[billme]

Generally speaking, books as a format make no sense. I have seen the financial records for number of popular tech book authors — and numbers related to them having published, for example: products, services, consulting & speaker fees, etc. If the author is trying, they make way more money from the numbers related to them publishing than the book sales.

If you like writing long form tech guides, do yourself and your audience a favor, figure out how to publish your materials for free digitally and grow an audience you have direct one-on-one access to, then allow people to order paper versions if that’s what they prefer.

Then, writing a book becomes easy: grow audience, provide an outline, get feedback, write more, write testable code, get more feedback, etc.

Anything you write (as in subsection) should have a timestamp of when it was: written, rewritten, last reviewed, test, environment tested, etc.

[munificent]

> Generally speaking, books as a format make no sense.

This is such a silly assertion. Books have been one of the most effective ways for an informed author to get large, complex topics and rich experiences into a another persons head literally since the Roman Empire.

Even in today's world where we have an infinite number of other formats and media to choose from, millions of people still prefer and learn from books. The ability to encode spoken language into a series of written words that can be consumed at a pace the reader controls is one of the most powerful technologies humans have ever invented. And an author taking the time to organize an entire body of work into a single coherent linear narrative is one of the most effective tools to move information across brains.

> I have seen the financial records for number of popular tech book authors

I think what you're trying to say is that conventional tech publishers make no sense economically, and I am inclined to agree with that. The idea that an author can do 90% of the work and get 10% of the royalties is just bananas to me. That kind of royalty sharing only made sense in a time when publishers formed a hermetically sealed cartel preventing independent authors from easily accessing bookshelves. Those days are thankfully over.

It is possible to make decent money from writing technical books if you self publish and build an audience yourself.

[billme]

>> “conventional tech publishers make no sense economically” [...] “It is possible to make decent money from writing technical books if you self publish and build an audience yourself.“

Do you have an example of an author doing this? (Meaning all they do is self-publish books and have disclosed financials.)

[munificent]

Yes, me.

My self-published book "Game Programming Patterns" has made me a lot more money every year for the past six years than I ever expected. It's not enough to live off of, at least not in an expensive city while raising a family, but it's nothing to scoff at either. I could probably make quite a bit more if I put time into marketing, supplementary materials, etc. As it is now, I just let the checks from Amazon etc. roll in and treat it as a nice bonus to my day job income.

If I lived somewhere cheaper, wrote full time, and made some adjustments in my lifestyle, I could probably get by on just my writing.

[billme]

First, congratulations, thanks for publishing, thanks for sharing your experience!

Second, yes, maybe I was not clear, my advice relates to the average author on a simple straightforward method of write a book that reduces the odds of it not being of use of the audience it seeks.

Lastly, might be wrong, but it appears:

(A) at least on Amazon, your book appears to be rank in the top 20,000 of all books;

(B) you appear to have published a singular book;

(C) as you say, yourself, it does not make enough for someone to live in a major city;

(D) writing books is not your primary means of income;

—- to me, what I hearing does not conflict at all with my analysis and your example, to me is survivor bias: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

——

Writing multiple best selling books year after year is VERY hard to do as a means of income. There are much easier ways to earn an income and share what you know. If someone wants to do that, awesome, though I do not have advice for doing that, nor do I know of anyone else that does; that would result in publishing 1+ successful books a year. My advice is just no nonsense take on being reducing odds of book being useful, which for the average author is much more of a challenge.

[munificent]

All of that is true, but it's also worth balancing that with the fact that when I was writing that book, I was only spending about an hour a day on it, and now I spend zero hours a day. The long tail of passive income seems to be pretty long so far.

You're right that it will be hard for many people to make a living solely off writing technical books. But I also think it's true that you can make more money that most people realize just by not giving a traditional publisher a huge cut of it. Maybe not enough to live on, but likely enough to make it worth your while.

[qznc]

If you go for free and online anyways, then you can pursue more interesting formats like Quantum Country [0]. It seems to include a spaced repetition mechanism. I have yet to try it though.

[0] https://quantum.country/

[billme]

Love the idea of a book based on spaces repetition, but wish they had a better way to get a sense of what you’re getting yourself into, since as far as I am able to tell there’s no:

- estimate of reading time - level of knowledge - way to link deeper content

[freedomben]

I love buying pre-releas books from Prag Prog (which isn't exactly the same but similar to what you described). Especially since things change so fast, if you have to wait for a finalized, published version of the book, it's usually outdated by the time it even hits the shelves (not entirely of course, but parts of it). If the author(s) publish pre-releases frequently, it can be a fantastic reference.

[billme]

Preselling good, since sending cash is a lot better signal of interest than handing over email, SMS, etc.

That said, you would need to have a quantifiable definition of done and likely be a good idea to account for absolute failure in case something comes up an “done” is never accomplished. Until it is “done” likely be good idea to escrow the funds, but then you run into issue like paying taxes, transaction fees, etc.

[freedomben]

Agreed, escrowing is a great idea. In the case of the books I bought they were by very prominent people so I had high confidence they would be completed. For less-known authors tho, you make a great point.