I want to work full-time on this book for 3 months. $20,000 covers
my cost of living for that long.
I want to work full-time on this book for 3 months. $20,000 covers
my cost of living for that long.
Even professional authors working with legitimate publishers rarely make $20,000 from a book. I do hope she can write this book cause I would really like to read it, but I also think she's a bit delusional regarding what authors in tech niches actually make for a book.
Using what actual published authors make on book deals is a good way to estimate what the value of such an initiative should be.
Maybe a lot of people will be interested in the project and fund it, then great. But publishers investigate the market thoroughly before signing a deal with an author, and they offer advances and royalties based on what they think the book will make. When an author received a $7,500 royalties advance on a book it's because the publisher thinks this is a good indicator of what the book will generate in royalties.
In other words, you have to consider this as a 3 month contract as an independent contractor with no chance of extension. Personally, that would be pretty far into my discounted rate ;-)
Still, if successful, it has the upside of giving the author chances at a good reputation and follow on contracts. I'm very interested to see how successful this is. I'm sceptical that it can be completed in 3 months, but wish the author the very best of luck!
And I know this isn't indicative of her skill or anything but surely, if you're going to add 10 or so lines of code to a pitch, you'd check it wasn't buggy. Or is that just me?
Should the person making this possible charge reasonably for their time? Yes, in my opinion.
Putting it another way, for almost any other product on HN we would point out that one should price based on perceived value, so I find it curious that we are so happy with some kind of "labour theory" here.
(Of course, there are other side-benefits to simply being an author of a book, so it might be worth discounting)
But why should it even matter? When you buy a car, do you also ask if the engineers received a fair salary?
Long story short, over 3 months after taxes and health insurance, with no other benefits like retirement nor any other business expenses like a computer and internet, that $20,000 becomes $10,884 or $3,628/month.