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Economically, a typical programming book will gain you around 20K USD, which is normally a two month pay as a good software(if you can write a book about progra

Economically, a typical programming book will gain you around 20K USD, which is normally a two month pay as a good software(if you can write a book about programming, you're probably very good at it). I don't think it makes much financial sense unless your goal is something else, e.g. consult, fame, etc.

adamwathan 5y ago
Just speaking from my own experience, if you execute very well on audience building and marketing you can do much better than this. I have released 2 books and 2 courses for developers and together they have done close to $4m USD in revenue. I wrote in detail about the process of writing, marketing, and releasing my first book here: https://adamwathan.me/the-book-launch-that-let-me-quit-my-job/ https://adamwathan.me/the-book-launch-that-let-me-quit-my-jo... And was interviewed on IndieHackers to talk about the most recent one here: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/098-adam-wathan-of-refactoring-ui https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/098-adam-wathan-of-refa... If the work is a good match for your skills and personality it’s a really great way to make a fantastic living.
- chrisweekly 5y ago
  Hi Adam, I'm a fan of your writing, but your experience in riding and monetizing Tailwind's explosive growth is obviously a massive outlier.
  - adamwathan 5y ago
    Hey thank you! 3 of 4 of my educational products actually predate Tailwind — I was a millionaire from that business before even releasing Tailwind v0.1.0. Refactoring UI came after but we had built a huge audience for that well before Tailwind as well. I’m an outlier for sure but $20k is low. If you do a great job at everything that goes into running a business like this you can definitely do much better than that. Josh Comeau did an incredible job building his audience and reputation before releasing his CSS course a few months ago for example and he has done over $500k if I remember right.
    - timClicks 5y ago
      You make a good point in here. Being a financially successful author isn't just about being a successful writer - it's being a successful business person.
      - geerlingguy 5y ago
        This. Writing is half the battle—it is a significant hurdle and not everyone can write a great technical book. But the other half (and I struggle with this mightily) is sales/marketing (and the whole 'business' side). Making it look pretty, getting people to know it exists, promoting it. Many of the best technical writers I know are not great at the latter, and for them, self-publishing might not be the best approach.
        milesvp 5y ago
        This may not be the forum for saying this, but in case you need encouragement, I always follow your links when they make it to the front page of HN, and I’m always happy when I see your name in the comments. I’m a sample size of one, but I suspect you’re on a good trajectory in term of notoriety. If you struggle with self branding and promotion, you still seem to be doing something right.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, but when I read stories like it, and look at the content sold, the concept is completely foreign to me. I would prefer to read reference content from the vendors themselves and not third-parties, so I don’t understand what draws people to this sort of content I the first place. That is, I couldn’t create any of this, because I would never buy it myself. Your story is nonetheless very interesting. I don’t think anyone can argue with the results, but arguing with reproducible results is a bit more difficult.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Great books outlast the author. Nobody is going to put up a Wikipedia page saying how much money I had in my bank account when I died. Not that you should necessarily care how you get remembered as you're dead anyway, but I think it's worth it to share knowledge and give to the community if you think you have a contribution worth making. I'm certainly glad other past giants wrote instructional material even if it didn't make them rich.
- philipswood 5y ago
  True, super valid point but a technical programming book would not be a great way to be remembered after you died. The technology/library/stack/language you're writing about will probably die before you do or otherwise mutate beyond your book being useful. I doubt that I would see "Here lies Fred, he wrote the greatest book on Fortran ever written" on a tombstone. Or "Justine, her book on JQuery changed the world" in an obituary. For a "heritage" book the topic would need to be longer lasting.
codazoda 5y ago
Just to add some contrast to this $20k figure and Watham's comments about the upside, I've published several small books that get very good reviews but haven't sold a lot of copies. I self published on Amazon as an eBook and then Print on Demand. My profits have totaled less than $1,000 in a couple years. My problems are likely that I don't have an audience built and Amazon rank is terrible until you have sales. If you're not in it _just_ for the money though, go for it. It's extremely satisfying. My most popular book is actual a book about how I self published. Publish Your Ebook by Joel Dare.
- omgitsabird 5y ago
  It seems like a lot of communities are built up with the explicit intention of being in it just for the money. There seems to be a lot of hype generation and releasing for-profit educational materials alongside eachother. In my opinion, there is a strange marketing game around web frameworks and web frontend development especially.
- xmprt 5y ago
  The best advice I got was to focus on the topic way more than on the actual content. Great quality content about a topic that is super niche won't make much revenue compared to an average book that reaches a wide market.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    That's not to say that you should write average books. It's more that people usually underestimate the amount of time it takes to come up with a good idea. And then they keep investing time into a bad idea due to sunk cost fallacy.
timClicks 5y ago
Book sales follow a power law distribution, so "typical" is somewhat deceptive. Sales follow a power law because we typically buy books that have been recommended to us by others. Rust in Action (https://www.manning.com/books/rust-in-action https://www.manning.com/books/rust-in-action) is only one data point, but USD20k sounds very low over the lifetime of the book, especially when you consider translation rights and other channels like Safari.
qiqitori 5y ago
Hrm. If I got 10K USD a month programming(?) (I think you left out a word) I'd retire in a couple years.
- cntrl 5y ago
  Isn't this a normal salary for highly skilled software engineers in the US?

adamwathan 5y ago

Just speaking from my own experience, if you execute very well on audience building and marketing you can do much better than this. I have released 2 books and 2 courses for developers and together they have done close to $4m USD in revenue. I wrote in detail about the process of writing, marketing, and releasing my first book here: https://adamwathan.me/the-book-launch-that-let-me-quit-my-job/ https://adamwathan.me/the-book-launch-that-let-me-quit-my-jo... And was interviewed on IndieHackers to talk about the most recent one here: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/098-adam-wathan-of-refactoring-ui https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/098-adam-wathan-of-refa... If the work is a good match for your skills and personality it’s a really great way to make a fantastic living.

chrisweekly 5y ago
Hi Adam, I'm a fan of your writing, but your experience in riding and monetizing Tailwind's explosive growth is obviously a massive outlier.
- adamwathan 5y ago
  Hey thank you! 3 of 4 of my educational products actually predate Tailwind — I was a millionaire from that business before even releasing Tailwind v0.1.0. Refactoring UI came after but we had built a huge audience for that well before Tailwind as well. I’m an outlier for sure but $20k is low. If you do a great job at everything that goes into running a business like this you can definitely do much better than that. Josh Comeau did an incredible job building his audience and reputation before releasing his CSS course a few months ago for example and he has done over $500k if I remember right.
  - timClicks 5y ago
    You make a good point in here. Being a financially successful author isn't just about being a successful writer - it's being a successful business person.
    - geerlingguy 5y ago
      This. Writing is half the battle—it is a significant hurdle and not everyone can write a great technical book. But the other half (and I struggle with this mightily) is sales/marketing (and the whole 'business' side). Making it look pretty, getting people to know it exists, promoting it. Many of the best technical writers I know are not great at the latter, and for them, self-publishing might not be the best approach.
      - milesvp 5y ago
        This may not be the forum for saying this, but in case you need encouragement, I always follow your links when they make it to the front page of HN, and I’m always happy when I see your name in the comments. I’m a sample size of one, but I suspect you’re on a good trajectory in term of notoriety. If you struggle with self branding and promotion, you still seem to be doing something right.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this, but when I read stories like it, and look at the content sold, the concept is completely foreign to me. I would prefer to read reference content from the vendors themselves and not third-parties, so I don’t understand what draws people to this sort of content I the first place. That is, I couldn’t create any of this, because I would never buy it myself. Your story is nonetheless very interesting. I don’t think anyone can argue with the results, but arguing with reproducible results is a bit more difficult.

nonameiguess 5y ago

Great books outlast the author. Nobody is going to put up a Wikipedia page saying how much money I had in my bank account when I died. Not that you should necessarily care how you get remembered as you're dead anyway, but I think it's worth it to share knowledge and give to the community if you think you have a contribution worth making. I'm certainly glad other past giants wrote instructional material even if it didn't make them rich.

philipswood 5y ago
True, super valid point but a technical programming book would not be a great way to be remembered after you died. The technology/library/stack/language you're writing about will probably die before you do or otherwise mutate beyond your book being useful. I doubt that I would see "Here lies Fred, he wrote the greatest book on Fortran ever written" on a tombstone. Or "Justine, her book on JQuery changed the world" in an obituary. For a "heritage" book the topic would need to be longer lasting.

codazoda 5y ago

Just to add some contrast to this $20k figure and Watham's comments about the upside, I've published several small books that get very good reviews but haven't sold a lot of copies. I self published on Amazon as an eBook and then Print on Demand. My profits have totaled less than $1,000 in a couple years. My problems are likely that I don't have an audience built and Amazon rank is terrible until you have sales. If you're not in it _just_ for the money though, go for it. It's extremely satisfying. My most popular book is actual a book about how I self published. Publish Your Ebook by Joel Dare.

omgitsabird 5y ago
It seems like a lot of communities are built up with the explicit intention of being in it just for the money. There seems to be a lot of hype generation and releasing for-profit educational materials alongside eachother. In my opinion, there is a strange marketing game around web frameworks and web frontend development especially.
xmprt 5y ago
The best advice I got was to focus on the topic way more than on the actual content. Great quality content about a topic that is super niche won't make much revenue compared to an average book that reaches a wide market.
- xmprt 5y ago
  That's not to say that you should write average books. It's more that people usually underestimate the amount of time it takes to come up with a good idea. And then they keep investing time into a bad idea due to sunk cost fallacy.

timClicks 5y ago

Book sales follow a power law distribution, so "typical" is somewhat deceptive. Sales follow a power law because we typically buy books that have been recommended to us by others. Rust in Action (https://www.manning.com/books/rust-in-action https://www.manning.com/books/rust-in-action) is only one data point, but USD20k sounds very low over the lifetime of the book, especially when you consider translation rights and other channels like Safari.

qiqitori 5y ago

Hrm. If I got 10K USD a month programming(?) (I think you left out a word) I'd retire in a couple years.

cntrl 5y ago
Isn't this a normal salary for highly skilled software engineers in the US?