

On why i haven't written another tech book - jnazario
https://plus.google.com/113974084460235989118/posts/hcbEnDKiRdi

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Irfaan
I know next to nothing about publishing, so do take my opinions with a rather
sizable grain of salt.

With the growing prevalence of ebooks, the "waste of paper" seems a bit weak.
And the ridiculously rapid pace of tech advancement strikes me as more of a
boon than a problem - for most topic-centric books, you only get to sell it
once to an enthusiast. With tech books, you get the opportunity _many_ times
over.

 _"rather than buying tech books i just read blogs, quora, stack overflow, and
i think a lot of people do the same. it's faster, cheaper, etc. for example,
as i am learning iOS programming, the docs on apple.com are great, as are some
third party tutorials."_

And if the content of the book doesn't outpace those sources - I
wholeheartedly agree, the book shouldn't exist. But I buy books with the
expectation that they _do_ provide me with a better _and faster_ experience
than I would have gotten by just googling on my own.

All that said, I sure as heck haven't written a book. So obviously the author
is better versed on this topic than I am. So, giving them the benefit of the
doubt - perhaps there's some sort of opportunity here. Like (pulling at the
lowest-hanging fruit), rather than creating "just" a book, creating a
subscription-based community around a topic?

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shagbag
This is usually true of language or framework-specific books, but not of more
general books like The Pragmatic Programmer. If you're looking to write books
that will be read years from now, you need to focus on wider or more
fundamental issues. The caveat here is that primers for long-lived languages
like C++ have remained relevant for decades.

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prpatel
eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook eBook. (no
trees were hurt in the making of this sarcastic post)

