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I'm convinced this is what most tech oriented books are about, not so much about earning money from a book, but putting "Author of xyz" on their CV and website; "you literally wrote the book on xyz, you are an authority on xyz"

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Assuming they’re going in with eyes open, totally. It’s also a good forcing function to dive deeper into a topic than you might otherwise do.

And traditional technical publishers are probably a more effective route for this reason even if you’re leaving some direct money on the table.

The famous mathematician Vladimir Arnold said (approximately) “the best way to learn a topic is to write a book on it.” He did that a few times in his career — most notably his excellent book on classical mechanics.

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