
Tips for Writing a Technical Book - bcherny
https://performancejs.com/post/31b361c/13-Tips-for-Writing-a-Technical-Book
======
nbaksalyar
Thank you, this is very timely: recently I got a cold email from an
acquisition editor too and been researching this fascinating topic of writing
tech books. :)

Some more helpful resources I found:

\- Advice to Prospective Book Authors from Scott Meyers (of Effective C++
fame):
[https://www.aristeia.com/authorAdvice.html](https://www.aristeia.com/authorAdvice.html)

\- "I wrote a book" by Tryggvi Björgvinsson: [https://dev.to/trickvi/i-wrote-
a-book-lfg](https://dev.to/trickvi/i-wrote-a-book-lfg)

\- "Writing a technical book" by Ian Miell:
[https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/05/15/writing-a-technical-
book...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2016/05/15/writing-a-technical-book/)

\- Then there are some good discussion about this topic on HN. You can try
searching by keywords like "ask hn + writing a book", e.g.:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300932)

~~~
sytelus
Was it from Packt? Me too :). I have been wondering if it is worth writing for
Packt or find another publisher or even self-publish.

I don't think Packt is bad publisher but I have no experience in book
publishing and have no idea how much publisher really matter. I have used some
excellent books from Packt and some not so. Almost all authors who have
written for Packt who I found online have had good experience writing for
Packt however few do consider them as "second tier" along with Apress while
Manning sits in 1st tier [1]. Again I have no idea what this really means.

[1]
[http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog/books/technology/2018_0207_p...](http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog/books/technology/2018_0207_pragprog_manning_no_starch_packt_apress_fill_oreily_gap)

~~~
nbaksalyar
> Was it from Packt?

From a 1st tier publisher. ;) But I concur with another comment, it's hard to
justify _not_ going with self-publishing in 2019. More so if you're not doing
this for money. I would prefer to publish a completely free ebook (like Pro
Git, etc.), but it's hard to negotiate this with traditional publishers.

~~~
kubrickslair
I am skeptical on the point that a good publishers adds no value.

In our case, we authors have been publishing papers for over a decade. And
together we have almost 1000 citations for our papers.

And yet, we were not able to think over and improve on certain aspects of a
book that we discovered only after talking to our current publisher.

Maybe if you are completely clear on what your book is about and how will
readers react to it, a publisher might not matter. But for us, it seems it was
not the case.

------
rmason
I've been a technical editor on a few programming titles. I don't think the
average developer realizes that for the authors writing a book is a passion
project.

Not only won't you get rich, you will be extremely lucky to make minimum wage.
Most if not all the marketing is on your shoulders. Even though it's a hits
driven business the publishers do all right though.

~~~
Silhouette
What puzzles me is why most people writing book-length technical work in 2019
should use a traditional publisher _at all_. The premise that a publisher
deserves to keep the vast majority of sales revenue because of the value they
add seems like it belongs in another time. In the modern digital and online
market, the idea of publisher as some sort of gatekeeper with established
channels through distribution networks and into bricks and mortar bookstores
is largely obsolete. And what publisher today provides a new author with
enough technical editing resources or marketing power or administrative
support to justify taking the rights and keeping most of the revenue?

Maybe someone has already done this, but it seems to me there's an obvious
opportunity for some sort of small-scale broker service that connects authors
with independent professionals who can offer the necessary skills in editing,
design, illustration, ecommerce, printing and distribution if physical copies
are wanted, and so on.

~~~
rmason
There were a few publishing startups that only published electronically and
let the author keep 60% of the title's price. I can't find them anymore so
perhaps the experiment failed.

~~~
peterarmstrong
At Leanpub, authors keep 80% of the title's price. We've paid over $7.5M in
royalties to authors, and we're alive and well :)

Write in Markdown, click a button, get a book (PDF, EPUB, MOBI). Click a
different button and your book is for sale with an attractive landing page,
etc. You can even create a MOOC with one click, again based on Markdown...

(disclosure: cofounder)

~~~
sytelus
Do you also provide services for proof-reading, cover design, marketing (or
connect people with these expertise online)? It would be great to have
community of people offering services to book writers for money or royalty.

------
perlgeek
Another one:

If you are fine writing blog posts, but have trouble writing for a book
because you think suddenly things need to be perfect (and run into writer's
blog)...

Then start with blog posts. Ask your publishers if you can publish them. If
not, write them as if you'd publish them on your blog.

Then take the blog posts, and turn them into chapters of your book.

A blog post tends to be a bit more self-contained than a book chapter, but
even for a book chapter, people appreciate it if they can read it separately.

Other things:

* don't expect to get rich. Writing usually pays way less than programming.

* no many how many passes you have made, you'll always find spelling and grammar errors (even after a professional copy editor went over it). Try to get them fixed, but also accept it as a fact of life that things won't end.

* Making good illustrations takes quite some time.

* Expect illustrations to be printed black and white, with grays being butchered, unless you have negotiated otherwise your publisher.

* The publisher has a project manager for you. Keep them updated. They'll be more lenient with delays if you tell them early. Communicate as much as you'd do with a project manager at your job, even if they don't ask you every week or month (because they don't want to be pushy).

* Keep a list of contributors, where you add names and email addresses as soon as somebody helped you. After half a year, you would forget at least a few contributors. List people by name in a "Thank you" section. Everybody likes to read their own name in a book :-)

* Keep a list of people + email addresses who expressed interest in your project. The publisher likely will send out ebook copies to people, in the hope that they will review your book on amazon. Be prepared for that.

------
mfrisbie
Fantastic article! I would add that it is quite impossible to hold the
contents of an entire book in your head at once. I rely heavily on Trello and
OneNote for mental organization of topics.

It's also critical to form a topic pipeline as you go about writing.
Unfailingly, writers will come across articles or blog posts that contain
something new they'd like to include in their text. Efficiently taking raw
content, boiling it down into its essence, and composing that concept into a
book section is important for keeping your book content fresh and relevant.

~~~
asplake
Not sure about some of this. If you can’t keep a good enough mental model of
your book in your head, your readers might struggle to follow it.

I do recognise the issue of nearing the end of writing a book and being torn
on whether to include new stuff. In the end you just have to draw the line
somewhere. It’s less of an issue if you have an outlet for new stuff - blog,
community, etc.

------
mxcrossb
> When editing, print out your manuscript and edit it with a red pen.

I also do this for all of my papers and find it extremely helpful. Though I’d
be curious if any of you have found a good digital process.

~~~
sytelus
How about tools like Grammerly? Sentence rewriting, spell & grammar check be
electronic and automated.

~~~
hopscotch
Only a partial substitute.

------
asicsp
Good list of tips and congrats on finishing the book, 1.5 years is a lot!

>Pad the timeline

yup, despite finishing two books, I naively thought I'd take about a month for
the third (I already had most of the stuff as a tutorial on GitHub) and it
ended up taking 2.5 months (granted some were unexpected delays, but still)

>forgot to give context for something

that's been a worrying consistent one among the few critical feedback I've
got, but as I'm self-publishing ebooks, at least I have the option of
addressing them quickly (this also ties with points in the article about
getting early feedback, especially those who are experts in the fields)

------
lone_haxx0r
> Why’d I write the book?

Non-native English speaker here. Does this mean why _would_ I write the book
or why _did_ I write the book?

~~~
jcalabro
I think from the context it means "why did I write the book".

------
Ozzie_osman
I haven't written a traditional book, but I'm currently working on writing
Holloway's Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring
([https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-
hiring/about](https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/about)).
Writing is hard but my experience so far feels a lot more positive than the
process described here. I had a ton of editorial support and we were able to
get contribution (through interviews, reviews and edits, and even written
contributions from a bunch of subject matter experts).

In any case, it's still not an easy feat and I have a ton of respect for
anyone who embarks on (let alone finishes) the task of writing a book.

------
tapirl
I wrote my book (Go 101) as a hobby. When I solved a confusion in using Go, I
wrote one blog article. In the end, I wrote about 25 articles. Then I write
some basic chapters to finish the book.

I have never a plan to publish it as paper books.

~~~
yasoob
I would love to give it a read if you are ok with it :)

~~~
tapirl
It is here: [https://www.go101.org](https://www.go101.org)

------
ghaff
One of the things that this post highlights is the difficulty of getting
others to do things to help you whether copyediting, technical editing,
contributions, or (in particular) co-authoring.

It's understandable. People are busy and way more open to helping out in
principle than in practice.

But getting reviewers is really tough and usually takes a lot of nagging. And,
unless the publisher is covering it for you, figure on paying a copy-editor;
it's unlikely someone reading the manuscript over as a favor will be thorough
(and skilled) enough.

------
blueboo
I don’t understand why anyone would choose to do this.

If you have the knowledge to write a book that has demand, you could earn way
more money and be treated better by putting those skills into practice in an
engineering team. And if you feel the need to write, sharing knowledge on a
blog or open source project only accelerate your career and improves your
earning outlook.

I guess the answer to this riddle in 2019 is that this dynamic just isn’t the
case outside of developed countries

------
crdotson
Another O’Reilly author here and this article is spot on — particularly about
blocking out specific times to write.

------
PixelPaul
How does someone self publish to amazon books?

