[munificent]

> When it's all said and done, it can take well over an hour of effort per page.

Emphasis on "well"! I think I'm at closer to 5x that and I don't consider myself to have gone above and beyond. But, when you think about the total amount of time all readers may spend reading it, what's a few hours per page?

> why would they take on a poorly paying second job?

This article seems to have the flawed premise that financial incentives are the only incentives, or at least the only ones worth mentioning.

I've put a surprisingly large chunk of my life into the book I'm writing and I've yet to make a dime. That may change soon once the print and ebook versions are done, but I don't expect to financially recoup the time I put into it.

But, I don't need to, either. Like many technical people, I'm paying my bills OK. Extra cash never hurt, sure, but one thing I can't easily buy is gratitude or appreciation. Writing a book and putting it online for free has given me that in spades. That's the incentive that gave me enough motivation to actually finish writing it. When I had a contract and an advance coming, the cash wasn't enough to get me off my ass. Feeling like my writing made a connection and helped people did.

If you want great technical people to write more, instead of buying more books, why not just tell them you love their work and would love to learn more from them?

[dangets]

Thanks for your book by the way! I loved it. (and it also made me recognize your username, proving your appreciation/reputation argument) http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

[munificent]

Thanks!

[k__]

Did you just start to write stuff or did you learn about writing?

[munificent]

We've all been learning about writing since kindergarten. All of those book reports and short stories are good practice for the fundamentals of grammar, imagery, etc.

I did blog for a couple of years before I started on the book. But, honestly, the most helpful thing was spending several years on reddit commenting very heavily. I wrote thousands of comments, and those are like writing bootcamp.

But there's definitely no dividing line between being able to "write" enough to write a book versus being able to write a comment here on HN. It's all just prose. The trick is just putting the time into writing and revising a lot of it.

[x0x0]

Well, there's a line. Given landlords/banks still refuse to convert moral rewards to cash, it can become prohibitively expensive to write a book. At 5 hours per page for 400 pages, you've traded your book for a year's worth of wages. If you can afford that, great; if not, you can't write a book.

[munificent]

> If you can afford that, great; if not, you can't write a book.

Sure, there's a reason I scoped this to technical people. Most of us are able to pay our bills and don't have to work much more than 40 hours a week.

Given that, we all have free time. Much of that is filled with friends and family, but many have room left for a hobby or two. Writing a book can fill that slot. I wrote this book while working full time and raising a family. It takes longer, of course, but since I'm not in it for the money, I'm not rushed either.

[x0x0]

There's something unhealthy about an industry's educational materials requiring essentially large financial donations. If it has to be a work of passion, I just find it... unhealthy. afaik most industries don't require what's essentially volunteer work to build training material.

[barry-cotter]

Most industry's training materials are written by academics. Those academics who take the time to write textbooks probably do it because they want to use a good textbook that teaches what they want taught, the way they want it taught. In most cases there isn't really any other very good reason to write the book. Writing textbooks takes time away from something your tenure committee cares about, articles. And most textbooks sink into obscurity, pretty much without trace. It's lucrative if you get a blockbuster but that's not something to be terribly confident about.

Training materials for less academically demanding occupations are correspondingly less demanding to write. Step by step instructions aren't that hard. Instructional videos are expensive to make but YouTube has shown that people are even willing to do those for (next to) nothing. People really enjoy sharing their expertise on things they're passionate about.

[SupremumLimit]

It also makes things difficult for those of us who are trying to make a living out of education/training.

I get that people do it for passion, I enjoy sharing knowledge too, and in an ideal world where I didn't have to earn money, I'd be doing it along with everyone else as part of a great virtuous cycle.

However, the current situation is mostly at odds with making a career out of education. I really can't invest as much time as I'd like into educational work because I have a family to support, and I barely break even on the hours invested.

It means that trying any new interesting approaches is out of the question, and advanced topics with a smaller audience are unlikely to see the light of day, which is a pity.

But I guess as long as there is a supply of people willing to do this kind of work on top of a regular job, the situation will only become more entrenched.

[munificent]

> However, the current situation is mostly at odds with making a career out of education.

Yes, this is the part that really bothers me. I'm fine with people doing creative work like writing and music without much financial reward.

The shitty part is that they still have to spend so much of their precious time doing other stuff to get the financial reward needed to pay their bills.

It's not a tragedy in my mind that writing doesn't pay, it's that we require something that does pay.

[JeremyMorgan]

Yep, I totally get this. Working on a book right now, and I'm about 98% certain I'll never recoup the costs or make anything more than minimum wage if I calc it out but if it helps people I'm good with that. Been running a blog for years on this premise and my bills are paid just fine. Why not?

[coliveira]

Buying a book is the way you "say" to the author you like his work...

[shiven]

Not the "only" way to say though. Email, Twitter, FB likes, recommending to others, are a few amongst many other ways to say.

[jacquesm]

What is the subject matter?

[munificent]

Game programming and software architecture!

The full text is here: http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/