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I feel 100% identified with you. I am working on a non ficton book about a niche topic and I wouldn't do it for the money at all. It's about the "prestige (or perceived prestige)". I am about to finish the first 1/3 of the book (the first draft, anyway), and I am already attempting to reach out to publishers to see if they would be interested in the book (at least the ones that don't require a literary agent!).

Some of them already replied saying the proposal seems interesting but they want to read a few chapters. I don't know if I am in the right path or not, but I'd love to read more about your experience and what can be shared!

That's awesome, can I ask what the topic is? What I did for "selling" the book was to create a proposal -- about 45 pages that has a skeleton outline of each chapter (it changed significantly during the end writing process but gave the publisher a feel for the topic), a sample chapter, and some more sales/marketing details like what are comparable books (and how well they sold if you have that data), who your audience is and how you plan to reach them (OP was in a great place having a following), why you're the right person to write the book, etc.

45 pages as a skeleton? Wow. I wasn't expecting that much! I guess your book is +120k words? Do you think having a clear vision/structure helped when sending it to publishers?

I think I lack all the last parts (that some publishers are requiring for) such as a social media platform to reach your potential readers. I find that a bit unfair because it means you first have to play the Instagram game and once you are popular there, you can write a book.

If you give me an email address I'd love to tell you more about my book!

Yeah, it was pretty robust in the end! I think I cut down the final manuscript to just under 80k words plus the references (there was actually something in my contract about a max word count). I definitely think having the structure helped, both for the publisher and for me to have a sort of blueprint to follow.

It's not always a dealbreaker, I didn't have any social media following or anything -- the way I pitched it was by figuring out a bunch of conferences, niche podcasts, etc. and highlighting that there was an audience there I could activate (and marketing is a big part of the book process I've learned).

My bio has my email now!

Is this some sort of new llm that competes on spelling / grammar errors? Very odd back and forth between two “writers”

Is this some sort of new LLM that wastes GPU cycles accusing everyone else of being an LLM?

Seriously, I’ve seen this exact genre of comment daily on hn lately and I don’t get what you’re gaining by trying to sniff out bots. Not what anyone has to gain by truly botting on here. Nobody is selling their HN accounts right? And how many pretty run-of-the-mill comments like the above would it take to have an account worth selling anyway even if there was a market for that? 100,000?

English is not my first language and I never said my books were written in English. But happy new year to you too!

I'll drop in from the sidelines, with the massive track record of having written one (1) book.

The prestige probably isn't what you'd expect. Having an ISBN to one's name carries ~zero weight for the people that actually matter for your career (it may mildly impress some future coworkers in a decade's time, though). The real value of having written a book is that then you have written a book.

Having a publisher carries one extra benefit that was merely implied in the post: you get assigned a professional editor. If you're lucky (I was), the editor has a really good understanding of how to wield language and the lessons you get from the editing process are going to far outweigh any direct financial benefits. When I wrote mine, I had been doing freelance writing for a large IT magazine for nearly ten years - and as a direct result had been taught how to use written language as a weapon by a good number of old-guard journalists. The year I spent on the book project taught me a LOT more still, because I was assigned an editor who herself was studying (in a university) to become a language teacher.

The skills I picked up from that process are with me to this day, and ironically have been the single most valuable asset I have as an engineer and/or engineering leader. Being able to write well to a varying audience is a superpower. You also learn to appreciate professional authors, because what they do is decidedly not easy.

In the end my book sold well enough to earn out its advance, so I guess it was a non-failure for the publisher as well. I also picked up a lesson for all aspiring authors:

Writing a book is easy. You sit down by the keyboard, slit your wrists and pour it all out.

As someone with twice as many books to their name, ho boy that last line hit home

Did you also write "Inspire!: Inspiration for Life and Life at Work" ?

Goodreads seems to think so. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14291276.Joel_Burke

That one goodreads review for the Estonia book is amusing. One reader criticized him for providing references. I feel like that's a positive, not a negative, and if you find it uninteresting those tend to be easy to skip.

Yeah, I have to admit because this was my first work I maybe overdid it in providing references because I wanted to default to having real historical data and not just writing a lot of personal opinions with no backing (it was a nightmare writing up that reference section but I'm glad I did it in the end) and if I'm being honest, because I'm not in academia and didn't have credentials as an "Estonia expert" I wanted to play it safe.

Edit: Added some context and I'd also mention that one thing that was quite helpful is that at the start of the writing process I created a massive spreadsheet where I'd add in quotes, writing, and anything interesting I thought I might pull from (some of it manually written, like when watching documentaries). This was hugely helpful when I was going back but also during the writing process so I had a single source of truth I could keyword search. I've just checked it and its got 4787 rows, with most entries being about a paragraph long

It sounds like you did the right thing and that guy is grumpy.

I appreciate that!

Ha, I didn't, I wish Goodreads would get a major update!

I'm (somehow) no longer a goodreads editor, so I can't fix it for you, but there's a forum you can post in to say that you're not the person who wrote all those travel books and get your book detached from them.

Oh that's a great flag, I've just gone into their system and done that, appreciate the tip!

What’s the name of your book? That sounds super interesting

Was wondering the same and went stalking in the profile. They named it a couple of days ago[1], apparently it's called Rebooting a nation

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398265

Looks like this is the book: https://www.rebootinganation.com/

Rebooting a Nation: The Incredible Rise of Estonia, E-Government and the Startup Revolution Paperback by Joel Burke

Yep, thats it, sorry for the slow replies, I'm out with family for the holidays!

Is there any way to buy your ebook book DRM free? I know that's not always easy for authors to make available but I thought I'd ask.

Sent you a message on LN

Interesting handle (atlasunshrugged) - a reference to Atlas getting back to work rather than shrugging? (I know it's a book title.)

Ha its super old now but I think I had read the Ayn Rand book and was frustrated that it felt a little simplistic (tbh I do have some libertarian tendencies but the world is a messy and complicated place) so this was my way of acknowledging the idea but disagreeing with the premise, especially because the libertarian philosophy felt so prevalent in the tech world at the time

Oh yes, the house cats. Unfortunately, those felines got close to power now.

Is Estonia a good country to immigrate to for an American?

It depends what you're looking for! I moved there when I was in my mid 20's on a one year contract to run a team for the government's e-Residency program and ended up staying a bit longer (and have gone back every year since). Parts I enjoyed -- once you find a community it's a pretty strong one (but it took about 6 months for me to make any Estonian friends), there's a good early stage tech scene, the old town in Tallinn is beautiful and city living very approachable. I probably wouldn't move back now unless there was a very good reasons or to raise kids (it seems like a great place for that, very safe, great education system, etc.) just because it's relatively small (total pop ~1.3M) and so doesn't have as much opportunity as other places, plus my parents live in the US and I like being closer to them.