4 ms·

I think you're not giving authorship enough credit. Being an author under a well-known publisher gives credibility, shows competence, and may confer the "exper

by teej 14y ago

I think you're not giving authorship enough credit. Being an author under a well-known publisher gives credibility, shows competence, and may confer the "expert" title. Considering the other ways to this path take years (working ones way up the corporate ladder), money (a university degree) or risk (launching a startup), losing a few months and earning 5k may be worth it. I'd imagine this publisher validation is built in to the price you are paid. I have a few personal friends who have written tech books and it is a large part of what helped them leapfrog their peers in job position and compensation.

beambot 14y ago
You are both right... Patrick is already an expert. He doesn't need vindication from a publisher, which is probably why he was approached by so many. For a lesser-known name in the field, getting "published" might be a sound strategy.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 14y ago
This is indeed the pitch that publishers use to get subject matter experts to write books. But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative. For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory. I have a lot of friends who have written books, and I'm not sure any of them really benefited from it.
- noahc 14y ago
  It's pretty clear the major publishers are a bad deal. But what about self publishing a very targeted ebook or print on demand book that would make you the subject matter expert on a particular subset of your general skills. It seems to me that a 35 - 60 page ebook might be better for your reputation than 35 or 60 blog posts. Not sure, but it seems to me, "Go look it up on Amazon. I'm published there" should send a pretty good signal, particularly if you have mostly positive reviews.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory. I agree. I think the deal is becoming much worse for prospective authors with the evolution of technology. A few decades ago, if you wanted to sell a book, you would have to turn some words on paper (typed up if you were lucky) into a professional quality product both physically and of course in terms of the content. Then you had to get that product into bookshops. Then you had to find ways of promoting it to your audience so they would go to the bookshop and buy it. All of this took a lot of time-consuming, laborious work and relied on extremely wasteful processes for things like stock management. Publishers would be expected to handle these things for their authors, in addition to providing professional editorial and support services for the content itself. They would also be expected to guide authors toward creating a product that would actually sell, based on their knowledge of the markets. Today, we have DTP software where someone can either create professional grade work on their own computer or hire someone to do it for them. Either way, by the time it gets to the printers, you can usually just hand over camera-ready copy in a PDF set to their specifications, and if you or your hired help are good then you'll probably achieve a much better standard of presentation than the phone-it-in quality some publishers seem to generate by default these days. Those printers can then print on demand, again to a reasonably high level of quality these days if you go to a good one, and even have arrangements to accept orders and ship direct to customers, negating any need for wasteful stock management for most kinds of book. To get those sales, you can do just fine via Amazon and/or major e-book channels, without ever touching a bricks 'n' mortar store unless someone wants to order your book, and again there are various integrations within the industry so book stores can still order in directly from your print-on-demand/self-publishing services if they want to. Obviously for promotion, we have search engines and social media, which make any token effort at promotion that most publishers might give a new author rather insignificant and IMHO negate what little brand value remains in being published by a "major" publisher. I had no idea who published the last few books I bought, though looking along the shelf they are all "big names". I did know who every author was before I bought the book, though. The situation is only going to shift further away from favouring publishers toward a self-publishing approach as e-books increasingly take over and printing at all, on demand or otherwise, becomes relatively unusual for anything but showcase books. I see a rise in fortunes coming for professionals like editors and designers of various kinds, who can freelance out their skills on merit to authors who lack the ability or the time and money to do such work to a good standard themselves. I see a rise in fortunes for modern distribution channels, catalogue sites, payment services and the like. I see a potential niche for a "book project manager" who can identify what combination of services will be useful for a project and recommend/co-ordinate the hired help. In fact, if I were running a publishing house right now, I imagine I would be shifting to more of a one-stop service-provider model just about as fast as I could making hiring/firing decisions accordingly. But for traditional publishers who won't adapt, who think the author is just one small part of a larger chain who should fit into their frameworks as one of many minor components, I don't see much future at all. Technology is making their business model obsolete, and it amazes me that they still get good authors signing up for the kinds of deal mentioned in the posts above.
- larrys 14y ago
  "But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative." Having your ticket punched opens doors plain and simple. In general being published by a major house will open doors just like a Harvard degree will. Doesn't mean there aren't ways around that. Doesn't mean for anyone. But I don't agree that you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative. Also with that statement you have to make a distinction between the traditional world and the online world. Being a top ranked commenter online means something online but it probably won't get you on 60 Minutes or (as easily) quoted in the WSJ or NY Times etc. I mean if I was in PR I could certainly pitch it that way and perhaps I would succeed. But my job would be much easier if you had been blessed by a major publisher. "For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers" I've been meaning to ask you this for quite some time. By your karma ranking you obviously put much time into HN. There is no doubt that this has paid off for you. Did you ever wonder or tally up that time and have any idea of how that effort would have paid off if you had followed another route?
  - tptacek 14y ago
    My karma is pretty simple to understand: I don't irc, game, or blog (and used to blog a lot), and I tend to own the tops of security threads. Now that I have name recognition, you can safely assume anything I write here "unfairly" receives 2x-3x as many upvotes as it should. Except on security threads, where HN tends to be full of crazy people. But to the point at hand: I can easily make a case for my HN comments being more lucrative than any book I could have written. Easily. There is no way a book would have been as valuable as recruiting vector, for instance; I've hired more people from HN than any other source.
    - larrys 14y ago
      The only time I spend online (other than a small bit on HN) is on a VC's blog where I have become the go to person (by the VC that is) for anything related to what I am expert in. He's asked me to write a guest post (which I've declined to do) I started (with no expectation) about 2 years ago. Over the last year he's sent me consulting referrals (which I never asked for it was more "can you help this startup with..."). The pay doesn't make sense I can make more by concentrating on what I actually do rather than giving advice and being paid by project or hourly. Writing the guest blog post I could easily transition into doing more consulting and approach other VC's but I don't want to do that and get sucked into being a consultant. I can easily see how in the case of someone being as active as you are, and at the top of the heap, how this pays off for you (and before I posted my comment I almost said that). But I suspect there are many others that spend a fair amount of time that, while enjoyable and with benefit, might not fall into that category. I'm wondering if you've ever thought about leaving HN and forming your own, um "family" if you get my drift. I'd put some seed funding into that family. You already have the gold medal, why not try to do something new? My guess is that others would follow.

by teej 14y ago

beambot 14y ago

You are both right... Patrick is already an expert. He doesn't need vindication from a publisher, which is probably why he was approached by so many. For a lesser-known name in the field, getting "published" might be a sound strategy.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 14y ago

This is indeed the pitch that publishers use to get subject matter experts to write books. But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative. For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory. I have a lot of friends who have written books, and I'm not sure any of them really benefited from it.

noahc 14y ago
It's pretty clear the major publishers are a bad deal. But what about self publishing a very targeted ebook or print on demand book that would make you the subject matter expert on a particular subset of your general skills. It seems to me that a 35 - 60 page ebook might be better for your reputation than 35 or 60 blog posts. Not sure, but it seems to me, "Go look it up on Amazon. I'm published there" should send a pretty good signal, particularly if you have mostly positive reviews.
Silhouette 14y ago
For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory. I agree. I think the deal is becoming much worse for prospective authors with the evolution of technology. A few decades ago, if you wanted to sell a book, you would have to turn some words on paper (typed up if you were lucky) into a professional quality product both physically and of course in terms of the content. Then you had to get that product into bookshops. Then you had to find ways of promoting it to your audience so they would go to the bookshop and buy it. All of this took a lot of time-consuming, laborious work and relied on extremely wasteful processes for things like stock management. Publishers would be expected to handle these things for their authors, in addition to providing professional editorial and support services for the content itself. They would also be expected to guide authors toward creating a product that would actually sell, based on their knowledge of the markets. Today, we have DTP software where someone can either create professional grade work on their own computer or hire someone to do it for them. Either way, by the time it gets to the printers, you can usually just hand over camera-ready copy in a PDF set to their specifications, and if you or your hired help are good then you'll probably achieve a much better standard of presentation than the phone-it-in quality some publishers seem to generate by default these days. Those printers can then print on demand, again to a reasonably high level of quality these days if you go to a good one, and even have arrangements to accept orders and ship direct to customers, negating any need for wasteful stock management for most kinds of book. To get those sales, you can do just fine via Amazon and/or major e-book channels, without ever touching a bricks 'n' mortar store unless someone wants to order your book, and again there are various integrations within the industry so book stores can still order in directly from your print-on-demand/self-publishing services if they want to. Obviously for promotion, we have search engines and social media, which make any token effort at promotion that most publishers might give a new author rather insignificant and IMHO negate what little brand value remains in being published by a "major" publisher. I had no idea who published the last few books I bought, though looking along the shelf they are all "big names". I did know who every author was before I bought the book, though. The situation is only going to shift further away from favouring publishers toward a self-publishing approach as e-books increasingly take over and printing at all, on demand or otherwise, becomes relatively unusual for anything but showcase books. I see a rise in fortunes coming for professionals like editors and designers of various kinds, who can freelance out their skills on merit to authors who lack the ability or the time and money to do such work to a good standard themselves. I see a rise in fortunes for modern distribution channels, catalogue sites, payment services and the like. I see a potential niche for a "book project manager" who can identify what combination of services will be useful for a project and recommend/co-ordinate the hired help. In fact, if I were running a publishing house right now, I imagine I would be shifting to more of a one-stop service-provider model just about as fast as I could making hiring/firing decisions accordingly. But for traditional publishers who won't adapt, who think the author is just one small part of a larger chain who should fit into their frameworks as one of many minor components, I don't see much future at all. Technology is making their business model obsolete, and it amazes me that they still get good authors signing up for the kinds of deal mentioned in the posts above.
larrys 14y ago
"But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative." Having your ticket punched opens doors plain and simple. In general being published by a major house will open doors just like a Harvard degree will. Doesn't mean there aren't ways around that. Doesn't mean for anyone. But I don't agree that you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative. Also with that statement you have to make a distinction between the traditional world and the online world. Being a top ranked commenter online means something online but it probably won't get you on 60 Minutes or (as easily) quoted in the WSJ or NY Times etc. I mean if I was in PR I could certainly pitch it that way and perhaps I would succeed. But my job would be much easier if you had been blessed by a major publisher. "For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers" I've been meaning to ask you this for quite some time. By your karma ranking you obviously put much time into HN. There is no doubt that this has paid off for you. Did you ever wonder or tally up that time and have any idea of how that effort would have paid off if you had followed another route?
- tptacek 14y ago
  My karma is pretty simple to understand: I don't irc, game, or blog (and used to blog a lot), and I tend to own the tops of security threads. Now that I have name recognition, you can safely assume anything I write here "unfairly" receives 2x-3x as many upvotes as it should. Except on security threads, where HN tends to be full of crazy people. But to the point at hand: I can easily make a case for my HN comments being more lucrative than any book I could have written. Easily. There is no way a book would have been as valuable as recruiting vector, for instance; I've hired more people from HN than any other source.
  - larrys 14y ago
    The only time I spend online (other than a small bit on HN) is on a VC's blog where I have become the go to person (by the VC that is) for anything related to what I am expert in. He's asked me to write a guest post (which I've declined to do) I started (with no expectation) about 2 years ago. Over the last year he's sent me consulting referrals (which I never asked for it was more "can you help this startup with..."). The pay doesn't make sense I can make more by concentrating on what I actually do rather than giving advice and being paid by project or hourly. Writing the guest blog post I could easily transition into doing more consulting and approach other VC's but I don't want to do that and get sucked into being a consultant. I can easily see how in the case of someone being as active as you are, and at the top of the heap, how this pays off for you (and before I posted my comment I almost said that). But I suspect there are many others that spend a fair amount of time that, while enjoyable and with benefit, might not fall into that category. I'm wondering if you've ever thought about leaving HN and forming your own, um "family" if you get my drift. I'd put some seed funding into that family. You already have the gold medal, why not try to do something new? My guess is that others would follow.