
Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book? - new999999937
I&#x27;ve been approached by 2 different publishers to author a programming book, based on the strength of a few technical articles I&#x27;ve written. They are both established publishers - think O&#x27;Reilly, Packt, Manning, Wrox, etc - and it&#x27;s darn flattering to be asked. I think it&#x27;d be a fun experience, and a feather in my cap. Though I&#x27;m under no misconception about the monstrous amount of work it entails.<p>To those who have been down this road: Before I get into bed with a publisher, what else should I be thinking about? What questions should I be asking? What is a fair, market-rate deal for a first-time technical author writing about a popular subject? What are the areas to negotiate? Thanks HN!
======
patio11
_What is a fair, market-rate deal for a first-time technical author writing
about a popular subject?_

You're going to be shocked and dismayed by the offer they give you. Let's get
that out of the way now. This is the model: they'll tell you to not do it for
the money, in exactly those words, prior to explaining to you terms which
imply that they're not doing it for ~92.5% of the money.

You will _likely_ be offered something akin to a $5k advance and a 8% royalty
rate on paperback sales with, perhaps, a modestly higher royalty rate on
e-book sales. The advance is guaranteed contingent on milestones. The
royalties first "earn out" the advance and then start getting actually paid to
you. (i.e. You have to sell $5k/0.08 = $62,500 of books on those terms prior
to receiving any additional money.)

Most tech authors _do not earn out advances_. You should expect to receive
just the advance and then occasional minor payments ($1k to $2k) for foreign
rights if the book turns out to be so popular that e.g. it gets translated
into e.g. Japanese.

If you want to make money in writing books, it is very possible. You'll want
to start collecting email addresses, start publishing more things which get
more people interested in trading you their email address, publish the book
yourself, and sell via your own site/email list. For bonus points, sell
packages (book, book + videos, book + videos + code samples) and price much,
much higher than you're comfortable with ($49/$99/$249 is popular and works
well).

There exist numerous people on HN who have successful businesses doing the
second model. Understand that the second model is far more akin to running a
business than it is to writing books. This is true of writing books generally,
but it is more obviously true when you don't have a publisher to blame for
your marketing/sales outcomes.

~~~
baudehlo
I'd be shocked if anyone got a 4 figure advance. I got a few hundred dollars
for an XML book in the height of the XML times. Ultimately the book never got
finished but everyone I know who has written a tech book (unless it's a huge
seller) says expect nothing more than lunch money from it, plus the employment
opportunities.

~~~
destructionator
My book (my first and only) <[https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/d-cookbook>](https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/d-cookbook>) got $3000 advance, plus an on-time completion bonus,
and now, two years later, continues to pay me ~$200 royalty checks in excess
of the advance every quarter...

That's not a large sum of money, considering that it took about 6 months of
nights and weekends it took to write the book, but it isn't nothing either.

~~~
solutionyogi
Link is broken.

~~~
tzs
HN's link recognizer misjudged the length by one, and so is including the ">"
end delimiter in the href.

Here is the correct link: [https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/d-cookbook](https://www.packtpub.com/application-
development/d-cookbook)

It would probably be a good idea for HN to recognize <URL> and "URL", since
those are specifically mentioned in RFC 3986 as common ways to delimit URLs in
text.

------
jonshariat
I'm currently an author with O'Reilly, writing about the design space.
([http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920038887.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920038887.do))

I am in the final stages after over a year and half. I was in your position
not too long ago and researched as much as I could before accepting, so I will
skip things you will find in a quick Google search.

Negotiating:

1\. Everything is negotiable, remember that

2\. Under promise on #pages, they ask you for an estimate but lowball it
because thats how they price it and then will ask you to fill it.

3\. Get in writing what they will be contributing.

Choosing the topic:

1\. Choose a topic you are passionate about

2\. Choose a topic you know a lot about

3\. Choose a topic you can write a lot about

4\. Don't be afraid to tweak the topic half way in.

5\. Choose a topic that will sell in a year and half.

Writing the book:

1\. Write an outline, write the first chapter, throw it away, and rewrite the
outline agin.

2\. Its better to lose work than to keep going in a direction that isn't
working

3\. You'll be busy but be reading other books as much as you are writing.

4\. Wake up early or stay up late, 0 distractions is the best for writing

5\. Talk out loud, like youre presenting to an audience to get unstuck from
writers block.

6\. Get feedback as soon as possible.

Marketing the book:

1\. If you can, get in writing what marketing they will do for the book.

2\. Negotiate on how many free books you can get to give away

3\. Sales on Amazon are important, direct sales there, esp on launch day.

4\. Start a newsletter (yay more writing!)

Other:

1\. This is a second job

2\. It does open a lot of doors

3\. Consider a co-author for your first book. I added one towards the end and
wish I had done it sooner. Its easier to collaborate and bounce ideas off each
other and keep each other accountable.

~~~
mcbits
> Negotiate on how many free books you can get to give away

What's a realistic order-of-magnitude number there? 50? And do you have to
agree not to sell them?

~~~
holdenk
If you forget to negotiate with them, and you go with O'Reilly, they are
really good at sending free books for book signings to conferences which can
be a really great chance to both get the word out and meet people that care
about the tech you wrote about.

------
swalberg
I've written 3 technical books. I highly recommend talking to an agent. I used
studiob.com. Not only will they negotiate money on your behalf, but they'll
get crappy clauses taken out. Stuff you've never heard of like "cross
accounting clauses". My last contract had a right of first refusal for my next
book in their opening offer. The acquisitions editor even laughed when we
asked about it because she didn't know it was there.

The agent will take 15% and believe me it's worth it.

Whatever deal you cut, pretend like it's not going to earn out its advance.
Because it probably won't. As everyone says, you're not doing it for the
money. You're doing it because you love the topic, love to write, and to be
seen as an expert in the field. Writing the books themselves earned me very
little money. Follow on work, like articles, and using it in salary
negotiations, more than paid for itself.

I'd suggest you figure out the book you want to write then shop it around the
publishers (again, agent helps). And be picky about the publisher, talk to
other authors that used them. They're not all the same. When one publisher
hires editors and pays their technical editors and another expects a lot of
self-editing and offers a free book to the tech reviewers, the outcomes will
be vastly different.

------
drcode
As an author of several books with an "established publisher" I guess my main
advice is that you know 1000x more about your domain than your publisher and
you have a better idea than them what the book should be like so that it will
sell a year and a half from now.

The best way to write a financially-successful book is not to negotiate the
best royalty rates possible, but instead to make sure you write a book people
are actually going to want to buy once the book comes to market... make sure
you get a reasonable contract, but after that use any remaining leverage you
have to make sure you get to write the right book for your market.

~~~
JohnStrange
That sounds like very good advice. Let me add to this that it is extremely
important for a programming related book to double and triple check for
technical accuracy, and in particular check again and again that code snippets
actually compile if they are intended to be complete.

Don't rely on any reviewers from the publisher to find mistakes.

~~~
dsr_
A reputable publisher -- O'Reilly, certainly -- will ask you to find
appropriate technical reviewers. The reviewers will get paid a very modest
amount. Remember to include them in the acknowledgments.

(Source: me, technical reviewer on 2 O'Reilly books.)

------
timbutlerau
As someone who's currently 1/3 of the way into doing exactly what you've been
asked... I'd advise you to really strongly consider the time it takes. I was
wrong by a factor of 4. Thinking I could spend an extra few hours a week takes
hours a night.

Expect no support, their staff are only there are a conduit to move things
around. The other thing that shocked me is how crude it all is. The publisher
I'm engaged with only has email and word docs. No form of document management
nor version control outside of manual naming of the documents.

Even if my book sells well, it won't cover the cost of the time if I'd simply
consulted that many hours. If you are considering it for the money, don't
accept. If you want to study a subject in detail and get partially paid for
it, then it might work out.

~~~
asadjb
100% this.

What I thought would be a quick few hours a week thing turned into taking up
all of my free time over the weekends. And writing the first draft isn't even
the most difficult part. In the review stage, you'll be revisiting stuff you
wrote more than 5 months ago and we amazed at what a poor job you did then. Of
course, time constraints make it impossible to re-write the whole thing, which
is something we programmers like doing so much! So you do the best you can and
move on.

And the tooling is non-existent. Word documents and emails are what I had to
deal with. There were multiple instances in which I was editing the wrong
version of the chapter, or the editor was looking at an older version, etc. I
hope better tools exist for this process.

------
joelhooks
I've published two books through publishers and the actual writing experience
was very similar to the book that I self-published.

For the self-published book I followed he basic path set forth in Nathan
Barry's Authority[0]. Financially speaking it was definitely more lucrative to
self-publish, but I've got access to a large audience to sell to.

There is another approach that I've seen that I find interesting and that is
of the "open source" variety where the book is given freely and later
published by a major publishing house. You Don't Know JS is a recent example.

My personal experience with OReilly was a good one. They send you a framed
cover and it was a decent experience. We got no advance and the pay was
peanuts, but it served to get me recognized at the time in a specific space.

Sure, money isn't the only motivator when setting out to write a book, but
it's definitely a motivator!

[0] [http://nathanbarry.com/authority/](http://nathanbarry.com/authority/)

~~~
_jdams
Thanks for sharing your experience. Never heard of Authority, I'm going to
check it out!

------
StevePerkins
Look for any "right of first refusal" clauses in the contract.

I was approached by Packt a few years ago, to write a book in a fairly niche
topic ([http://amzn.to/29LR9Ly](http://amzn.to/29LR9Ly)). Their reputation is
not the most stellar, but I put a lot of work into making a high-quality book
with source code on GitHub and live examples running on Heroku. So I "beat the
odds", I guess... earning several times the (small) advance, and getting some
positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. The money doesn't justify the time
that I put in, but it's tremendous resume fodder and played a large role in
taking my career to the next level with my next job change.

However, my biggest regret is that I signed a clause giving Packt the right of
first refusal on my next two books. Realistically speaking, I doubt I'll ever
get around to writing another technical book again. If I do, I'll probably
pitch it to Packt and then self-publish if they don't want it. But it sucks
being locked in like that.

Truth be told, if I had known then what I know now then I probably would have
just self-published in the first place. There's no real money in book
authoring no matter which route you take. Publishers don't really promote
books, and you're really on your own anyway for author support during the
writing process. I doubt that most employers looking at my resume would care
whether the publisher was Packt or Leanpub, so I probably would have gone the
latter route just for the freedom.

Of course, if one of your publisher options is O'Reilly, then maybe that's
another discussion.

~~~
drb311
Steven I'm managing editor at Packt. Thank you for publishing your book with
us.

If you want to publish your next work yourself or with another publisher just
mail us and ask. I'm sure we wouldn't enforce that clause against your will.

------
calcsam
Most technical authors don't write a book for the money -- they write a book
for the prestige (and proportionally higher consulting rates).

~~~
spdustin
This is likely to be the more useful answer here. The biggest benefit comes
from listing "author of [book you can buy at bookstore]" on your CV or web
site. The marketing power of your name being seen by potential employers (or
their employees who point to you as the domain expert of a topic). Not from
actual royalties past the royalty advance which, as others have mentioned,
would be rare.

Of course, the value of that would depend on if you trade on your name; e.g.
if you're a freelance consultant.

~~~
clifanatic
> The biggest benefit comes from listing "author of [book you can buy at
> bookstore]" on your CV

What about "[book you could buy at bookstore at one point, but not any more]"?

~~~
spdustin
I guess that would depend on if the book is still relevant to and likely to be
owned by the person you're pitching.

Or, of course, you're making a glib commentary about retail bookstores, in
which case, _s /bookstore/amazon\\.com/g_.

~~~
clifanatic
> s/bookstore/amazon\\.com/g

Well, anybody can self-publish on Amazon (and I do mean anybody, including the
completely illiterate), so I'm not sure that's a very high bar.

~~~
GFischer
While many can, I'm pretty sure not many actually do :) (at least for
technical topics).

It depends on whether the employer will care to check your book references or
not, I guess.

------
MarcScott
I wrote a kids programming book. £1.5k advance and 8% royalties if I remember
correctly.

My biggest takeaway, is forget your tool chain. I wrote it in org mode, and
exported to Libre Office and then Word. As soon as the first draft was
returned I ended up battling with Word the whole time, for edits and redrafts.

Also, designers don't read code like programmers. Indentation was often messed
up, incorrect quotes used and line breaks added to suit formatting. One
particularly badly formatted piece of code had me ripping my hair out.
Everything beneath the first line was messed up. The designer came back to me
a bit confused, saying the only problem he could see was the first line of
code was 4 spaces too far to the left. Being accustomed to an absolute left
limit on code, defined by the first line, it hadn't occurred to me to view it
like this.

~~~
andrewl
I've heard (but can't verify) that the Pragmatic Programmers have their own
tool chain, and that it's quite good. It will, for example, check that code
snippets are syntactically correct.

I have a few of their books, and they're pretty good. Their store is also very
straightforward and friendly.

Does anybody have experience writing for them?

------
simonsarris
I did this with Pearson (SAMS imprint) and wrote _HTML5 Unleashed_. My first
time = $10K advance and 12.5% (I think, forget) royalty rate. I'd gladly
answer any questions.

> what else should I be thinking about?

Time. I spent a better part of a year of my free time researching and writing
the book. Its almost like I skipped a year-ish of life. Of course, the next
time I write a book will be a lot quicker.

In terms of hours worked, its not a lot of money. If you like writing (and I
do), it may still be worth it. Like most projects, the second one you do will
probably be much quicker and feel a lot better than the first!

By the way everyone I worked with at Pearson was an A+ friendly, helpful
person. I have a much less favorable impression of Packt, but never wrote for
them.

~~~
drcode
> Of course, the next time I write a book will be a lot quicker.

That's what I thought, until I wrote my second book.

------
paulbjensen
I've just spent 18 months working on a title for Manning which is due for
publication soon: [https://www.manning.com/books/cross-platform-desktop-
applica...](https://www.manning.com/books/cross-platform-desktop-applications)

\- Writing a book is a huge undertaking - make sure that you have the time to
do it.

\- Find a good environment to write the book in - if you have kids/pets/others
that will interrupt you, try to find somewhere else to do the writing - Marcus
Hammerberg (the co-author of Kanban in Action) wrote his in coffee shops, with
the side effect that he gained 10lbs, so factor that in.

\- Try to pause on blockers if you can - time spent on coding/writing does not
always result in the equivalent amount of book being produced.

\- Check what the tech landscape for your book's subject is like - if it's
very fluid then plan around it - since I started my book, Node.js was forked
to create IO.js, Node Webkit was renamed to NW.js, IO.js merged back into
Node.js, and then Electron emerged on the scene and now overshadows NW.js
(which is ironic given that they have something of a shared history).

\- Keep your editor informed - I've had quite an eventful 18 months and it
helps to let them know what's going on in your life.

\- Writing a book is a great feeling when you see your name as a published
author.

I think the one takeaway is that it is like doing a dissertation whilst also
doing a job - ask yourself if you can commit to that. If you can, great. And
find the right motivation too, because you are putting at least a year of your
life into this project.

~~~
Siecje
I just bought your book. It still talks about IO.js. Are you planning on
updating that?

~~~
paulbjensen
Yes, the mentions of IO.js in the book should mention that it was merged back
into Node.js. Out of curiosity which chapter were you looking at? I will check
the MEAP and make sure that it has the latest chapter versions.

~~~
Siecje
Just the Welcome before Chapter 1. Why not just remove the references to
IO.js? And explain Node.js.

~~~
paulbjensen
Ah, the welcome bit, yes that was written a while back. I will get round to
updating that now.

Paul

------
d23
I went into it for the "feather in my cap" and "fun experience" aspect as
well. It's grueling, stressful, and the piddly amount of money you'll make for
it doesn't do much for motivation. I stopped about 3/4ths of the way through
writing it and finally admitted to myself that I couldn't go on.

Some other folks have put out information about the advances and royalties,
and it's about what I saw as well. If you're doing it for the money, I think
you'll be disappointed, but at least you can gauge that before accepting. If
you go the self-publishing route, I'm sure the amount of money you can make
can increase if you have the right network, but you may lose that sense of
"making it" by being published by one of the big names.

------
amenghra
I was a reviewer for a Packt book
([http://droppdf.com/v/UTl8X](http://droppdf.com/v/UTl8X)). The review process
was terrible, they ended up not taking my feedback into account and the book
was published with lots of technical mistakes.

The final book is essentially a random tutorial from pre-existing web content.
Avoid them.

~~~
halfdan
While I was working on a video course for Packt, someone from their company
approached me and asked whether I'd be free to review a video course.. (mine)

They are badly organised and most of their communication happens through Word
docs randomly spread over multiple Dropbox folders.

------
rdl
I'm friends with the owner of No Starch Press, but I'd consider their
published royalty schedule to be quite fair and a good sign of the upper-
middle of the industry.

[https://www.nostarch.com/writeforus.htm](https://www.nostarch.com/writeforus.htm)

15 percent royalty with no advance 12 percent royalty with $5,000 advance 10
percent royalty with $8,000 advance

------
bhouston
I've been approached quite a few times over the decades.

In my opinion you will make very little money from writing the book (unless it
is a rare O'Reilly blockbuster) and it will take a horrible amount of time.

I think if you do the calculation based on expected income versus the time
required to write the book, it is likely be close to minimum wage. Or it sure
seemed close when I did the calculation for myself.

I think that those books make money for the publishers, but not much for the
authors, especially if you can make market wages in a major market, or
possibly more if you can get stock or some other form of potentially lucrative
compensation.

------
philip1209
I haven't followed through, but just as an FYI - many people who have written
blog posts have been approached by publishers. They don't put all of their
eggs in one basket - for a given topic, they go through the "outlining" stage
with multiple people.

------
TylerE
I would say it depends a LOT on who it is. Packt books for instance, are
mostly....not very good.

~~~
subsection1h
By "not very good", do you happen to mean that Packt is a content farm that
produces low-quality information written by cheap labor?

~~~
dhoe
It mostly seems to be, but don't overlook the occasional pearl when they
manage to trick a competent person to work for them.

~~~
Tharkun
The content of some of their books is written by very capable technical folks.
Sadly, being a techy does not make you a good writer. Especially when you're
not a native English speaker and are writing in English.

What's worse is that their review process seems to be worse than useless.
Recently tried to read one of their books, which credited maybe 10 reviewers,
and every other line had me cringing so hard it was unreadable.

~~~
jakub_g
Yep, I've recently read a Packt book and I found I think at least a hundred
(!) of typos, grammatical errors etc. These kind of things give very bad
evidence about the publisher, and (not always justly) indirectly also about
the author, even if he is very competent technically. Better avoid this kind
of publisher.

I've read an HN thread a few months ago and there was a lot of folks, both
readers and writers, complaining about Packt's quality.

~~~
erroneousfunk
I wrote a book for Packt (and later for O'Reilly -- much better!) and I still
cringe when I think about people reading it. They gave me three months to
write it, and it's been out for three years now, so code samples are slowly
breaking as technology moves forward, and some of the content is badly out of
date. The principles are good, and there are definitely some useful things in
it, but, my god, what I wouldn't have given for a copy editor and someone to
actually review the code. It was all written in MS Word, as well, which made
formatting and editing a nightmare. Their editors actually put mistakes _into_
the book. I think I took most of them out, but, like I said, their deadlines
are nuts.

------
parisidau
I've written 10+ books for O'Reilly, and one for Wiley/For Dummies, back in
the day. It's a great experience, and I'm still writing for them now. We
really enjoy it, and gain credibility, clients, and speaking opportunities
from it. The money is fine, but the opportunities are great. Once you've done
one or two, it gets easier and quicker.

------
kkapelon
I have authored a book for Manning (Java testing with Spock) and was
approached like you are (they noticed some of my technical articles)

My advice

1) Unless you are going to write a big hit, you are not going to earn match.
You write a technical book for prestige, not money. Writing a technical book
for money is the wrong reason to write it. Stop now.

2)You should really know your topic well. I mean REALLY know it.

3)The amount of effort it will actually take will be 6x the effort you think
it will take.

4)Make sure that you have enough free time and you have discussed the matter
with your significant other (and that she/he approves)

~~~
franciscop
I have never written a book, but having written many tutorials, shouldn't it
be like teaching > prestige > money in a motivation scale?

~~~
ghaff
Depends. I find sufficient quantities of money to be pretty motivating as well
as quite useful. I don't have any problem with the satisfaction that comes
from teaching or with egoboo but it's hard for me to justify the huge amount
of work that goes into a book based on those non-monetary things alone.

As has been remarked elsewhere, the monetary rewards don't need to come from
royalties. Books are quite valuable as validation for people who make income
from other sources--and therefore help support consulting and other income
streams.

------
ninjakeyboard
I wrote a book for one of the pubs you mentioned and have talked to several
other authors. Know what you're getting yourself into - you're going to be
responsible for all editing so it is A LOT OF WORK. Never ending work. And it
will never be good enough but dates move forward.

You don't make any money publishing with a publisher - not directly from the
book, anyway. Maybe a dollar or two an hour. Do not do it for the money. Once
you're done, however, you can demand a higher salary as an 'expert' \- say an
extra 10% or 15%. Or double your income if you move into contract or
consulting. :)

One STRONG recommendation is to not promise the publisher first stab at any
future books. Some publishers have this in their default author contract -
that you can't publish with another publisher without first offering the
publisher the opportunity to publish first (maybe for your next 3 books). That
clause is one I would demand be removed from the contract.

------
mistermcgruff
I wrote a technical book for Wiley. 12.5% royalties for paper sales. 25% for
book. Negotiate the ebook rate.

The main thing that surprised me (which shouldn't have) was the complete lack
of marketing Wiley did. You write it, you find the tech editors, you edit it.
They assign someone to you who basically bugs you to turn in chapters. I had
the cover designed myself so it wouldn't suck. Then it comes out and you are
the one who has to market it. but for me it was fun just to do it.

~~~
ivan_ah
Is that 12.5% of the list price or 12.5% of the profits?

E.g. if the list price $100, the publisher sells it wholesale for $45 and the
printing cost is $10, will your royalty be $12.50 or $4.37=(12.5% of $35)?

~~~
erroneousfunk
12.5% of publisher's revenue. In this case, it's 12.5% of $45. Publisher eats
manufacturing costs, which is why their percentage is higher.

------
garysieling
It seems like the people who are making money at this are the ones that have a
following and sell PDFs of the books + addons (video training, a product) on
their own.

Manning and Leanpub are built around being able to ship chapters as you write
them - I think the feedback while working would be a huge help for motivation.

If you were choosing a publisher, I'd consider what the association with the
publishers says about you (e.g. I've always been most impressed by the
O'Reilly books)

~~~
lenepp
I'm a Leanpub cofounder and just wanted to mention here that self-publishing a
book while you're writing it is not necessarily incompatible with eventually
going with a conventional publisher (though if you have a publisher in mind,
you might want to ask them first if this would be acceptable to them).
Publishing your book while you write it can help with motivation and the
feedback you get from early adopter readers can be really valuable and make
the book better in the end.

~~~
fapjacks
I _love_ Leanpub and buy a _ton_ of books and contribute as much as I can
there to works in development. The whole feedback process has 100% won me
over! If I ever published a book (something I've fantasized about for years),
it would be probably through Leanpub or self-published. I'd probably consider
one of the smaller presses, but Leanpub would be my go-to. You guys do great
work at Leanpub!

------
morgante
Don't write a book for the royalties. Books are far more valuable as marketing
for your expertise.

A single consulting gig (of a week or two) will likely pay more than the
entire revenue of even a successful technical book.

~~~
netman21
This. But keep in mind that books generate consulting gigs. My first book
probably earned $4,000 in royalties over the last six years. But I got a $10K
speaking gig in Columbia almost immediately and a three year engagement in
Australia at $24K/year not to mention business class seats to Sydney once a
year.

------
mark_l_watson
I am late to this discussion but I have one important thing to add: make sure
in your contract that the rights to the book revert to you if the publisher
does not publish the book in a timely manor.

This happened to me just one time, and I learned my lesson: I signed a
contract with good terms, and half way through writing the book discovered the
publisher was also producing a competing book. They decided to not publish my
book, but did not revert the rights. I got to keep $5000 in advance money but
I was unhappy. I wanted to give back the $5000 in return for the book rights
but the publisher said no.

Edit: I have published 12 books with mainstream publishers like McGraw-Hill,
Springer Verlag, etc. and many more self published books via Lulu and most
recently Leanpub. I totally enjoy writing.

~~~
redtexture
And make sure you have clearly and favorably defined in your terms, in the
contract, what "publish", and "in print" mean, so there's no wiggling out of
the obligation by the publisher to return the book rights to you. That, and
only license the right to the publisher. You hold the ownership of the
copyright.

------
j2kun
Consider whether you're writing a book you want to be a lasting resource, or
whether it's a book that needs to get published quickly to keep up with
software trends. This will help you prioritize and set deadlines
appropriately.

------
hyperpallium
I co-authored a technical book about 15 years ago. The advice I got from
another author was that you "can't get rich writing books", and it's not worth
it for the money.

Since then, book sales have declined... particularly technical books. I wonder
if things are now also worse than the experiences of other commenters? For
example, David Flanagan, O'Reilly's star author on Java and Javascript,
switched back to consulting because even _he_ couldn't make enough money.

All that said, it's great to be a published author! I couldn't help but smile
when I re-read some of my work recently.

------
lxt
I have written some tech books, one of them best-selling, tech edited others,
and written a preface for one. I am also the author of published novels.

The amount of money and contract terms vary widely with the publisher. This is
where a contract with one of the big publishers is in your favor. You can also
consider self-publishing, but that is a different business model, which I will
not cover here.

Don't be afraid to ask for different terms.

In particular:

\- You can negotiate for an escalator clause on the royalties. This means that
the more books you sell, the higher your rate.

\- You can ask for a higher advance or a lower advance and higher royalty
rate. You can ask for the advance to be split differently (on contract, 25%,
50%, full MS, final acceptance, etc).

\- You should negotiate the option clause. This is the clause that says they
get the first option on your next book. Specific terms to negotiate include
limiting the scope - not "next book" but "next book on the topic of game
development with Python". Also make sure they have a limited time to consider
your proposal before deciding to buy it or not. 60 days seems to be a common
number, but you can probably negotiate that down.

\- Strike any non-compete clauses (that you will not write a book on this
topic for anyone else or self publish one).

\- Strike any cross-accounting clause. This is where you must earn out the
advance on every book you have for a publisher before you can receive
royalties on any book (and royalties for book 2 can be counted against the
advance for book 1, and so on).

Some publishers pay monthly, some pay quarterly, some bi-annually. Take this
into account.

Ask your publisher what their marketing and promotion plan will be for the
book. How much support are they putting into it?

Earnings vary a great deal, but I have been very happy over the years, and
book earnings have paid large chunks of my mortgage. How much you make depends
a lot on the size of the audience, what other books are in the market, the
timeliness of the book, and the publisher's approach to distribution and
marketing. It tends to be on the small side and I realize my experiences are
not typical.

It has opened doors for me and my co-author. We've been offered jobs,
contracts, writing opportunities, and speaking opportunities.

I would say this was the best career decision I ever made. It's also draining
and time-consuming, so be aware it's a large project.

Good luck!

------
toyg
Like a focused blog, it's really a marketing effort. It may or (more likely)
may not generate direct income, so don't do it for the riches, do it for the
experience (you will probably have to delve into certain topics to clarify
them for the book) and the publicity.

I would say choose the publisher wisely though. I've had a couple of
experiences where I was asked to review books and I had to give up after a
couple of chapters because they were just unreadable; don't be _that
author_...

------
muktabh
I have been asked to write books too, but I go with a no response always. My
reasoning is generally that my I have read free books and learnt a lot of what
I have ( was not really rich to buy all trendy books being a middle class
Indian student) , my book whenever it is written would be open and free
access. That will be my way to pay back. If I have to make money , I will
rather do it through my work, not letting publishers have control over the
knowledge source I write.

------
jgrahamc
I've written two books (O'Reilly and No Starch). Do it for the pleasure of
having a physical token you can give to people as a gift. The money is poor,
it takes forever, but when it's over you've written something and have learnt
from it.

~~~
neurotech1
Bill Pollock, founder of No Starch press is well respected in the hacker
community, especially in San Francisco. I know several people who have
published with No Starch.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes. I like working with them a lot.

------
adamnemecek
Please follow this. [https://medium.com/@atnemecek/so-you-are-writing-a-tech-
book...](https://medium.com/@atnemecek/so-you-are-writing-a-tech-book-with-
sample-code-493d6d640a44#.5ry3xx7dv)

~~~
rhizome
Barry Eisler and JD Konrath have also written a lot on self-publishing.

------
amouat
I wrote "Using Docker" for O'Reilly recently. My thoughts:

\- I wouldn't bother with the advance. It was a pitiful amount of money and
was paid in instalments that I constantly had to chase. Instead see if you can
negotiate a better royalty rate (as your first book, I don't know if this will
happen). Supposedly I was lucky to get advance at all, not sure how true that
is.

\- Another commentor mentioned the free books they give you; I think this is
an area you can likely easily negotiate up a bit.

\- As I wrote on a popular topic, I did make some money, but nowhere near what
I would have made consulting. However, it has opened a lot of doors for me. I
have given a lot of talks in a lot of countries and people come to me for
advice, which is a nice place to be. In terms of my career, it's certainly
been a big help.

\- I wouldn't write for one of the publishers that push out lots of low
quality titles. It demeans your work and you'd probably be far better off
self-publishing.

\- O'Reilly have a reasonably good infra set-up; I wrote the book in asciidoc
using Vim and pushed to a git repo. There was an on-line app that would then
build PDF/ebook versions of the book on demand.

Good luck!

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> I wouldn't bother with the advance. It was a pitiful amount of money and was
> paid in instalments that I constantly had to chase.

Unless you need the prodding to help you actually get the book done...

~~~
amouat
Not sure what you mean. I had to chase O'Reilly, not the other way around,
which was just a pain.

------
JohnBerryman
I wrote a book ([https://www.manning.com/books/relevant-
search](https://www.manning.com/books/relevant-search)). Considerations: are
you willing to write the book assuming that you will effectively make nothing
in direct proceeds from the book? (Close to true.) The upside from a book is
in monetizing on it indirectly. For instance, as a "though leader" you'll be
able to garner a higher salary at your next job or you'll be able to ask for
higher rates for consulting. But the catch here is that you've got to be
willing to put yourself out there, otherwise it's a nice bullet point on your
resume.

Oh yeah - and don't underestimate the time and effort involved. (I know you
mentioned it in your post, but still.) A due date, even if fairly far off,
looms ominous. For a year you'll have trouble relaxing and having fun because
you know you should be getting work done on the book. You won't have weekend
back for quite some time.

Would I do it again? Yep. Will I do it again? Nope. (At least not likely :D )

Good luck!

------
mattcopp
Hi, I'm the co-author of a book by PacktPub.

Throwing some incoherent thoughts together:

I was approach by PacktPub, and I did a bit of Google'ing before I started, to
check it wasn't a scam but didn't find a great deal of advice. I really wish I
had the good sense to ask on HN, like yourself, before I picked up the
contract. I've been meaning to write it up on a blog, when I put mine together
(ironically considering the subject matter of the book).

So for me I knew it was never about the money, I was intending at least not to
take the advance (which is actually a kind of loan that comes out from your
royalties), it was about having my name on a book, but in the end it was so
much work I figured I deserved it at the very least.

The main thing that shocked me was how much time it would take to do, in the
end 18 months and that was from the half way point that my co-author had got
it to, to the point where I gave up with it.

It should be noted I'm not a free-lance developer, I have a full time job so
all this work had to be done in my spare time. This was not well understood by
the publisher even though I explained it often, but deadlines came and went
without any feedback. I was asked to make Skype calls during my working hours,
never times that inconvenienced them, just when it inconvenienced myself. I
believe they were based in India so calling in my evenings would be 2am or so
for them, but I wouldn't be able to write their book at all if I was fired.

I went though 3 (or 4) different 'project leads' who always told me the end
was just around the corner. There was no outline as to how much work was
involved, the contract stipulated chapters and some re-drafts, but there is
WAY more effort in it than that. No one seemed to have a coherent view of what
was going on.

In the time I wrote the book and it being published, I got engaged, and
married, and the thing that really annoyed me, and the point where I just
stopped responding to them, is that I was still being contacted while on my
honeymoon after being explicitly asked not to, that and I wasted my time 2
days before my wedding writing the pre-amble that turned out had already been
written by my co-author after I was told it was just one last thing (again).

As for the quality of the book? I just don't know. There are errata which get
sent to me, but I am done writing books for a very long time.

------
martinpw
I did a book a couple of years back. Motivations were:

\- I have been working in a particular speciality long enough that I felt I
had something worth sharing with others, and was also lucky enough to be in a
company that allowed me to write about the work we had done.

\- Just having done it, being able to see a book with your name on it on the
shelf, give it away to friends and family etc.

Some observations:

\- I did the book with co-authors. I have other colleagues who are attempting
to write books by themselves, and are struggling with motivation under the
sheer enormity of the task. If you have coauthors you not only cut the per-
person workload down, but also get the benefit of peer pressure to keep things
moving along. Being the lead author, I also learned a lot about managing and
organizing a distributed group with strong opinions and different approaches,
which was an education in itself.

\- You mentioned you have existing technical articles. Having a starting point
is a great leg up versus a blank page. Our book came out of a conference
presentation for which we had to write up detailed notes. So we effectively
had about 30% of the raw material ready before we started on the actual book.

\- As others have said, it is a lot of work. Hofstadter's Law definitely
applies.

\- It forces you to really know your stuff, and to double and triple check
things before committing them to immortality.

\- The first royalty check is surprisingly decent, I believe due to initial
sales to libraries etc, but it quickly drops off. As others have said, you are
almost certainly not going to be doing this for the money.

\- Publisher quality varies of course, but don't necessarily expect too much
from them. In terms of editing, they will pick up on some typos, but not much
else. We did everything in latex so there wasn't really much extra to do. But
if you calculate how much money they make from the book, it is not surprising
they do not allocate a lot of resource.

\- You will get completely sick of reading and rereading the text, while still
finding more errors.

If I was to do it again I think I would go the self-publishing route, just to
try it, since I honestly don't think the publisher did much for us in terms of
marketing or editing.

~~~
ghaff
>You will get completely sick of reading and rereading the text, while still
finding more errors.

To this point, you must must must have a paid copyeditor as part of your
publishing process. Technical reviewers, friends and family, etc. can't be
counted on to read carefully enough to catch editors even if they're decent
writers.

~~~
julian_t
Er... catch errors?

(Available for hire as copy editor...)

------
jsingleton
I recently wrote a book for Packt (ASP.NET Core 1.0 High Performance -
[https://unop.uk/book](https://unop.uk/book)).

I won't go into exact numbers, but you can expect an advance of around 1000
GBP (obviously, if you live outside of the UK then this is worth less now).
This is paid in instalments, as you progress through writing the book.

Royalties will be around 15%, but you will need to pay back the advance before
you see any of this. There will also be a minimum threshold before anything is
paid out, otherwise it will be rolled over. You won't get any visibility of
how well your book is selling apart from the quarterly accounts.

I don't think you can value writing a technical book solely on the direct
financial return. You could probably make more in a week of contracting than
you will see for your six months of effort in writing a book.

Look at it as more of an investment in marketing your personal brand. It can
open doors to higher paid jobs and better contracting work. If you enjoy
education (both learning and teaching) then you can look at it as a virtuous
endeavour even if it doesn't pay well. As long as you go in with your eyes
open to this then you won't be disappointed.

It's not normally a problem, but be careful about any lock-in on options for
future works. You may wish to switch publishers after the book.

Be prepared for a very low tech process. Depending on where you work now,
writing a book may be much less sophisticated than what you do to write code.
The quality over time curve will not always go up and it is quite a complex
oscillating wave function. :)

I may write more about this on my blog if anyone is interested. I'll also be
at the London .NET User Group tonight if anyone wants to pick my brains or see
a copy of the book.

 _Edit_ : LDNUG link - [https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/8274-security-basics-
and-un...](https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/8274-security-basics-and-
uncovering-the-power-of-the-graph)

 _Edit 2_ : Show HN for the book on Amazon UK (cheaper because of weak GBP) if
anyone is interested:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12121133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12121133).

Happy to take questions.

------
JSeymourATL
> what else should I be thinking about?

Additional food-for-thought, Tim Ferriss offers this excellent blogpost, tons
of helpful links > [http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/02/04/how-to-get-
published/](http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/02/04/how-to-get-published/)

------
mikeash
I've delved into this some. I wrote a chapter in a multi-author tech book, and
got a decent way through writing an entire book, until the project fell apart
because the co-author they paired me with turned out to be completely useless.
I would definitely not recommend it, but I'm not sure if my bad experience was
worse than usual, or if I just have a lower tolerance for bullshit.

Don't even think about the money. Assuming you're working as a programmer or
similar job now, the money you'll get from the book will be an absolute
pittance. Your income divided by your labor will come out to well under
minimum wage.

Fun? Maybe. But you'll be dealing with people at the publisher who aren't out
to have fun. Expect poor communication, horrendously unrealistic deadlines
that only exist to make you work faster, ridiculous feedback on your writing,
and a general attitude that _you_ need to answer _them_ ASAP, but your
requests to them can be safely ignored.

Find out what format they need you to use. In my case they required MS Word.
They said it would be fine. It was not fine.

Feather in your cap? Yes, for sure. But there are other ways to do that too.

My advice would be to think about what you really want out of this, and how
much of that you could get from, say, starting a blog, or writing more for
your blog if you already have one. The money won't be as good, but the money
sucks anyway. You won't have professionals helping you, but you also won't
have professionals screwing with you. You can easily get more exposure, since
tech people tend to read stuff online more than in books these days.

If you really really _really_ want your name in print, consider self-
publishing. There's a lot less stigma in it these days. You'll probably sell
many fewer copies, but you'll get much more of the proceeds and you'll have
all of the control. It's easy to get your book into online stores like Amazon
and iBooks.

------
zwischenzug
I wrote this a while back, in case it helps:

[https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/writing-a-
tech...](https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/writing-a-technical-
book/)

------
lentin
I am the author of two books in Robotics. Here are the book websites

[http://learn-robotics.com](http://learn-robotics.com) [http://mastering-
ros.com](http://mastering-ros.com)

The publisher was PACKT

Here are the details of PACKT perks which are given to me in a nutshell

Advance Royalty offered : $ 2.5 K to $ 3.5 K

Royalty share : 16 %

Writing time : 7 months -- 1.5 year

I am from India and i will say, if you can complete writing within less span
of time, it will be great.

Note: Writing a book is boring and difficult task. It also consume high amount
of time too. So be sure that, you can write book along with your job .

------
syngrog66
Manning once offered me the co-authorship of Hello Python for 5% royalties and
(unspecified, possibly 0) advance. To collaborate with an Australian co-author
in an Australian timezone. I declined. Figured if I wanted to write a Python
book I could do it for sole authorship, at time and pace most convenient to
me, for 100% ownership, 80-95% royalty, most format freedom, etc. with the
biggest loss being less marketing power. To this day, not sure if I made the
right choice or wrong choice. But declining appeared right at the time.

------
jdswain
It's generally agreed that you are unlikely to make money from the book alone,
but there are other reasons for doing this too.

Is the topic is something that you really want to promote? Do you have the
spare time to do this for the experience and learning alone? Will this lead to
career advancement or consulting opportunities? Often things like this are the
reasons why people write books.

It is going to take a lot of time though, so you need to make sure you can
spare this time for what is not going to generate a large income on it's own.

------
bostik
I've written a book, on publisher's request. It helped that I had about 7
years of experience as a freelance writer for one of their well established IT
magazines.

While others in the thread have already stated the obvious (don't think of
doing it for money; negotiate everything; under promise, over deliver etc...)
- there are a few things you should be aware of as a first-time book author.

1: It will take a LOT longer than you ever thought possible. For every page of
final product, you will have written 3-4 pages of text.

2: It's a full-time job. Expect to spend 5-6 hours a day, just writing.

3: The workflow between you and your editor is crucial. Treat the book the
same way you would treat a complex software project - your editor will want
regular progress reports, and _you_ want to provide work-in-progress
manuscript revisions or chapters. A good editor is going to send back lots of
editorial comments, questions, requests for expanding (or sometimes
contracting) on varying topics and so on. Approach this the same way you would
approach a very thorough code review.

3b: Ask to meet in person with your editor before you sign the contract. The
two of you have to be able to work together over written media.

4: You will learn a lot about how to use written and spoken language. You may
want to consider the entire project an opportunity for an extremely intensive
course on written communications.

5: Before you embark on the project, find out what activity helps you relax.
Then find a way to record audio. When you feel blocked, take up the activity
but keep the audio recording device at hand. When your mind comes unhinged and
ideas pop up, _record them immediately_.

6: Don't even try to write your book "in order". Focus on one or two chapters
at a time, and think of them as 90% independent results. The time to tie the
chapters together comes towards the end of the project, as you and your editor
realise that a previously "logical" chapter order may not work after all.
Leave yourself some wiggle room to make the chapter shuffle easier to handle.

And because we in engineering discipline are even more likely to suffer from
existentialism...

7: Do your best to maintain an emotional distance. You are not your book, and
your value as a human being is _not_ dictated by the progress of writing or
the (lack of) success of the published book.

Basically, writing a book is easy. You sit down, open your veins, and pour the
blood out.

P.S. Having an ISBN to your name is one hell of a CV item. But don't ever
imagine that you're doing this to buff up your Publications section.

------
programminggeek
It's going to be a lot of work and you're likely to not make any more than the
initial advance of $5,000-10,000.

------
wallstprog
A couple of good resources:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-horror-the-
book/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-horror-the-book/)

[http://www.aristeia.com/authorAdvice.html](http://www.aristeia.com/authorAdvice.html)

------
marvindanig
On the other hand you can also publish (and sell) your body of work directly
on the web.

It's easier than many would think!

~~~
ams6110
Unless you are an experienced writer (and honestly, even then) you will still
need a professional editor to help you create something that will get good
reviews and that people will be willing to pay money for.

------
brikis98
I'm the author of a book published by O'Reilly: [http://www.hello-
startup.net/](http://www.hello-startup.net/)

Before I decided to write the book, I talked to a number of friends who were
authors and they all basically gave me the same advice:

* It's a massive amount of work, especially if it's your first book. If you're working a full-time job at the same time, depending on the length of the book you have in mind, expect it to take on the order of 2 years.

* It's a different type of work than programming or even blogging. In programming, you get feedback on a near constant basis at all levels: your IDE (sub-second), your compiler (seconds), your test suite (minutes), your co-workers (hours), and customers (days or weeks). This helps keep motivation high and gives you the info you need to improve your work. With a book, unless you make a massive effort to seek it out, you get more or less no feedback whatsoever for months or even years. For a project that takes such a long time, this can really sap your motivation. You have to come back and write a bit every single day, day after day, and yet on any individual day, it feels like you've hardly made any progress at all. You have to be very good at driving yourself and you need to put in an effort to give talks, to send out chapters to friends and family for feedback, to join a writing group, and anything else you can to get the feeling of tangible, incremental progress.

* You won't make much money from it. If your book hits the New York Times best seller list, sure, you can make money. But most tech books don't sell anywhere near that much, and even if you have "decent" sales, when you factor in the massive amount of work (see point #1), it's a comically small return, especially compared to a programmer salary.

* Despite that, every single author I talked to was writing their 2nd, 3rd, or even fourth book, and they all recommended doing it, subject to the caveats above.

As a result, I took the plunge, and I am very happy that I did. The real
reasons to write a tech book are:

* It's an unbelievable learning experience. I used to think that experts became authors, but the reality is that authors become experts. I did a ton of research for my book, met a lot of interesting people along the way, read a huge number of books I had been meaning to for years ([http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/recommended-reading/](http://www.hello-startup.net/resources/recommended-reading/)), improved my writing skills, got better at marketing, and so on.

* It's a great way to develop ideas. I started a company not long after writing my book ([http://www.gruntwork.io/](http://www.gruntwork.io/)) and many of the ideas for that company came directly from what I learned during the writing process. As a bonus, the book is also a nice sales and marketing tool.

* It opens doors. People treat you just a little differently when they find out you are a "published author." They are more willing to listen. You get more opportunities for jobs, talks, meeting people, and so on.

* It feels good. I love teaching and sharing knowledge. I love seeing something that I created have a positive impact, even a tiny one, on someone's life. I love creating things. It feels wonderful to see positive reviews; to get emails from readers telling you how much the book meant to them; to hold your book in your your hands for the first time; to give your parents a copy; to find it on shelves at bookstores and famous libraries (my book is at Harvard, Oxford, etc!); and so on.

------
perl6bookplease
Is it a Perl6 book? I'd really, really like to read a full book on
multiparadigm programming in a language optimized for fun and power!

------
japhyr
I wrote an introductory Python book for No Starch, Python Crash Course. Bill
Pollock, the owner of no starch, invited me to consider writing a book after I
gave a lightning talk at PyCon a few years ago. Writing for no starch was a
really good experience, and I'd do it again.

I feel fortunate that my first writing experience was with no starch. They
take each book seriously, and work hard to craft a high-quality book. They
have their own editors on staff, and they asked me to recommend a technical
editor. They trust their authors to know their field well enough to identify
an appropriate technical editor. I am deeply grateful to my technical editor,
Kenneth Love. Kenneth has a deep knowledge of Python and a strong background
in teaching. He caught many technical issues, and we had numerous
conversations about how best to present certain concepts to new programmers.

The writing process was clearly defined. I drafted a chapter, got feedback
from a no starch editor, and then sent the chapter off for technical review.
After that it went to a copy editor, and then the chapter went through a final
layout process. It was my responsibility to respond to feedback at every
stage. Every so often Bill would read through the chapters and offer feedback
as well. At first this process felt like a bit much; in the end I really
appreciated the attention to detail, and I can't imagine writing for a
publisher that doesn't have a rigorous approach like this.

I committed to this work for several reasons. Writing at the introductory
level is a little different financially than writing about a niche technical
topic. The market for an introductory Python book is much larger than the
market for just about anything else. I think of the audience for technical
books as a pyramid; introductory books target the base of that pyramid. Any
topic that requires background knowledge is higher up the pyramid, and the
opportunity to make a meaningful number of sales is lower.

I teach high school math and science. Writing an introductory technical book
has opened many doors, and I don't feel stuck in teaching at all now. I can
write more, and I can easily shift to teaching CS full time if I want to. Just
the process of completing a quality book has taught me a lot about following
through on the less enjoyable but necessary aspects of a long-term business
project.

Here's the no starch description of Python Crash Course:
[https://www.nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse](https://www.nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse)

Here's the Amazon page. I was terrified to read the first reviews on Amazon
when the book came out, but now I really enjoy reading what people have to say
about something I put so much effort and thought into:
[https://amazon.com/Python-Crash-Course-Project-Based-
Introdu...](https://amazon.com/Python-Crash-Course-Project-Based-
Introduction/dp/1593276036/)

------
dansanderson
Lots of great advice in these comments. Adding a few bits based on my limited
experience writing for O'Reilly:

E-books are important. They're more than half the unit sales in my case. Look
for good e-book royalty rates. Someone mentioned 50% and I have no idea if
that's realistic for tech books, but it should certainly be much higher than
print. Some tech publishers participate in all-access online libraries, and
you get royalties from these too when anyone accesses your book.

Toolchain is important. MS Word intake may mean you'll have less control over
quality in post production. O'Reilly can do DocBook/AsciiDoc end to end, and
can even push author-submitted ebook updates after launch. Of course if you
prefer MS Word and staying hands off in post then great. But I'm always
grateful for text markup in a git repo, enough that I'd consider it a big plus
when picking from multiple publishers.

When you pick a publisher, make sure that you like their books and would be
proud to have a year or two of your own work sitting next to them. Based on
stories I've heard from author friends, there seems to be a correlation
between production values and author happiness. Typesetting, paper quality,
error rates, etc. are all things I care about anyway, and they're also a proxy
for other parts of the experience like editorial and technical support. There
are big publishers I wouldn't even consider because their catalog is so poor.

Once you start writing, don't stop. Find a steady pace and stick to it. Treat
each chapter like a magazine article that's due at the end of the month. The
biggest pain for my first book was writing for five months, pausing for two
(weekends went to the day job for a bit), then feeling guilty about pausing,
procrastinating, and nearly burning out from the stress. The work won't burn
you out, the guilt will, so manage the guilt.

My editors were all good people willing to chat, answer questions, and connect
me with resources. None of my editors gave me writing feedback. I don't know
what's typical in this regard, but I felt quite on my own when it came to
drafting and editing. I had mixed feelings about this at first: I was hoping
to learn more about writing from an opinionated editor, as with magazine
writing or fiction (I imagine). My editors were all good about pestering me
for new material on a regular basis, which is a valuable contribution, and we
had some good project planning discussions at the beginning.

Keep expectations very low for marketing help from the publisher, especially
for niche titles, beyond the publisher brand itself and the occasional full-
catalog ebook sale. Ask about marketing channels run by the publisher, such as
companion videos, live streaming events, and publisher booths at conferences.
Plan to self-promote online, and don't be shy about it. You're writing this
book so people will read it, and they can't read it if they don't know about
it.

Not sure if this is controversial, but personally I would trade some or all of
the advance for a higher royalty. The advance doesn't come close to paying for
my time, which means it doesn't shift the risk or up-front production costs to
the publisher in a meaningful way. The case where I deliver a completed
manuscript but the advance doesn't pay out is one I want to avoid: I want as
many people as possible to read my book! If it's a failed investment for the
publisher, it's a failed investment for me, even with the advance. One not
insignificant advantage of an advance is that it usually pays based on
drafting milestones, so it's a nice motivator, but that's merely
psychological.

~~~
erroneousfunk
Will second the "look for good rates on e-books" People often underestimate
income from ebooks, but it's huge. I was offered a $5,000 advance with 10% of
ebook sales, or no advance with 25% of ebook sales, and it was one of the best
decisions of my life to take 25% with no advance. For the past year, I've
received an average monthly royalty check of $3k (albeit before taxes, which I
have to pay quarterly), with most of the income from ebooks. Not only do I
earn a higher royalty rate for them, but the "wholesale" price from the
publisher for print books is smaller than you think it would be (not shelf
price), and my ebook/print book sales are about half and half.

I also get a few hundred dollars a month from licensing it out through Safari
-- each page read through the platform earns me money, which they calculate
through some wizardry (all revenue, divided by all page reads, times the page
reads your book got, times 25%). So really think hard about the royalty rates
for online access, licensing (the book's been purchased by five international
translators, and each one is another $500-$1000 for me, on top of 5% of the
revenue from foreign translation sales). Those things really add up.

------
lsc
I wrote a book most of a decade back...
[http://nostarch.com/xen.htm](http://nostarch.com/xen.htm) \- No-starch
approached me, based on some blog posts that I thought were absolutely
terrible. Now, I don't know if they just wanted to know if I knew someone, and
included the "or you" bit to be polite, but I'm all about grabbing
opportunities to do things I'm not qualified to do... as far as I can tell,
that's how you _get_ qualified to do things.

I think I said something like "My English is Presidential, but I know a guy."
I called up the roommate of a friend, and we got all excited. "We'll be done
by Christmas!" We got a two bedroom apartment by the Lawrence Caltrain station
and filled it with computers. Writing that book took forever. I still call it
"the hardest thing I ever finished." but, it was super rewarding, and I still
brag about it. I am very glad I did it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I personally am super proud of the tiny checks I get
quarterly; and hell, they seem to still be coming in, like 6+ years later, and
I _am_ the sort of person who refuses to pretend like salary doesn't matter,
but on an objective level? It's just so little money compared to what I get as
a bay-area contractor that sometimes I think I'd be happier framing the checks
than cashing them. I made literally thousands of dollars!

When I negotiated, it was explained that I got a better percentage for giving
up the advance, so I did, because the advance was like a week's pay from the
dayjob, but if I could go back and tell myself what to change in that
negotiation? I'd tell me to take the percentage payout as if I had taken the
advance, in exchange for the publisher promising to spend the advance money on
publicity for the book.

Honestly, I have no idea if that's a standard thing, but I don't see why they
wouldn't do it if I asked.

Also note, in my case? the e-book royalties were comparatively quite
substantial, even though my book isn't available in the Kindle store; you can
only buy the e-book, as far as I can tell, direct from no-starch, and it costs
almost as much as the regular book and the e-book. They don't sell very many
e-books, but my percentage on the e-book was way higher. I imagine that
percentage drops a lot if you sell the e-book through amazon; I believe the
vig on a kindle book is more than what it costs to print a book, (though I
know printing a book is not the only cost of distribution, so the kindle book
is likely still cheaper, as the 30% covers not only printing, but distribution
and retail profit.)

The people I know who make good money off books are already famous, and they
sell without a publisher. But... that's really hard to do if you aren't
already famous.

I went with a publisher because going with a publisher gives you a lot of
credibility if you are not yet famous, and because seeing my physical book in
physical stores tickles me to no end. And because it was their idea, and to be
completely honest, I never would have finished without the publisher working
with me.

I guess my main point is that you should think carefully about the non-
monetary things you want when deciding which publisher you want, way more than
you should think about the monetary things. Sure, get the best deal you can,
because why not, but looking back? I totally would have traded away some money
for more fame.

~~~
fapjacks
After this post I am considering buying your book just for more of your
writing.

------
arafalov
Short lessons: _) Strike out the contract part about rights for books after
1st one_ ) Beware of how fast projects that you cover move _) Put the source
code on Github_ ) Have a blog where you write about your discoveries that
don't fit into the book _) Ask for discount codes and throw them around; that
may be the only marketing _anybody_ will actively do for the book..._ ) If you
are doing the first book after all, make sure you are treating it as something
you will leverage multiple times after that ("published author", increased
chance of presenting, proof you can write a different book for a better
publisher, etc).

Background and happy/sad story: I wrote my first book for Packt (on Apache
Solr). It was a small beginner-oriented book (about 64 pages of real content).
I wanted to write a book for long time, so when they approached me to do it
about a popular open source project I was working with and blogging about, I
jumped on it. I figured that a small book would be perfect way to see the book
process end-to-end.

It did not take _too_ much time, but longer than I expected (of course).
However, support from Packt for the process was terrible, both in terms of
initial information, explanations of process stages, reviews, formatting
support or marketing.

I believe I did a good job _despite_ that as I wrote tutorials before as well
as working in a senior tech-support position, which gave me visibility into
research and explanation techniques.

Still, they managed to nearly destroy my book by publishing a free sample
chapter from another book on the same topic that overlapped by the topic-name
with my single-focus work. The technical content was actually complimentary
and used very different explanation approach, but the general titles looked
similar. The beginners (target audience) would certainly be confused. Packt
did not realize they were publishing both books at the same time. They did not
realize they created a conflict. And they did not see a problem until I
escalated the issue 3 levels up all the way out of India into the UK level of
management. They replaced the free chapter in the end.

Then they screwed up on the pricing and - just after release - accidentally
moved the decimal point and made my book 10x priced. For several weeks while I
notified, begged, and - relatively politely - escalated.

In the end, I pushed really hard repeatedly and am happy with what I got. I
just feel it happened despite the publisher, not because of them. The book is
now obsolete, but a couple of people keep buying it, despite Packt increasing
the price on it for some reason. Overall, I got a couple of thousands out of
that. A good chunk of that was actually not from individual sales but from
some sort of global subscription (perhaps via O'Reilly Safari library).

Later, I also reviewed a couple of other Packt books, supposedly on the same
subject. Or I tried to review. They were so bad I could not even start
providing viable feedback. So, I pulled out. Yet, I think they all got
published. (Yes, I understand what this may REALLY mean about my own book. If
anybody wants to privately review and provide honest feedback on an outdated
Solr book, let me know.)

I also had a go at Leanpub and O'Reilly. The topic for Leanpub book was too
big for me and I cancelled it, refunding all the money back (Leanpub were
awesome at that slightly-complicated logistics).

Current O'Reilly book is probably too big as well. Solr is moving way too fast
to do anything but small books on with classic publisher schedule and update
capabilities. I am not the first one who hit that problem and I know of
another book about Solr that got cancelled when the page count went into the
second thousand.... I tried to get my scope smaller, but the things are still
changing faster than I can process them, never mind explain.

My current thinking is that it may make sense to go back to Leanpub and do
super-focused micro-book that is absolutely up-to-date. Something like Solr
mega-tutorial with all bits working and using latest features and command
lines. Sell it for 4.95 with discount to my mailing list subscribers (yes, I
built one). Update it as Solr updates, do other micro-guides, etc.

