6 ms·
You too can write a book
- andrewstuart 2y agoLeunig cartoon on your "inner book" https://scontent.fmel18-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/461606355_2561455014040702_2422122711202345218_n.jpg https://scontent.fmel18-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/461606...
- Y_Y 2y agoBad URL hash? https://consumer.licensing-publishing.nine.com.au/Assets/V2/hInKHMWgppAk8V6IuTNftxrxesV0BIAWSUvA0yxKViBytjXVtDsHRbhTAx7@jlksOaeGSwa_JT6ecZ9tAOOy9IceH6RRF6narC9QpZK_jNM-/TCnIg2Wuoe2ZMF8f/bvgmHBXC6rbZMi@b/FXT45357.jpg https://consumer.licensing-publishing.nine.com.au/Assets/V2/...
- andrewstuart 2y agohttps://imgur.com/a/Z2iAB7Y https://imgur.com/a/Z2iAB7Y
- TheCleric 2y agoThe blog post should more accurately be titled “You too can write a textbook”
- jftuga 2y agoThis is a good observation. I was hoping to read a blog that wasn't so narrowly focused to just text book publishing.
- grecy 2y agoHere’s here I wrote and self published books about my adventures around the world, print and ebook. I also have a hardcover photography book. Happy to help if you have questions. http://theroadchoseme.com/how-i-self-published-a-professional-paperback-and-ebook-using-latex-and-pandoc http://theroadchoseme.com/how-i-self-published-a-professiona...
- TheCleric 2y agoThanks for that excellent write-up!
- schneems 2y agoI agree. I DID write a book! https://howtoopensource.dev/ https://howtoopensource.dev/ My biggest tip is this: Don’t skip getting beta readers. High quality feedback is really hard to come by. I changed my tool chain to add a google form at the end of each chapter and got strong buy in from a handful of people with the finished first draft in a beta state. In the end some bailed but one left amazing feedback resulting in massive structural changes. The process of writing a book is two things (to me). The most obvious is sharing information. The second, often overlooked, but biggest benefit IMHO is how you will grow and learn the source material even better than you already do. Even if you don’t ever publish it, it’s still worthwhile to putting in the effort to write a book. GLHF.
- Narhem 2y ago[flagged]
- stogot 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoHi there - from your recent comments it sounds as if you might have been going through some difficult experiences. (If I'm misreading you, I apologize—it's not easy to be sure if one is reading these things correctly.) If so, we all send good wishes. At the same time, we can't have accounts posting comments like these on HN—especially comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097195 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42097177. I've therefore banned your account for the time being. I just wanted you to know that it's nothing personal, and that if you get to the point where it won't happen again, we'd be happy to unban you in the future.
- UncleOxidant 2y agoWhat kind of software did you use to write your book?
- obiefernandez 2y agoFor beta ebook publishing I can't help but recommend my friends at https://leanpub.com https://leanpub.com where my latest book is currently at the top of the charts. I've been publishing with them since they launched (a long time ago) and have made nearly six figures lifetime revenue. Plus they give you one-button push to publish to print versions at Amazon.
- jdhendrickson 2y agoAs someone that has bought your books in the past, it's because of your personality and the quality of your writing more than the platform.
- ManuelKiessling 2y ago+1 for Leanpub, a great platform run by amazing people.
- jamager 2y agolooks great, thanks for this!
- bbor 2y agoOh hey, this person! The 'Books as software' post has made the rounds on here a few times since its publication in 2006, if I recall correctly, and it's always a controversial+fascinating conversation. They're certainly not a conventional soul: We will include mistakes, not because I don’t know the answer, but because this is the best way for you to learn. Including mistakes makes it impossible for you to read passively: you must instead engage with the material, because you can never be sure of the veracity of what you’re reading. I've never seen this post, though. Speaking as someone who's currently closing in on self-pub after ~18 months of work (lots of research, tbf): I. As another comment mentions, this is for technical books, and seemingly specifically textbooks (AKA lessons, as opposed to the other three quadrants of technical documentation, references, instructions, and tutorials). In case anyone here is considering writing a fiction book, please do not ever expect to make any money at all. The odds are downright absurd these days. II. I absolutely agree that it's a sometimes-underappreciated and potentially very lucrative career move if you have real expertise to share and are a good writer. Especially in the vaguely post-blog era. III. Writing a book but not expecting to make any money from it is... bold. I'm very glad it worked for this person, and if you're looking to use it as a credential to land contracts or appointments, then that's very smart and kind. But I think I speak for many authors when I say that writing a book is very time consuming, and you need to eat somehow. Not all of us are just publishing cleaned-up lecture notes, after all. I initially shared this person's "offer a print copy as a tip jar" concept, but have gradually moved towards "only publish free snippets" as I consider long term financial feasibility. This applies even more so if, like me, you're writing a prose book that has a 1% chance to be truly popular among laypeople, rather than more realistic textbook-centric goals. IV. PoD is indeed incredible. For those not in the know, this allows you to sell your book without any significant upfront investment, and have them manage shipping. There's definitely room for profit via many sites; Lulu, for example, will print a 250 page "Digest" (normal) paperback in B&W for $7.56/ea. I'm also planning on going with http://lulu.com http://lulu.com . Arguably it's <50% likely to beat Amazon's uber-popular PoD service on overall sales+profits, but it has some notable advantages: 1. If you're thinking about a publishing a "premium" book, which some textbooks might be, they have some gorgeous options -- both in terms of color printing and cover material. https://www.lulu.com/pricing https://www.lulu.com/pricing 2. If you're a web-dev comfortable setting up a Shopify portal on your own site, you can hook it up to Lulu and get "100%" (after PoD costs) of your profit. Obviously, this is potentially a huge deal -- the trick is of course getting Amazon-like numbers of eyeballs on your own site. https://www.lulu.com/sell/sell-on-your-site https://www.lulu.com/sell/sell-on-your-site You can even order copies via API, which seems goofy but potentially fun. 3. They're targeted at DIY authors, and as such offer a nice little knowledge base on formatting and such: https://www.lulu.com/publishing-toolkit https://www.lulu.com/publishing-toolkit I haven't printed any yet, but they're templates are nice to work with. 4. They're not only "not Amazon", they're a B-Corp. Which, hey, we all gotta do what we can when we can, no matter how small. ...I swear I'm just a biased fanboy, not a shill! V. The cover art space is fucking wild these days, AI has absolutely upended it. Scroll through /r/writers for lots of horror stories. I would be cautious about hiring any freelancers to help you without serious vetting. Plus, Inkscape is free and technical books don't need realistic art! P.S. Does the author know they're invoking a antisemitic trope with the "(((Parenthetically Speaking)))" title? It seems to be in obvious good faith, but that did draw my attention for a short moment. Maybe just one set of parentheses could do the trick ;)
- HL33tibCe7 2y agoIs it intentionally ironic that there's a grammar mistake in the second sentence of the article?
- skrishnamurthi 2y agoThat would be nice. Problem is rather more simple: the author can't proof-read.
- WalterBright 2y agoWhen I proof my own work, I read what I thought I wrote, not what I actually wrote.
- munificent 2y ago100%. We all fall prey to this. Two tricks that help more than you might expect: 1. Read it in a different font than what you write it in. 2. Read it out loud.
- treetalker 2y agoTwo other effective techniques: 1. Read your sentences or paragraphs in reverse order. (In other words, if you have sentences or paragraphs 1–5, read them in the order 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.) 2. Have Siri read it out loud to you in an accent as you follow along. (I like hearing it in an Indian accent — it makes me pay closer attention.) The app Voice Dream Reader (iOS/macOS) is great for this. The general principle is to review the writing in an unfamiliar way.
- paulpauper 2y agoproof reading one's own work is hard. it's why editors exist
- skrishnamurthi 2y agoFor people missing the point: The person who made the above remark is the author.
- suprjami 2y agoI usually participates in question/answer communities to answer things, I almost never ask my own questions. As a result, I have various sources of notes I've figured out and get high use/reuse from. I also do a lot of technical training at work, for both beginners and advanced users, so have a wealth of tried and tested content there. I've often contemplated writing an eBook on each topic and selling them on Leanpub/Amazon/Google for 5 or 10 bucks each. The idea of limiting myself to 6 pages per topic is appealing. That would force an economy of writing and density of content which appeals to me.
- paulpauper 2y agoYou can write a book, but odds are it won't be good or get traction. I think you're better off with video. Videos can remain indexed and accumulate traffic on youtube for years, whereas most books are forgotten/ignored. I have seen plenty of videos from 10+ years ago that still gets lots of comments and traffic.
- davisp 2y agoYou can make a video, but odds are it won’t be good or get traction. I think you’re better off with a book. Books can remain indexed and accumulate readers for centuries, whereas most videos are forgotten/ignored. I’ve read plenty of books from decades ago that still get lots of comments and discussion.
- paulpauper 2y agonot the same thing...billions of people use youtube. There is no library equivalent of youtube. how many use Google Books? Even then, you need an ISBN or a publisher.
- wheresmycraisin 2y agoYour audience isn't a billion people
- paulpauper 2y agoWhen people want to find something or learn about something, they go to YouYube. That is where or how the majority of people find and consume content these days. There is also Google search, but again, these are not books. If your audience is limited, then target niche keywords. Same principle applies. Videos about even the most esoteric of topics still get traffic due to YouTube's popularity.
- saulpw 2y agoPer the Lindy Effect, a published book has a higher likelihood of still being readable centuries from now, than a Youtube video.
- yawpitch 2y agoGreat article, but on Mobile Safari, at least on an IPhone 12 Mini (old, I know, but not that old) this loads with a massive left margin / padding, with all the text overflowing the right side of the screen.
- polygot 2y agoI'm in the process of writing a book, Beginning CI/CD, primarily because I have a strange way of learning things, and hoping others might find my teaching style useful. I also struggled with CI/CD and still have those struggles fresh in my mind. While the author of the article is against commercial publishers, I don't think I'll have the same impact if I were to go with the self-publishing route. Either way it's super unlikely I'll make a profit so it might be better to use it as leverage; also, getting a publisher to publish it shows that there is at least some commercial viability. Looking for beta readers--if interested, feel free to reply or email me (email on profile.)
- beej71 2y agoAs an author of free online books and POD books, I wholeheartedly second everything in this post.
- _tom_ 2y agoWhat I remember from college is that the instructors who wrote their own books had terrible books. They used their own books because it was theirs, not because it was good. Most people do not write well, but the people who can become a standard textbook do. The vast majority of people write worse than this. Usually much worse.
- Daub 2y ago> Most people do not write well… This very much needs to be said. Also… as we are ‘most people’ we all need to be reminded of this of our own writing.
- franze 2y agoThe challenge is not writing a book, but letting it go. I wrote Understanding SEO https://fullstackoptimizatio.gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo/hacker-news https://fullstackoptimizatio.gumroad.com/l/understanding-seo... 4 times. Each time it took me a year. The last time together with an editor. And I could have gone on, over every word, every sentence again. In the end my editor forces me. In the end you just have to publish it, otherwise it does not exist. Still think I did good, even after more than 7 years I still sell a few paper and some more e copies per month just by WOM, so yeah, must be some value in there.
- jamager 2y agoI know what you mean. Writing a book takes 2x discipline than any other thing: 1x to actually write it + 1x to call it done.
- kqr 2y agoThe main counter-argument to this I have read is "you should just publish blog posts instead." This is, among other reasons, because - The bar to releasing the first thing to the public is lower, - The regular cadence builds an organic following, - You can iterate on subjects in the open, - You have more freedom to organise content non-linearly. The main drawback I can think of is you cannot call yourself "author of book X". Are there any other reasons not to blog instead of book?
- grecy 2y agoI started with a blog to get into the habit of writing and get better at it, Then I published books. The main reason to do so is that I get paid for book sales, but not for the blog.
- mcdow 2y agoI agree with this take. Blogging is a the first step towards writing a book. However, through blogging I've realized just how impressive book writing is. I work really hard to build coherent blog posts, I cannot begin to imagine scaling that to a book. It's kind of like software in a way. Anyone can code a toy, not everyone can build a product.
- BillyTheMage 2y ago[flagged]
- JSR_FDED 2y agoI thought this was crazy, but it’s a thing apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses Interesting times we live in…
- skrishnamurthi 2y agoThat was (obviously) not the intent; it had never occurred to me that it could be read that way, since the bits inside the parentheses are not a proper name. But, to avoid any doubts, I have modified the masthead image to get rid of two pairs of parens.
- keyle 2y agoI feel there is not enough Satire IT book. Someone ought to take the shit, and by that I mean realistically picture the industry.
- isoprophlex 2y agoSo, repackage the energy of https://ludic.mataroa.blog/ https://ludic.mataroa.blog/ into a novel? I have recently been thinking about fleshing out a story about a completely incompetent agile-type scrumlord, an unlikeable opportunist who is, tragically, unable to better himself in the institutionally broken system that is IT right now. Oh and also he's sad about WFH because he has a poorly controlled fetish about smelling the air under people's desks.
- keyle 2y agoI meant something along the line of non-fiction. Actual IT book. In your example I'd name it Agile in the real world, with a perfect legit cover, and as you go through the chapters, it starts descending into a complete circus and the joke that it can be.
- BizarroLand 2y agoI did some backend and devops stuff for a while and it can be insane. On the one hand, I went to college for many years and spent so much time getting certifications to build my resume. Then when I finally became a sysadmin in a mid/large company, for me to update a linux server I had to ask permission from the cloud group to do so, which took 8 weeks and required 3 rounds of project planning, time estimation, writing dozens of emails and ultimately an escalation over the cloud teams head to the division CIO to ultimately coerce them to provision a new linux server rather than give me appropriate sudo permissions on one I was already "supposed" to manage. Ultimately I ended up getting the job done. And then, other than a couple of intense temporary redeployments as a sharepoint frontend developer, which sucked, 90% of my job was to promptly respond to emails, attend 2-5 30 minute to 1 hour meetings a week where I was asked and said very little, and other than that about 20 minutes of work a day. Playing with my home lab was more intellectually challenging and tech related than my actual tech job, and I probably spent more actual time doing that than actual time doing actual work in my real job.
- fullstackchris 2y agoI started writing a book along side of every video course I make. (I make educational software videos, and discovered that some really enjoy the written version apposed to video - even for software!) I just use LaTeX with some fancy packages: https://github.com/princefishthrower/dev-book-template https://github.com/princefishthrower/dev-book-template I too think there can always be more long format literature out there, in a world seemingly dominated by short articles and tweets
- ch1kkenm4ss4 2y agoBut why should i? Many excellent books covering every aspect vave been written. Time's better spend elsewhere.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoIf you become truly an expert at something that has sufficient depth, or is sufficiently obscure, or is sufficiently underestimated, I think you will see, that not every aspect has been covered. Sometimes books also convey a personal opinion of the author of how to approach things. Or they are autobiographies. So many reason to write a book. Or some other textform.
- DimuP 2y agoIt's very inspiring indeed
- DominikPeters 2y agoGwern recently wrote an article on why not to write a book: https://gwern.net/book-writing https://gwern.net/book-writing
- skrishnamurthi 2y agoMost of these reasons appear to be tied to commercial publishers. But there is no need to involve a commercial publisher.
- dm03514 2y agoI agree with the post :) Writing a book was very personally fulfilling. I wrote about my self published book earnings a couple years ago. https://on-systems.tech/blog/130-2022-self-published-book-earnings/ https://on-systems.tech/blog/130-2022-self-published-book-ea... This quote got me pretty excited, and I since yesterday I started sketching out some ideas for other books ;p "First, simply: you believe strongly in your view of the world, and you’re pursuing it with intensity. Right now nobody else is really able to download your brain. Your book becomes how others can download it."
- Daub 2y agoAs a university lecturer, I have interviewed many people… academics and admins. I have taught in many S E Asian universities and multi-lingualism is the norm, with English assumed to be the ‘Lingua franca’. Almost everyone I interview claims to have ‘excellent’ skills in written and spoken English. Almost none of them could produce so much as a single paragraph of English that did not burn my eyes. Prior to starting writing my first book, I had already accumulated some experience in academic writing. I thought it would be a doddle. I can honestly say that it was one of the most demanding experiences of my life. The worst thing is the degree to which I was blind to my own shortcomings… just like all those people I interviewed. Moral of the story… "writing is easy; you just stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead" (Gene Fowler).
- sanderjd 2y agoYeah, my thought while reading this was that this is why I am so often disappointed by books.
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- heycaseywattsup 2y agoWrite a book! +1 you all can do it Here are some of my tips from when I wrote Debugging Your Brain. How I developed my ideas for the book (discussions, conference talks) https://www.caseywatts.com/blog/casey-s-writing-process/ https://www.caseywatts.com/blog/casey-s-writing-process/ How I got feedback from beta readers https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EwX8L6RCUbiu86Lik1xZ8eXv_sxdtIpCdFPknx-VwY/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/13EwX8L6RCUbiu86Lik1xZ8eX... How I wrote and typeset my book from markdown to an eBook and print book, via pandoc/latex https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/3d8150fe04e0d8462cfc4d51b9856d39 https://gist.github.com/caseywatts/3d8150fe04e0d8462cfc4d51b...
- paulorlando 2y agoI did this too... As a Covid project I took what I used to do live on a class whiteboard and wrote it up. The second one went from a workshop talk I used to give that kept getting developed more and more. Key for me was keeping to topics and content that won't need to be updated frequently. Figuring out the "Why Now" question: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Now-Timing-Makes-Products/dp/B0CYXSNMT3/ https://www.amazon.com/Why-Now-Timing-Makes-Products/dp/B0CY... Figuring out your startups unit economics: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJVV8RJ/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJVV8RJ/