[lxt]

If you are going into a book contract, familiarize yourself with cross-accounting or basket accounting clauses, and get them stricken from the contract. (This is the clause where you need to earn out all the books before getting royalties for any of them.)

In general familiarize yourself with book contracts, and understand the pitfalls. Or consult a literary lawyer.

Source: I'm the author of multiple tech books over more than a decade and several novels.

[jeffwass]

What's the general difference in contract terms between tech books and novels? Or are they fairly similar?

Also curious about the differences in how you do the writing.

[lxt]

The basic shape of the contract is the same. The publishers I have worked for are both fans of plain language and relatively short contracts, which helps. (Tech publisher is Pearson, fwiw, and they have been wonderful to work with over the years.)

The differences in how I write are pretty epic. For a tech book I'll work out a very detailed outline (down to subheadings within each chapter) in advance, and need larger slabs of time to write to maintain my train of thought. For novels I tend to work from a much lighter-weight outline (major plot points, not chapter by chapter) but spend a bunch of time in advance thinking through the characters and world-building.

[jeffwass]

Cool, thanks a lot for that lxt.