[lsc]

no-starch press, for me, was very good. Not only did they provide a good editor, they also got us an incredible technical editor.

It was worth the money, mostly because "the book of xen" doesn't have an incredibly large audience. We've sold less than our initial print run of 4000 copies, though we are approaching that number, so even if I got twenty bucks a copy it would have been a drop in the bucket compared to the six man-years it took to write the thing. It's possible I'd have gotten more sales if I self-published an ebook and sold it for three bucks (or whatever our cut of the book was) but I find that somewhat unlikely.

The biggest thing the publisher brings, though, is credibility. If you mention you wrote a book at a party (okay, some other guy, in another thread called me arrogant and crass. maybe he has a point? but let's be honest here. One of my primary motivations that kept me going during those three long years was to look like slightly less of an uneducated hick when I hang out with my largely highly educated friends.) the first thing people ask, when they are weighing this information, is "who is the publisher?"

Of course, the other day I was at a party with a guy who self-published a rather popular book on RoR. He mentioned how much money he was making off the thing, and I imagine most people there were rather impressed. I know I was. (when people ask me how much money my book made me, and they usually don't, I say something to the effect of "It paid for the pizza we ate while we wrote the thing.")