[Swizec]

Yes, don’t write technical books for the money. But also do! If you approach the book as a business venture, there’s plenty of money to be made.

Here’s my recap of making almost $400k over a few years of working on books-and-such as a sidebiz alongside a full-time job. Not all of it was from books directly, a lot was from opportunities that the books unlocked. And that’s not even counting how the books enabled me to sponsor my own visa/greencard to come into USA and unlock oodles of opportunities.

The main insight I’ve learned is that the book is a product. Write your thing for someone to benefit from. What [useful thing] will they be able to do after reading your book that they weren’t able to before? How does it help them get more of what they want faster?

https://swizec.com/blog/5-years-of-books-and-courses-or-how-...

Sharing this to encourage, not to brag. We need more insightful and useful books out there.

If you’re gonna do this, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of Write Useful Books first. Wish it existed when I started. http://writeusefulbooks.com/

[mattgreenrocks]

How much is this income do you think was a result of your following? From here, you look quite established.

My pet peeve is indie dev influencers who tweet “anyone can do it” while ignoring their own built up momentum. I don’t know enough about you to ascertain either way.

[__mharrison__]

Lots of influencers out there claiming that anyone can follow their outlier performance. Super annoying but gets eyeballs (at least on LinkedIn).

I've been writing books for over 10 years (have published over a dozen). If you keep at it, there is good money to be made. Because you learn how to market and treat it like a business.

I now make more from my books than I make when I was in industry. But it took a long time. And a lot of work.

[Swizec]

This is how I got established and built a following :)

[drzzhan]

Awesome! I probably won't write book for money but at least I want it to be useful.