'll be so much better than doing nothing and leaving it. I can either start it and finish it on a different day, or just put it down for a long time and try to get some ideas out of it.
• fault_tolerant 6y ago
  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.
• fault_tolerant 6y ago
  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.
• dunemaster 6y ago
  Are there any writers of technical books here that write in their second language? Do you translate it to english or just write it in english?
• yanis_t 6y ago
  I'm selling a book via Gumroad (https://www.vimfromscratch.com/book https://www.vimfromscratch.com/book). Not much, around 30 books per month in good months. Here's why I think it worths it: 1) You can write it slow in your free time. No hurry. 2) You learn a lot and organize your thoughts in your head. 3) You can start selling before the book finished. It will allow you to test your audience and keep motivated. 4) When it's finished it's mostly passive income (though it's a good idea to also build a website and publish some blog posts regularly)