5 ms·

My father wrote technical books through the 80's and 90's. I remember him being very happy about a book that sold in the low tens of thousands of copies (I'm gu

My father wrote technical books through the 80's and 90's. I remember him being very happy about a book that sold in the low tens of thousands of copies (I'm guessing 20k or so). I know some of them flopped. Even as a child I knew that it did not make sense financially... stay up til 4am writing for a solid year or more (he had a regular job as well), so that you can get maybe 5-10% royalty on something that likely will sell only a few thousand copies on average. The ephemeral natural of computer books makes it even worse.

cfeduke 4y ago
It's like any hobby. Sometimes people are able to take their hobby full time after a massive success. Most of the time it's a hobby that provides satisfaction.
spjwebster 4y ago
Having written a bunch of books on Flash and PHP back in the early 2000s, my experience is very much aligned with this. For a relatively young guy the income was welcome, and after the first book did well I got a pretty decent advance for the subsequent books. They all sold enough to pay back that advance and so I got quarterly royalties on top too, but given the amount of toil it required - and quick turnaround times with new Flash releases, meaning many late nights - I would have been better compensated doing pretty much anything else. That said, money isn't the only, or even necessarily the most important or fulfilling, reward on offer. I got the writing gig because I was spending a lot of my free time on various Flash-related forums answering questions and helping people with their projects. I did that for the sheer joy of helping others along in their learning journey, and saw writing books as a massive extension of that. It very much mirrors my experience of the public school system in the UK: teachers are chronically overworked and underpaid, but do it anyway because it's something of a calling. In fact, that probably applies to a bunch of other public sector roles too, not least the NHS primary care roles.
_tom_ 4y ago
You don't write tech books for the royalties, you write them for the consulting opportunities they lead to.
- wheresmycraisin 4y ago
  1) There are so many much easier and faster ways of networking and getting clients than writing a book. 2) If the primary motivation per consulting gigs then there wouldn't be so many books written by people who work at FAANG-level companies, who I'm guessing are not on fiverr on weekends.

cfeduke 4y ago

It's like any hobby. Sometimes people are able to take their hobby full time after a massive success. Most of the time it's a hobby that provides satisfaction.

spjwebster 4y ago

Having written a bunch of books on Flash and PHP back in the early 2000s, my experience is very much aligned with this. For a relatively young guy the income was welcome, and after the first book did well I got a pretty decent advance for the subsequent books. They all sold enough to pay back that advance and so I got quarterly royalties on top too, but given the amount of toil it required - and quick turnaround times with new Flash releases, meaning many late nights - I would have been better compensated doing pretty much anything else. That said, money isn't the only, or even necessarily the most important or fulfilling, reward on offer. I got the writing gig because I was spending a lot of my free time on various Flash-related forums answering questions and helping people with their projects. I did that for the sheer joy of helping others along in their learning journey, and saw writing books as a massive extension of that. It very much mirrors my experience of the public school system in the UK: teachers are chronically overworked and underpaid, but do it anyway because it's something of a calling. In fact, that probably applies to a bunch of other public sector roles too, not least the NHS primary care roles.

_tom_ 4y ago

You don't write tech books for the royalties, you write them for the consulting opportunities they lead to.

wheresmycraisin 4y ago
1) There are so many much easier and faster ways of networking and getting clients than writing a book. 2) If the primary motivation per consulting gigs then there wouldn't be so many books written by people who work at FAANG-level companies, who I'm guessing are not on fiverr on weekends.