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Comment by yosito | Hacker News Reader

Another payout of writing a technical book is that it pretty much solidifies you as an expert in the topic and can be a springboard leading to great job opportunities and things like paid offers to speak or teach. If I ever write a technical book, it won't be for the immediate monetary payout, it will be to solidify expert status in a topic.

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Be careful what you pick.

I've done a couple of projects (book, video course) because the opportunity presented itself. Then, at the end of the projects I either was burnt out on it, or wasn't in a career position to take on consulting around it.

So, nice resume burnisher and proof I can finish something, but not a springboard.

I think this speaks more to differences between people than anything else. If 5-10 extra hours a week for 6-12 months burns you out on a topic, writing a 250+ page technical book is probably not a great use of your time if the finances alone don't make it worth it.

Ah. I wasn't burned out because of the book, but because of what I'd been working on (I'm just not a mobile developer).

But the bigger issue is that I would write a book based on something that I was working on, and then stop working on it (because of different work priorities or because of changing jobs) and then not have any interest in updating the book.

Whereas I think, for a technical book to be really worth your while, you should really focus on an area and dive in and become an expert, and continue to work in that area after the book comes out (consulting, etc).

I commented above - I published a technical book about 8 years ago, that's been pretty well received (lots of 5-star reviews on Amazon, still selling 8 years later). But boosting my career? Solidifying my expertise in a topic? An MCSE would have done more in that direction than having published a book. Mostly people are just confused when they find out.

I would say just the opposite. I think a certification is a slight negative signal, it seems like there are too many "paper tigers" who memorize enough to take the test and don't know how to implement anything.

I took the 6 tests back in 2010 to get the MCSD for a Software architect (?) but even then I didn't think it was all that valuable. I don't think I ever used it on my resume. But it was more to force me to learn .Net after spending 12 years mostly doing C and C++.

Currently, I'm working on various AWS certs for the same reason - to force me to learn and a company needs a certain number of AWS certified employees to be an Amazon Partner.

I would have a lot more respect for someone who wrote a book.

But does it really make sense to right a book on technology instead of creating a video for PluralSight, Udemy, etc?

This heavily depends on the technology involved and on what your preferred career path is. There are technology stacks where in corporate sectors you will only find "paper tigers", with Cisco and MS certifications being the most significant example (although the Cisco's certicication system is surprisingly sane in the sense that it is not gradual).

I somehow thing that I mostly built most of my reputation by mostly ignoring both vendor certifications and academic qualifications, or to frame it better by not ever using such things to land a job or gig.

I would assume that this effect will bring 1 or 2 orders of magnitude more money over his career if correctly capitalized on.

author here Do you have examples on how you would correctly capitalize on this expertise? I put some things that have happened since writing the book in the outcomes section but so far they have all been free speaking engagements.

Basically $1000+/day consulting rates. You still have to do the legwork of getting the gigs, but justifying those kinds of rates are much easier when you literally wrote the book on the subject of your contract. Having written it for a well known, respected, even iconic, publisher does a lot of the work here too, self publishing would have a lesser effect.

$1000/day is $125/hour, which is a standard hourly rate for software developers. I would expect authorhood/extreme-subject-matter-expert to yield at least a 2x premium.

> a standard hourly rate for software developers

Maybe in SF or NYC, but even then I don't think $125/hr or $260K/year at 40 hours/week is "standard" even there.

This yearly rate calculation assumes you spend 100% of your working hours on-contract, which is definitely not the case.

$125 an hour isn't crazy. I billed that doing some consulting for a company in Memphis maybe five years ago, and that was a no negotiation involved arrangement. I'd worked there before, so they knew me. I threw a number out there and they pretty much went, "alright, sounds reasonable enough".

I know of at least one consulting shop that bills corporate clients $250/hr for mostly general software development in SF. The employees only see about ~1/3 of that amount. As a bonafide expert with a significant addressable market (expertise isn’t valuable unless you’re solving problems people have) and a knack for self promotion, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear $500/hr in SF/NY. It really depends on who your clients are and what kind of track record you’ve got to point to.

Not to mention it matters where the money's coming from.

If you just closed a $40M round of VC financing, $500/hr for a 1-week project ($20k?) from someone you know isn't crazy. If you're a bootstrapped company and that's 6 weeks of revenue it's not as easy of a decision even if you think the ROI is there.

$125 is pretty much the de facto rate regardless of location (give or take a small percentage). But you're missing several points in the equation that make that rate much much less than $260k/yr.

1. You're not differentiating between the rate that's charged and the rate that's paid to employees. I am billed out at $185/hr. I make a small fraction of that as an employee, even after benefits.

2. You're not including any time off - you're figuring 40.0 hours for 52 weeks straight which is ridiculous. US employees are much more likely to be 48-50 weeks. Europeans are at what, 20 weeks a year or something now? (I jest)

3. For consultants (who are not employees), if you want to bill 40.0 hours you're going to be working 60-70 when including all the marketing and admin work, or you're outsourcing that which eats into your base rate considerably.

4. When I was consulting a big reason why was freedom and time off. I billed $125/hr but made probably $50k/yr because I only worked 25-30 hours a week all in. That included all my marketing, proposals, billing, chasing invoices, and actual billed work. It was great seeing a direct financial impact to the amount of work I did, but also sucked because if you have no motivation for more than a few days that impacts you financially for weeks.

$1000/day is pretty standard, and might even be low for someone who has the expertise and communication skills required to write a book. Even if that person had not written one.

Companies routinely pay agency rates this high.

Agency rates bring an entire agency, though. Speaking from experience, companies will pay other companies multiple thousands a day for software implementations without a second thought but typically will fight paying a single person $250/hr to do the same job (even if it's a 1-person job).

Do you mean multiple thousands per day per person? Or multiple thousands per day for multiple people?

Pff. One of the better known guys in the little world of some accounting software we use, charges $300+ an hour.

He’s done some e-books, YouTube tutorials, and a blog with tips/tricks.

The $300+ comes from consulting, training classes, and speaking, just depends on which. A day of training is $3000 plus travel and expenses.

The free speaking engagements is the first step. After you do enough of those, you will get invited to international and big name conferences as a keynote speaker (if you're good at it).

At that point, hiring managers will start contacting you about new jobs with big name companies, for big time salaries. That is where you get the leverage. You'll also start getting offers for paid speaking gigs for both public and private talks. The private talks are nice because they pay well and you almost always walk out with a gift and a job offer.

I never finished the book I started because the publisher pulled the contract when 12 (yes 12) books on the subject came out in the same month.

But I did all those other steps and it worked out pretty good for me.

Oof sorry to hear about the bad luck with the book. Do you mind sharing the subject?

This was many years ago. I was writing a book on cloud computing before it was a thing. But it became a thing in that one month. It all worked out though. I ended up editing AWS for Dummies later on, and my coauthors managed to use some of our content in other places.

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