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I've written 9 technical books, including 4 for a major publisher (Apress), and 5 independently (https://wjgilmore.com/). One of these books (Beginning PHP and MySQL) has incredibly reached its 20th year in print[1], and has been translated into a bunch of languages. Many years ago I also wound up editing ~70 or so books for Apress plus a few for Wiley. In summary I know this business pretty well, and still follow it closely despite not having participated in it for several years. My advice is this: if you want to write a book, then write it. But if you do have this sick, twisted desire to spend countless hours writing and editing your work, telling yourself you are an idiot, not good enough, and a horrible writer, then at least do so with the thinking people are going to read it and as a result you will make money. Set yourself up for the possibility of success. How can you do this? * Package the book in different ways (print, print + videos, print + videos + consultation). This has been extraordinarily successful for me personally. * Use the amazing Leanpub.com to do the book production (turn your Markdown into PDF, epub, etc). Not an affiliate or whatever, just mentioning it because you will save untold hours of pain. * If you want to work with a publisher (and in 2024 I don't suggest you do), then choose very, very wisely. There are two who I would even consider working with today, and even in those cases I would absolutely not cede the usual rights. Hope this helps,
Jason [1] As of this fifth edition my name is no longer on the book due to a disagreement with the publisher. |
Jeff Geerling gave his devops books away (free) on multiple occasions. I chose to pay for them as he kept working on and improving them well after release.
If more writers took this approach, the quality would increase.