[sb8244]

Writing a book was a ton of fun. It's challenging but really makes you dig deeper into something you're already an expert in. Really accelerated my own learning while creating a product that shares my experience with the world.

Publishers are not all made the same. Pragmatic Bookshelf was great to work with and I'm thinking their estimate of 25k per book (to the author) is probably a good goal. Mine cleared that and then cleared my sales numbers goals as well.

You simply can't get that type of revenue unless you're at 50% royalty rate. Self publish is 100% of course, but pragmatic relationship definitely gave me a better product and marketing.

[__mharrison__]

Pragmatic has high royalties. Folks who do well (trad or self pubbed) either get lucky with the topic or do the heavy lift of marketing themselves.

I created a technical book authoring course [0] a bit back and interviewed over a dozen technical authors. Those who made the most were self pubbed. Though there is a huge draw to get a book with an animal on the cover...

0- https://store.metasnake.com/effective-authoring

[sb8244]

I believe that self pub can make the most, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it for a first book.

Maybe survivorship bias in the results? I know plenty of self pub authors that never cleared $1000 of sales. But then you have people that hit it big. Those people always seem to have a large existing audience, though.