I got out of the habit of blogging while I was unemployed. I hope to get back in the habit again soon, but I don't know when it will happen.
Thanks for being concerned.
It does sound like an interesting marketing approach though: open a used book store that does make this promise, and without obligation sends $1 per used book to the listed author. Since it's a 'gift', there would be no need to determine legal ownership, assigned rights, etc. I'm not sure that it would confer enough advantage to cover the lost $1 of profit, but I think it would attract a lot of attention and business if you could keep the prices competitive otherwise.
1. I sell my book to a used book store.
2. You buy the book I sold to the book store.
3. Somehow the author also takes a cut in that sale?
On the surface, would you expect that a network exists for university libraries to pay for articles included in student class packets? Would you expect that the venue is expected to pay when a cover band plays in a bar? That musicians theoretically get paid when their song is played on the radio or streamed on the net?
There's a lot of 'magic' happening, and it wouldn't be that much of a stretch for libraries or used book stores to participate. For all I know, there's even a country somewhere that already does it.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Books often challenge an author's discipline and then become extremely painful exercises. With most programming you get regular feedback. Many authors go months without getting any feedback at all. So, be aware, time management is important.
2. In my opinion, longevity of the information you're writing about matters more than anything. The primary benefit of writing a technical book is getting to claim to be an expert for awhile (that and helping people). If you were to write a Javascript book in the O'Reilly cookbook style (how to find the length of an array, etc.) you could expect to be a javascript expert for many years. If you were to write an Android Application Development book, you might only have a year. I published my book (a pocket reference for O'Reilly) in 2003 and landed my biggest client this year because the technical decision maker had a copy on his desk. That's why I'm a believer in evergreen topics.
3. Lucrative means $50-100k. I have a friend who tells a story about how the car he drives came from his first royalty check, $42k. That's a lot, right? Maybe he made $100k on that book for three months of work. But it's not repeatable. The way that it became lucrative for him is that he parlayed that into high dollar consulting and eventually CTO of a well funded database startup. If you're savvy about picking a topic with some interest, you should expect to make $10-20k lifetime. That's less than you'd make in salary.
4. Get co-authors. I think that's the most efficient way to write a book. That way you're not responsible for the entire thing.