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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

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?
- asicsp 6y ago
  Not the person you asked. I use pandoc to create pdf/epub from GitHub style markdown: https://learnbyexample.github.io/customizing-pandoc/ https://learnbyexample.github.io/customizing-pandoc/
asicsp 6y ago
>Leanpub pays much higher royalties (80%) I don't use leanpub to create my book, but I still put it on both leanpub and gumroad. In case you aren't aware, gumroad [0] gives better returns and holds your payment for 1-2 weeks instead of 45-75 days on leanpub. [0] https://gumroad.com/features/pricing https://gumroad.com/features/pricing

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?

asicsp 6y ago
Not the person you asked. I use pandoc to create pdf/epub from GitHub style markdown: https://learnbyexample.github.io/customizing-pandoc/ https://learnbyexample.github.io/customizing-pandoc/

asicsp 6y ago

>Leanpub pays much higher royalties (80%) I don't use leanpub to create my book, but I still put it on both leanpub and gumroad. In case you aren't aware, gumroad [0] gives better returns and holds your payment for 1-2 weeks instead of 45-75 days on leanpub. [0] https://gumroad.com/features/pricing https://gumroad.com/features/pricing