4 ms·
My question about books like this is always 'If you are doing so well at what you're writing a book about, why are you wasting the time writing a book about it?
by jaggederest 14y ago
My question about books like this is always 'If you are doing so well at what you're writing a book about, why are you wasting the time writing a book about it?'
Surely you don't expect that your time spent writing a book is going to pay out at $300 an hour, or whatever your consulting rates are.
- robbiea 14y agoNo, but this does allow the author to get more publicity and thus allow him to survive even easier as a freelancer.
- pyre 14y agoMaybe he's done well enough that he doesn't need to be making $300/hr and has a desire to create a book? There's also the publicity angle too.
- jaggederest 14y agoHonestly, if you're really able to pull $300 an hour, you run out of things to do? Work more, donate the money to charity. You can easily save a life for $300.
- bdunn 14y agoConsulting: Will always require more of your time to make money. Products: Long term, residual income and the ability to build up an email list that you can market to with other offerings.
- netmau5 14y agoYou make it sound as if the choice is obvious.
- jaggederest 14y agoThe problem is that, if you can bill for your hours, it's guaranteed money. With products, you may build it, and they may never come.
- stevejalim 14y agoHi. Good question. Why did I write this book? I think bdunn and robbiea's suggestions are valid. (And, man, I wish pyre's suggestion that I don't need money was true :o) though I'm lucky enough to consider myself pretty successful at what I do, so I wasn't writing to make up for missing revenue.) But, in addition to the residual income and, to a lesser extent, publicity angles, the initial spark behind writing it was the fact that I found myself being asked time and again about what life is like as a contractor/freelancer. Which meant that a) there was definitely a knowledge gap/problem to be solved and b) the repeated nature of similar requests meant it made sense to optimise how I shared what I'd learned over the years. I'm well aware that no one gets rich from writing a book - so I deliberately didn't sacrifice any client time; I was able to (just) fit it into what spare time I had. Along with all that, there's the fact that I knew I could write this book and wasn't intimidated by the task (I had the knowledge and the skills -- I used to be a national-level journo) and the fact that writing is still fun, so it was a pleasure to make. Yep, that pretty much covers it.
- mgkimsal 14y ago"I found myself being asked time and again about what life is like as a contractor/freelancer." This was the same impetus behind indieconf, the conference I run in November (shameless plug - http://indieconf.com http://indieconf.com - we might even get bdunn speaking this year).
- RileyJames 14y agoHey Steve, I'm running a startup focused on making freelance dev easier, http://dragonflylist.com http://dragonflylist.com. Love to have a chat sometime on skype: riley.james.aus
- devgutt 14y agoSure, because the only reason to do anything is money. <sarcasm/>
- dpacmittal 14y agoThis is same as asking a teacher why he is teaching if he's so good at the subject.