Ask HN: How much money to realistically expect from a technical book? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much money to realistically expect from a technical book?

28 pointsaparsons14 comments

Hello HN,

I have been writing a technical book. It's similar to Clean Code, but a little broader as it places a larger emphasis on systems over programs.

I've spent the last two years on the book, after being forced to change my typical outdoor fishing/trekking/hunting lifestyle due to COVID, mostly as a means to keep my sanity. As a very slow writer, I generally write about a page a day. At this rate, it will take me another year to feel the book has reached 'completion'.

With restrictions in my state being lifted, my partner is less and less a fan of me working on the book for long hours at home (chuckle), and I have no good answer to the question of "will anyone even buy this?".

Has anyone here had success selling a technical book like this? Was it lucrative? I'm not hurting for money, but it helps me answer some questions both for myself and my partner.

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I have real experience in this. I wrote and published two "big" technical books which were released through a major technical publisher. Both books were "mass market" in that you could find them on any bookstore computer shelf, they were translated into multiple languages, and used as course curriculum at several colleges. My caveat is that unfortunately my real world experience was a while ago. 20 years, which is a long time in this space. Distribution, self-publishing, and better online resources mean that YMMV.

I made a decent royalty, with a bunch of other terms which included buy-backs (e.g. returns) and other ways for the publisher to ensure they maximized their profit over mine. Over the course of 5 years I made roughly $35-40k, but that was spending a full year of 25/hrs a week on top of my day job, it works out to about ~$30/hr. I think if I were to quit my day job, continue cranking out 2-3 books a year, and collecting residual revenue, it would still be less than a 6 figure income (this was circa 2000 so $100k was +/-$160k equivalent) - certainly quite livable but also not stellar given that you have to be at the top of your field and on top of technologies all the time. My salary and my "side gig" contract rate were both hire at the time.

So...

Did I make much money? Not really.

Do I regret writing two books? Nope.

Am I proud of those books? Hell yes.

Would I do it again? Hell no. Way to much work.

As I understand it, with self-publishing your income per book might be higher but you have to do your own marketing, publicity, etc. Publishers tend to generate higher volumes but also rake more cash their way. Afterall, that is their business model.

Could you elaborate whether you had a book deal in place before you began writing the (majority of) the book? And, what are your current thoughts on book deals?

I feel this is relevant to OP's situation given that I am assuming he has no such deal in place currently.

I have authored 3 tech books and quite honestly I would not do it again, the shift to ebooks has allowed the publishers to cut the royalties paid on electronic deliveries, even though thier costs have been cut. I found that the majority of sales were ebooks, plus you often find your books sold onto platforms like O'Reily where you receive no royalty. It also appears that translations cut the author off from royalties, one ofmy books was translated to Korean and I stop getting any royalties on that set of sales.

How is your network? I wrote a technical book, I have around 1k twitter followers, a few hundred people on my emailing list. Each month I wrote a chapter or so, and sent it to my email list, and shared on twitter, etc. This is known as marketing. When I released the book, I had a ton of interest and I've made around 10k since release (15 months ago). I sell via Gumroad and have a membership ($100 / year) so they only take around 2.5%, I keep the rest. I sell for $30 but have many vouchers for lower income earners/countries, so the average sale price is around $15.

If you are not actively marketing and/or are not targeting a niche, no-one will buy your book, since it won't stand out among the hundreds (or thousands) of others.

Both my experience and most other authors I've talked to don't make a lot of money from book sales/royalties. In one case that I know of, one author self-published a book on a niche subject that no-one else was writing about and made a fair amount of money (over $100/book). Other author's I've spoken to have made more money self-publishing than through a publisher. One of reasons why some authors write is because they're independent consultants or part of a software house where the book is good for marketing. It's a nice calling card that might be attractive to a certain type of customer (especially via a well-known publisher). There are other intangibles like personal growth and teaching others that might contribute to your later success. Teaching others can be a forcing function that makes you think about a subject more deeply. So, while you might not experience immediate financial gain, there are often future gains from the endeavor of writing a book.

How much money you make on direct sales may be secondary to its benefit in helping you for the rest of your career. Ask your partner this: if they are evaluating two equally good job candidates, and one has written a relevant book, which one would they choose to get the job?

I am self taught, and started in the 80s with no degree. But I was a widely published author, and that led me to jobs that eventually made me seven figures.

P.S. “Systems over programs“ would be a dynamite title

I would encourage you to figure out a clear plan for how you want to get this work published.

If you're hoping to go with an established technical publisher, they usually want to see a proposal rather than a finished draft. That gives them a chance to develop a shared vision, and then execute on that. It also lets you see if an established publisher agrees with you that this is a good idea for a book.

If you're planning to publish it independently, then developing a specific plan for how you'll share it would be a good thing to do now rather than later. You might look at Leanpub or Gumroad, or maybe as a technical person you're thinking of building a homegrown site; it's not unheard of.

Any of these will move you out of the unvalidated state of this work and into a state where you're forced to demonstrate to yourself and others, including your partner, that people want to see this book completed and are willing to pay for it.

As others said, the chance of you making thousands of dollars is very slim if you don’t have a marketing plan or a pre existing audience and you just publish a book.

Since you said that you still have a year ahead of you, you can use that time (and bits from the book) to build that audience.

The income the book will generate also can vary depending on the sale strategy. I can’t remember who it was now but there was someone who sold a course or different products along with the book for various price tiers. You can also consider consulting/mentoring along with the book sale.

In addition, the book can also establish your authority in your area of expertise and you can use that to bootstrap a consulting business or increase your rates if you already do so.

At any case, if you use it well, a book can be a tremendous asset for you and advance your career and income in big ways.

Congratulations!

Have a look at this - https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-wort...

Keep in mind that the author's book is one of the most successful technical books out there (I don't have numbers to back this up but it's at the top of every "recommend-a-book-to-me" thread).

The answer is a huge “it depends”.

I know a few people with published books who admit it basically doesn’t make them any more than some extra pocket change. The bigger value for them is showing it to future clients or employers as proof that they know what they’re talking about.

Several more people have published e-books along with heavy marketing campaigns (giving away chapters, social media pushes, etc) who make a little more, but they’re not raking in the cash. It’s more about funneling people to more profitable things (courses, workshops, etc)

The number of books that become high sellers and spread like wildfire are much smaller. You’ll need to focus heavily on marketing if you want to even get a chance at this.

I have a friend who wrote a technical book in a non computing field (sort of agriculture for home/small group use).

He couldn't get a publisher interested, so he self published, took well over $100k first year.

He had a subject specific forum he ran and for some time was #1 google hit for his specialty.

He also had converted his back yard in a bunch of experimental demonstration systems, so was pretty well living what he was selling.

Point is he probably sold less books, for much greater profit, but he already had an audience.

I think the biggest problem you might face for getting money out of it by self publishing is that it doesn't have a clear audience - at least from the way you describe it.

It sounds as if you have this book sitting inside you, and it's part of your creative process to write it down and release it to the world, so I'd really focus on the act of publishing, and releasing, more than the actual monetary value.

Here's a very detail article from someone who wrote an excellent book: https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-wort...

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