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I agree that writing a book is likely not worth it for you.

But, it's somewhat more lucrative than you describe. Self-publishing has opened the doors to much higher royalties, and the stigma has vanished.

I self-published with Createspace, amazon's publishing arm. I get 43% of revenue (not profits) as a royalty. Printing costs are covered from amazon's portion. If I had a Kindle version, I would keep 70%.

Here's what the book looks like: http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-LSAT-Explanations-Official-Dia...

I am comfortable posting here as I expect exactly zero people on HN would need to buy it, it's pretty niche.

Design + proofing costs were around $500. Reviews were easy to get from advance readers.

I've found a tangible benefit from being able to show this page to people in my industry. The learning curve to produce it wasn't very high.

Anyone with a pre-existing following shouldn't have trouble marketing a book. It may be worth many people's time to write one book both as a passive income project and as a credibility indicator. The royalties are great if you get any kind of volume.

If I may reluctantly hijack patio11's reluctant self promotion,the production costs for an eBook are even less:

www.LiberWriter.com

Although editing is still, of course, highly recommended.

I'm about 80% finished writing the ebook I emailed you about a few months ago and was planning to launch it with in the next few weeks from my own site as a PDF, but your praise of Hyperink intrigues me. Especially the help on the design and editing side would be a huge asset.

After going to their site and clicking on the link for bloggers, it presented me with a form asking my email and URL and then said they'd follow up when they were ready. Any ballpark idea how that process works?

Also, were the new blog posts your idea? I've actually written in quite a bit more depth for the book than I did on the blog. I definitely do want to earn money out of it, but as long as I'm doing it, it's worth doing it properly.

Off the top of my head, I think https://leanpub.com/ is similar to Hyperink. I think if you do a bit of Google digging you can find stories from authors who decided to self-publish with specifics analysis of their process (what they used, how much time it took, revenue analysis etc.)

I think the new blog posts that were added to the book serve as an incentive to buy it, probably a lot of the HN users were already familiar with Patrick and might've needed a little 'push' to click on the purchase button :) Just one of the possible reasons.

On the spelling front: "... never-before-seen tails of abysmal failure". Is that the long tail of abysmal failure? Or should it be tale? :)

I think you're not giving authorship enough credit. Being an author under a well-known publisher gives credibility, shows competence, and may confer the "expert" title.

Considering the other ways to this path take years (working ones way up the corporate ladder), money (a university degree) or risk (launching a startup), losing a few months and earning 5k may be worth it. I'd imagine this publisher validation is built in to the price you are paid.

I have a few personal friends who have written tech books and it is a large part of what helped them leapfrog their peers in job position and compensation.

This is indeed the pitch that publishers use to get subject matter experts to write books. But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative.

For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory. I have a lot of friends who have written books, and I'm not sure any of them really benefited from it.

"But as Patrick keeps saying, if you're in a position to successfully pitch yourself as a subject matter expert for a book, you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative."

Having your ticket punched opens doors plain and simple. In general being published by a major house will open doors just like a Harvard degree will. Doesn't mean there aren't ways around that. Doesn't mean for anyone. But I don't agree that you can make the same pitch for something more lucrative.

Also with that statement you have to make a distinction between the traditional world and the online world. Being a top ranked commenter online means something online but it probably won't get you on 60 Minutes or (as easily) quoted in the WSJ or NY Times etc. I mean if I was in PR I could certainly pitch it that way and perhaps I would succeed. But my job would be much easier if you had been blessed by a major publisher.

"For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers"

I've been meaning to ask you this for quite some time. By your karma ranking you obviously put much time into HN. There is no doubt that this has paid off for you. Did you ever wonder or tally up that time and have any idea of how that effort would have paid off if you had followed another route?

My karma is pretty simple to understand: I don't irc, game, or blog (and used to blog a lot), and I tend to own the tops of security threads. Now that I have name recognition, you can safely assume anything I write here "unfairly" receives 2x-3x as many upvotes as it should. Except on security threads, where HN tends to be full of crazy people.

But to the point at hand: I can easily make a case for my HN comments being more lucrative than any book I could have written. Easily. There is no way a book would have been as valuable as recruiting vector, for instance; I've hired more people from HN than any other source.

The only time I spend online (other than a small bit on HN) is on a VC's blog where I have become the go to person (by the VC that is) for anything related to what I am expert in. He's asked me to write a guest post (which I've declined to do) I started (with no expectation) about 2 years ago. Over the last year he's sent me consulting referrals (which I never asked for it was more "can you help this startup with..."). The pay doesn't make sense I can make more by concentrating on what I actually do rather than giving advice and being paid by project or hourly. Writing the guest blog post I could easily transition into doing more consulting and approach other VC's but I don't want to do that and get sucked into being a consultant.

I can easily see how in the case of someone being as active as you are, and at the top of the heap, how this pays off for you (and before I posted my comment I almost said that). But I suspect there are many others that spend a fair amount of time that, while enjoyable and with benefit, might not fall into that category.

I'm wondering if you've ever thought about leaving HN and forming your own, um "family" if you get my drift. I'd put some seed funding into that family. You already have the gold medal, why not try to do something new? My guess is that others would follow.

I'm here until Paul Graham offers me a YC slot just to get me to shut up.

A few things come to mind, strictly for discussion/entertainment and w/o knowing the level of seriousness in your comment. Although there is a hint of truth obviously I'd love to be part of YC as well.

The first is "why buy the cow if the milk is for free"? The second is how I'm reminded of women that never get their long time boyfriend to marry them because there is no line in the sand, no deadline, no imperative to make a decision or do anything.

To wit: "I'm here until Paul Graham offers me...". People need a reason to make a decision and to do something. (Not that you can say "if/then" or anything.)

For all I know of course you have had discussions with Paul or someone else about a YC slot or are totally joking. (I can only speculate and offer thoughts in case anyone is still awake in the thread my thoughts).

I do plenty negotiating and I've never closed a deal w/o having a time limit (in which of course the bluff sometimes goes bust obviously but that's the risk of the game). I never ever leave something open ended unless I don't want someone to make a decision because I am trying to buy some time while waiting for someone else.

My point of course is not that you could ever say "make me YC or..". Just that there is no clear reason for PG to do anything and make a decision.

I'm kidding. The short answer to why I don't set up my own site is, I'm here almost entirely because I wanted to avoid having a site tied around my own identity / personal brand. I had a reasonably popular blog before HN, and fled to HN from it.

It's pretty clear the major publishers are a bad deal. But what about self publishing a very targeted ebook or print on demand book that would make you the subject matter expert on a particular subset of your general skills.

It seems to me that a 35 - 60 page ebook might be better for your reputation than 35 or 60 blog posts. Not sure, but it seems to me, "Go look it up on Amazon. I'm published there" should send a pretty good signal, particularly if you have mostly positive reviews.

For the amount of effort that goes into writing a book, the deal major publishers get from authors borders on predatory.

I agree. I think the deal is becoming much worse for prospective authors with the evolution of technology.

A few decades ago, if you wanted to sell a book, you would have to turn some words on paper (typed up if you were lucky) into a professional quality product both physically and of course in terms of the content. Then you had to get that product into bookshops. Then you had to find ways of promoting it to your audience so they would go to the bookshop and buy it. All of this took a lot of time-consuming, laborious work and relied on extremely wasteful processes for things like stock management. Publishers would be expected to handle these things for their authors, in addition to providing professional editorial and support services for the content itself. They would also be expected to guide authors toward creating a product that would actually sell, based on their knowledge of the markets.

Today, we have DTP software where someone can either create professional grade work on their own computer or hire someone to do it for them. Either way, by the time it gets to the printers, you can usually just hand over camera-ready copy in a PDF set to their specifications, and if you or your hired help are good then you'll probably achieve a much better standard of presentation than the phone-it-in quality some publishers seem to generate by default these days. Those printers can then print on demand, again to a reasonably high level of quality these days if you go to a good one, and even have arrangements to accept orders and ship direct to customers, negating any need for wasteful stock management for most kinds of book. To get those sales, you can do just fine via Amazon and/or major e-book channels, without ever touching a bricks 'n' mortar store unless someone wants to order your book, and again there are various integrations within the industry so book stores can still order in directly from your print-on-demand/self-publishing services if they want to. Obviously for promotion, we have search engines and social media, which make any token effort at promotion that most publishers might give a new author rather insignificant and IMHO negate what little brand value remains in being published by a "major" publisher. I had no idea who published the last few books I bought, though looking along the shelf they are all "big names". I did know who every author was before I bought the book, though.

The situation is only going to shift further away from favouring publishers toward a self-publishing approach as e-books increasingly take over and printing at all, on demand or otherwise, becomes relatively unusual for anything but showcase books. I see a rise in fortunes coming for professionals like editors and designers of various kinds, who can freelance out their skills on merit to authors who lack the ability or the time and money to do such work to a good standard themselves. I see a rise in fortunes for modern distribution channels, catalogue sites, payment services and the like. I see a potential niche for a "book project manager" who can identify what combination of services will be useful for a project and recommend/co-ordinate the hired help. In fact, if I were running a publishing house right now, I imagine I would be shifting to more of a one-stop service-provider model just about as fast as I could making hiring/firing decisions accordingly.

But for traditional publishers who won't adapt, who think the author is just one small part of a larger chain who should fit into their frameworks as one of many minor components, I don't see much future at all. Technology is making their business model obsolete, and it amazes me that they still get good authors signing up for the kinds of deal mentioned in the posts above.

You are both right... Patrick is already an expert. He doesn't need vindication from a publisher, which is probably why he was approached by so many. For a lesser-known name in the field, getting "published" might be a sound strategy.

Congrats on your book. I'll definitely buy it.

Having written a few books myself through the traditional publishing process, I agree that you'll likely never earn back the royalty and the $/hr rate is minimum wage. That said, I have landed more than a few jobs by giving a copy of my book to the interviewer to start the interview. Real paper books published by big name publishers still impress a lot of people, including my mom.

I know it's lame, but is it available in paper format? It seems strange to leave money on the table even if they were to charge $50 instead of $10?

I'm with Robert here - I don't own an eBook reader and don't enjoy reading off computers nearly as much as paper. Is the best option to buy a PDF and get it printed and bound at a local print shop?

> Is the best option to buy a PDF and get it printed and bound at a local print shop?

This might make sense at first glance, but in many cases it's a technical violation of copyright. When you buy a PDF, you're buying the right to read it, not reproduce it.

I'm not sure this is correct. I believe courts have ruled that you can make copies for personal/backup reasons, but someone with more knowledge would have to back me up here.

> I'm not sure this is correct.

Unless you read, and then promptly burn, the copy, yes, it's correct. The point is that the printed copy might be passed on, at which point it's a clear violation of copyright.

> I believe courts have ruled that you can make copies for personal/backup reasons ...

These rulings apply to computer media, not printed works.

You don't even need to get into complex "I haven't bought the right to print it" legal pseudo contracts. Copyright law says you cannot make a derived work without the copyright holders permission. It's not contract law or licencing law you'd be breaking, it's copyright law.

I blame EULAs for making people think this is all about contract and not copyright law.

Where's your citation for this or is it just pure speculation ?

Consider what happens to the copy unless the copier promptly burns it. Yes, that's right, it will be passed on to a new reader. No citation needed -- that's a violation.

Nonsense - that's like saying you aren't allowed to buy a kitchen knife because you might stab someone with it.

Ah, so, in your world view, it's all right to make copies of, and pass on, copyrighted works. Welcome to reality.

Actually you suggested that copied works would be redistributed - I was addressing the parent comment which covered the notion of printing a PDF to personally consume it in paper form.

If that action is unlawful I'd wager that 99% of offices around the world would be in breach.

Fair use?

Fair use only applies to relatively short quotations as part of a review, literary criticism or parody. It doesn't apply to a complete copy.

That interpretation of fair use is too narrow - there is precedent for for copying whole works, it is the context in which they are used which determines infringement.

A fair use defence of printing a copy of a PDF for personal consumption would probably hold up fine, in the same way that the Audio Home Recording Act establishes that it is legal in some circumstances to make copies of audio recordings for non-commercial personal use.

> there is precedent for for copying whole works ...

Yes, true, but that is not what is called "fair use".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

"Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test."

> A fair use defence of printing a copy of a PDF for personal consumption would probably hold up fine, in the same way that the Audio Home Recording Act establishes that it is legal in some circumstances to make copies of audio recordings for non-commercial personal use.

Again, yes, but you're describing another appropriate exception, not "fair use".

You can't distribute it, but you certainly can print pages for yourself from an ebook. You can't distribute that, but if you bought it then you can back it up. The same with most software and music. You can't distribute, but you can create copies to prevent your own loss. A printed copy prevents against loss in the case of loss of any digital playback device.

As someone thinking about writing an e-book, I appreciate the recommendation of Hyperink. I was approached by Packt a while back, but I found at least one author who had had bad experiences with them. The financial incentives are already so bad, why go with a publisher that will treat you poorly?

> I am spelling-challenged

Indeed: "tails of abysmal failure." (Or was that a joke? :-)

EDIT: Forgot to mention how much I appreciate all the time you've spent to help fellow techie entrepreneurs. Happy holidays to you.

> That's basically what Hyperink pitched: curating the best of the blog into a book, complete with editing and design help, with some extra essays added. It's far less work than scratch-writing a book, the terms are more equitable (no advance, equitable royalty split), and it provides incremental value to readers over the blog.

> I don't expect to make a huge amount of money on it, relative to the business in general, but the idea sounded attractive enough to try it as an experiment

I find this a strange thing to say.

A book is a way in which to earn additional income from content you've already produced.

Why not have the content you produce pay over and over?

Once on the blog.

The second time on the blog as a best-of-the-blog.

The third time in a book.

The fourth time as presentations at conferences.

One piece of content, earning revenue many times over. It seems to me that the book isn't supposed to earn a huge amount of money, you already spent the time creating the content and relative to the time to compile and edit the book should earn a tidy income.

And, as you are patio11 and have a great standing, the book can only further enhance your reputation and achieve higher sales, and increase your value to conferences later.

Whether or not you yet appreciate it, you are one of the few programmers who has the status equivalent to a celebrity chef, and you should seek to earn additional revenue through recycling the same content through different channels. You should, because you're one of the very few who could. For you, not writing a book is money left on the table.

Unless you make less money writing the book than you would consulting.

Yes, the content is already produced. But putting it all together in a book format still takes time. You need to go over old articles, choose the ones to go in, edit and rewrite where necessary, figure out what order to put things in, add new content, deal with the publisher, figure out typesetting things, etc.

If that process takes him two weeks and earns him $5k but his consulting rate is $5k per week then writing the book costs him $5k in potential income. In that case, writing the book is actually leaving money on the table.

Patrick - I went to hyperink.com, saw your book under "new", clicked thorough, saw the price of 9.99 with 100% refund (wondered what's up with that). Then saw I could see a sample chapter, was prompted for a "10 second survey" (did that out of curiosity and answered 1 question probably would have been better for them to simply say "answer 1 question"?) then got to what appeared to be the preface that wasn't anything exciting or unique or showed the "content". Saw at the bottom "people who read this article also read..." and clicked on "SEO for Software Companies" which simply said "this is a rough outline of my verbal remarks" and then followed with a brief biography and then prompted me to "complete 10 second survey" (again).

At this point I'm ready to abandon the shopping cart. Just thought I'd pass this along I realize that this is hyperink's doing (and I like the graphics and look of the site) but this is ironic given the messages that you are trying to give and what you are writing about (I think..)

I believe Hyperlink did a good job for you but what a horrible, horrible name for a company.

Given your word of mouth recommendation here (w/o a link) how am I too find them with such a generic word that's so closely tied to their industry? Search for "hyperlink publishing", "hyperlink ebook"? Yeah, good luck with that!

Companies should not chose a generic name for their company that's already widely used in that market. Apple Computer... that's good. Apple Orchards... not good. Hyperlink? Come on.

So... anyone got the link?

Ah... that makes more sense then. Hyperink is unique. Funny how the brain turns the word into what you expect, Hyperlink rather than what it was. I wonder if HyperInk would be less prone to that.

Its Hyperink not HyperLink

http://www.hyperink.com

I think it's hyperink not Hyperlink

One of the main reasons why I bought your book is the fact that it is well-organized and free of the usual 'extras' that one finds in a blog that in the end distracts from the reading experience.

I've almost finished reading it and I can pretty much guarantee that it would've taken me a lot more time to navigate through your blog and make myself read beginning to end.

"and successfully convinced me on why I should try publishing through them rather than trying to e.g. go through a traditional publisher or even one of the smarter tech-specific presses"

I'm really interested in knowing what they did to sell you on that. What hot buttons they pushed.

Thank you for sharing the experience of the blog-to-book transformation, it's an idea that I've been interested in for a while. Good to know that Hyperink worked so well for you.

I was one of those who suggested that you write a book and you curtly dismissed the whole idea.

Very glad the folks at Hyperink were much more persuasive and good luck with it;<).

Thanks for these details, and I expect you'll do well with the book. Aside from Kyperink, what other self-pub options did you consider?

I haven't heard of hyperlink, but I love leanpub.com. Looks like there are a few companies doing the same thing.

Instant purchase. Worth it to have all in one place. Thanks for all that you put into the community!

This ebook sells itself. I'm so glad you/Hyperink finally put it together!