
Writing a software book and making over $100k - mariuz
https://twitter.com/vlad_mihalcea/status/1282199525562753025
======
jashmenn
These numbers are possible and repeatable. I've made over $100k on software
books at least 7 separate times [1].

If you're going to try to do this, the key idea is to build an audience e.g.
an email list. You need to budget 50% of your time to writing the book and 50%
of your time to blogging/promoting the content.

There's basically three key aspects to making $100k on a programming book:

1\. Market - is the topic broad enough to sell $100k in copies?

Weak market: Build an Adblocker with Clojure on Arduino

Strong market: Complete Guide to D3

2\. Offering + guarantee - what does the student get when they buy?

Weak offering: my 200-page pdf

Strong offering: my 400+page pdf/epub/mobi, 2 hours of video intro, invite to
community chat, interviews with experts, support, questions answered by the
author, quizzes, and worksheets

3\. Promotion Effort

Weak promotion: posting 3 times to medium

Strong promotion: writing remarkable content, posting weekly, creating
downloadable resources, collecting emails - launching to an email list of
10k-100k+

When you hear someone say, "you can't make money in programming books" run
their strategy through the filter above. It's no wonder most folks don't make
much money, because doing it right is hard.

It can take months to build an email list of 10k, but that's how the game
works.

[shameless self plug]

If you're thinking about creating a programming book or a course, this is what
I do and I'd love to chat. See here: [https://www.newline.co/write-with-
us](https://www.newline.co/write-with-us)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17015117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17015117)

~~~
quietbritishjim
> Strong promotion: ... collecting emails - launching to an email list of
> 10k-100k+

One thing I've often wondered about this: who are all these people posting
their email addresses everywhere?

Even if I'm reading a blog post I'm so interested in that I'd like to read
more later, I would never dream of putting my address in one of those "sign up
for more" popups. I know many will comment that it's offensive that they popup
over the page, but for me that's not even the main reason - email is just not
the right place for that sort of thing, I already get enough cruft in my email
account without adding blog post notifications too. I know not everyone is
exactly like me but surely that is the rule rather than the exception?

~~~
jashmenn
Email fatigue comes from self-serving emails. When you get value from an
email, it isn't a burden.

Context: We have 100k folks on our list, and our typical open rate is 25%.
Almost all are web developers.

I think the key thing required to maintain this is to give value. I'll spend
hours personally writing high-quality email tutorials. My friends and family
are subscribers and so I treat each email as such.

I feel an obligation that if you open an email from me you're going to get
value from it. I might send out 19 emails that teach before I ask for a sale
on the 20th (but even then, I'm only going to ask you to buy something I think
you might also find valuable).

~~~
esrauch
I'm not sure that the value can explain the 100k signups though; except for a
small amount of word-of-mouth the vast majority of those must type in their
email based solely on the website content and the promo?

------
vladmihalcea
I'm the book author, so if you have any questions, let me know.

~~~
hohenheim
You mentioned publishers leave you with 10% of the sales. I can't wrap my head
around that, how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

~~~
commandlinefan
> how is that possible and acceptable by authors?

I had no problem accepting just 10% of my book sales - without going through a
traditional publisher, it would have been impossible for me to get my book
carried by physical book stores. Of course, this was 10 years ago, when
physical book stores were more common; this may not be such a consideration
today.

~~~
teddyuk
I've just signed a contract to write a book and I get an advance and then 10%
(goes up to 12/15% if more are sold).

One major reason is that I am more likely to finish it and get it done than if
I rely on it myself.

Another reason is that I want to be known for one niche, this will help and if
that works out then I could likely self-publish and keep more of the profit.

It is slightly more nuanced than I want as much cash as possible for this
thing.

~~~
pc86
Does the 10% go against your advance or does it start immediately?

~~~
dhosek
An advance is, just what it sounds, an advance payment on royalties.
Publishing, unlike film/tv or music generally doesn't play games with
royalties, so, if the book sells, once you've earned enough royalties to cover
the advance you will get additional earnings.

------
swyx
for those interested in other examples I studied a bunch of them and compiled
them into this list for my own book launch [https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-
cheatsheet](https://github.com/sw-yx/launch-cheatsheet)

I'll be adding this one naturally

~~~
symplee
Very cool resource.

Have you thought about adding the scale of the author's following and/or
social media presence?

For example, this story's author has 21,000 followers on Twitter, and a
successful blog.

Another example is 200k in sales
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23502770)
where the self-publishing author admitted that practically all sales were due
to 35,000 Twitter followers.

Have you come across an example of a successful book launch where an (unknown)
author didn't already have a large following?

~~~
DVassallo
Here’s one example of a successful launch with almost no followers:
[https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1260964674561953792?s=2...](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1260964674561953792?s=21)

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xchaotic
I consider this a success story similar to an NBA star making it. So if 100k
is very successful in terms of computer book revenues, then I’d say money
should not be the main motivation to do it, as there’s better, more reliable
ways to earn money in the software industry - working for any SP500 company
will easily get you the same amount of money in less than a year, more or less
guaranteed. I know it’s not either or situation, just that it proves that
money should not be main motivator for writing a book.

~~~
scarface74
I’ll go a step further. I agree going through all of the trouble writing and
promoting a book for only a $100K seems like a lot of work. Especially when
you consider the risk adjusted return.

Anyone that smart could make more than that - guaranteed just by consulting.

I’m most familiar with the Apple related ecosystem, but there you see people
with a following making a money via optional subscriptions (Accidental Tech
Podcast,Upgrade), subscription only podcasts (Dithering by John Gruber and Ben
Thompson), or daily newsletters (Ben Thompson).

If he is not doing just for the money, then go for it. Another example is John
Siracusa of ATP. He wrote large reviews of each version of OS X for the first
10 years that literally took months, did much more than his contract required
and admitted that if he actually accounted for every hour he worked on it, it
paid much less than minimum wage.

One more mention is Horace Deidu. He got his start as an analyst, started
podcasting and now hosts paid workshops and conferences.

~~~
vladmihalcea
The book made more than 100k as it's still selling pretty well. In fact, the
sales have increased over time, even if the book is now 5 years old.

I keep on updating it and will release a second edition soon.

The marketing effort is not just for the book. It also helps me sell:

\- video courses

\- on-site training

\- online training and workshops

\- find consulting opportunities

\- subscription licenses for a software product I created, Hypersistence
Optimizer, [https://vladmihalcea.com/hypersistence-
optimizer/](https://vladmihalcea.com/hypersistence-optimizer/)

~~~
scarface74
That makes sense. From what I’ve seen, most authors don’t write books just to
make money from the books themselves but as the center of the “flywheel”.

~~~
vladmihalcea
I manged to get some training engagements because someone in the company read
the book and liked it.

So, it can surely help you sell other services. However, this Twitter thread
aimed to point out that a book can also make good money, not just be an
exposure mechanism.

------
ThePhysicist
As another point one could add "Write about a reasonably popular subject and
write for beginners". From my own experience of analyzing popular content and
people that have successfully built a large follower base (in tech) it seems
that almost all of them produce content about subjects that a lot of people
are interested in (e.g. Javascript, CSS, web development, basic Unix/Linux
functionality) and target mostly beginners.

~~~
pc86
Once you find someone willing to put in the level of work required (probably
80% of people simply will not work hard enough to finish), the most common
mistake is targeting the advanced/experts in their field. That's great to
flesh out your following, but if your goal is revenue, beginners are going to
be the key to driving that. That doesn't necessarily mean actual beginners -
you can write about microservices architecture for mid-level and advanced
software developers, but target those who aren't familiar with microservices.
They're beginners in that respect. You'll have 10x the revenue from a
"Microservices 101" type product as you will from a product of similar length
and quality talking about all the different ways to structure your messaging
topics, for example.

------
dcsilver
I've bought a handful of software and technology books from O'Reilly and had
mixed experiences.

One of them - The Art of SEO, feels like a treasure trove of wisdom and
experience. Another that I won't name, but is about a popular programming
language, feels more or less like like a print copy of the online
documentation that's available for free, with very little value-add.

Shop with care, and if you're going to write, write with purpose and real
value.

------
kranner
Thanks, this is inspirational. Glad to see writing about "a niche in a niche"
as you put it in one of your tweets can do so well for an individual author
(provided they do it as intelligently as you did).

~~~
vladmihalcea
I didn't expect much when I started. However, traffic grew over time, and I
got to learn more about marketing, so in the end, it turned out to be a good
investment.

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ngcc_hk
Seems to be genuine. In fact for 1 year whilst $100k is quite a lot but as he
said, he may be able to get that in consultancy. But I guess the satisfaction
(if successful) would be very different.

~~~
vladmihalcea
I did't make 100k in one year. It took several years to get to this amount,
but it didn't stop there either.

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k__
I made over $10k with my first book. Which took me about 3-4 months to write.
So I approve.

------
fomine3
Important: Write in English. (or maybe Chinese?)

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mk000v
Wow! Amazing

