3 ms·

why would anyone write a book for o'reily (or anyone) for such low royalties?

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• kingnothing 4y ago
  10% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Same reason people raise money for their startups.
  • parenthesis 4y ago
    There's even a song that says that (Double Exposure - Ten Percent).
• julianeon 4y ago
  It's prestigious, and arguably the value of the prestige is worth more than the projected cash. How much money is there in "Game Programming for Haskell", really? You release with O'Reilly and you get 10% or $1,000. You self-publish and you make more per sale, much more, but make much fewer sales - so, let's say $3,000. But publishing with O'Reilly, you get accepted on the speaker's circuit and start getting asked to do contract work; publishing on your own, you don't (as much). It's arguably worth losing out on a one-time gain of $2,000 for that.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    I haven't published with O'Reilly but I have published a couple editions of a book with Apress. Yeah, you don't write a technical book (or tech-adjacent) book for the money. But my observation is that a lot of people seem to be more impressed by a book for a known publisher than something you do through Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm not sure that attitude is deserved. There are pros and cons with going through a publisher and am very unlikely to do it again. (Reputational benefits are pretty irrelevant to me at this point.) But no one should go in thinking it's about the money.)
• spookthesunset 4y ago
  Nobody is getting rich off writing a tech book. At some point a 10% or 50% royalty on a niche book for some random technology doesn’t really matter. People author these books to increase the value of their personal “brand” or out of a passion for whatever technology they write about. If they are hoping to get rich or get a “livable” wage… they are going to be very disappointed.