| Writing tech books is something of a crap shoot. I had a mixed blessing with my first book effort, Pro VB 6 & XML. I started out as one of about 10 authors, expected to contribute one or two chapters, and ended up as one of two authors and writing a little over half the book. I got to write about stuff I was already quite familiar with, so it went pretty quick. And the book did OK, so I made some decent money, and the time spent was well worth it. However: It gave me the impression this was a repeatable event. :) Aside from the odd chapter for Wrox (most of which never saw the light of day because books got canceled, though I still got paid since I was not on royalties for them), my next book effort was Beginning Ruby for Wrox, around 2001 or so. Way more work, the tech market was turning to shit, and Ruby was still an uber-niche area. Wrox then went bankrupt, and I never saw my final check for work completed. I got, I think, a grand for several months work. Just before Wrox burned I had some discussions with my editor who suggested various ways to monetize what I had already written. Mostly it was "have a Web site". Thing is, there is so much free quality info already available that drumming up eyeballs and getting people to part with cash is quite tricky. If you're thinking of writing a book you really need to have your eyes open and keep realistic expectations, and be comfortable with what you can expect. If the goal is to build a rep, then sales may not matter. But you are still competing for attention. Greg has the Ruby Best Practices blog; I'm quite honored to be allowed to publish there (and I wish I could get my ass in gear to write more). I'd be all for having ads on the site and finding a way to get some cash back to Greg & O'Reilly so long as it didn't spoil the reader's experience. But I think that's quite doable. I also think E-books can do better by exploiting their E-nature. I've had some ideas for E-books that weren't simply paper books turned PDF. There is lot's you can do with them, and perhaps there are ways to hook them into a recurring revenue service (say, a subscription to Best Practices screencasts or something.) I can't emphasize enough, though, that people who find these things valuable should see about remunerating the author. If you want to see more things like this, help out. People like Greg deserve a lot of credit for trying things out and trying to provide quality material in an affordable way. He is one of the reasons I'm proud to be part of the Ruby community. |