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Comment by BrentOzar | Hacker News Reader

My experience in writing a technical book 8 years ago was the same:

https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/01/the-economics-of-w...

I made more money from Amazon affiliate fees linking to our book than I did the actual book. Way more. If you’re out to make money short term, you’re better off writing book reviews then books.

Having said that, the book gave me some credibility with clients for a couple of years when I was starting a consulting practice. When clients asked, “have you got experience with performance tuning databases?” I was able to point to the book. Today, with self published books being so prevalent, I don’t think having a listing in Amazon is as influential as it was.

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You would be surprised. Even having the wherewithal to put together the content, put up a site and publish is a huge differentiator.

99% of the people you're competing with in any given niche aren't willing to put in even that much effort.

As a former hiring manager, I weighted highly any evidence of an ability to sustain work on projects and bring them to completion (which could be demonstrated on technical and non-technical projects); and evidence of actual interest in technology beyond that it pays the rent (which evidence was more typically a software project, but could be writing or speaking).

Beyond these attributes as proxy measures for job-related abilities, having someone like this around can also help attract and retain other quality engineers — so long as the side hustle doesn't displace the work responsibilities (unless the job is re-cast such that those coincide).

I would expect technical books would be great from a hiring perspective. In addition to the pros you mention (sustained work, etc) if the technology from the book lines up with the job, someone technical can review parts of the book and tell pretty quickly where the person was technically at the time they wrote it. The potential downside for the author being that if they've grown significantly that won't be borne out in the text.

That's the main reason I would write a book: to tell people that I wrote a book.

You can literally say, "I wrote the book on that."

Hi, you've been shadowbanned, which is a shame because your last three or four comments have been perfectly reasonable (I vouched for them so they'd show up). I'd contact a moderator or something if I were you.

Not anymore shadowbanned

> your last three or four comments have been perfectly reasonable

His first banned comment looks pretty reasonable too.

You are right, that's a very positive effect. But it was not my main reason.

Also, don't do it for the money. Some people do quite well with books, but for me, at least, it's more of a prestige thing so far.

Very true. Write a book or speak at some conferences and you are suddenly much more worth.

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