Comment by WoodenChair | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WoodenChair | Hacker News Reader

I wrote a technical book this year (well the project took almost a year and was released this year) and it did indeed help build my brand a bit (although there are other obvious concrete steps I should take like improving my portfolio and writing a technical blog). The author is right that it's a colossal effort. I went with a traditional publisher, and they expect high standards. They will provide you with several editors, reviewers, etc, but ultimately you need to spend the hundreds or thousands of hours sitting down and typing the 300+ pages.

I don't recommend bad writers write technical books. I also don't recommend people who don't read regularly write technical books. Ultimately writing a good technical book requires a lot of the same things as writing any other kind of book: dedication, perseverance, writing skills, and attention to detail (and let's not forget extensive domain knowledge). It's not doable by most people given their time constraints, IMHO.

The author's assumptions about compensation are off though. You're lucky if you sell 2000 copies in most technical markets, and your royalty rate is above 12%. Forget that if you have a coauthor. Your main compensation is indeed the brand building unfortunately (plus a small advance).

We offer our authors a choice of royalties -- from 12 to 15 percent. Most choose the 12 percent option but many still take 15 percent.

Several of our technical titles have sold well over 20,000 copies but we've also had the rare title sell in the 2-3,000 copy range. That is definitely rare and only on very niche topics.

Writing a technical book is a lot of work on both ends, especially when a publisher provides real editorial and marketing support. Unfortunately, most no longer do, which is unfortunate for all involved and a good argument for considering self-publishing. After all, if publishers aren't offering added services, why not self-publish?

We read and edit every word before a book goes to copyedit. I've personally spent well over 300 hours editing individual titles. If you were to hire someone to do that work the minimum cost would be $15,000.

I'd love to see more people writing technical books -- good technical books -- for love of the subject and out of a desire to share knowledge. Sure, a good book will build your brand, but make it great, first.

The world always needs more good books. Our watchwords are "fewer, better books." Aim to be great.

My publisher also provided most of the above (extensive copyediting, developmental editing, and technical review). Given how niche the market is, I'm quite happy with sales so far. As far as marketing goes, it's hard for me to tell as an author how extensive the support has been.

I guess you're selling so many copies of each book (and based on your watchwords) by being quite selective about what titles you publish?

For the record, I do think my book is great but writing a book is not black and white - it's such a big endeavor that there is generally more than one motivation. I also didn't want to self call.

The author's assumptions about compensation are off though. You're lucky if you sell 2000 copies in most technical markets, and your royalty rate is above 12%.

The author was making the point that the good-case scenario for book sales results in a not-very-impressive royalty. And that implies the average-case will result in a really-not-impressive royalty as you've personally seen.

So we do need to buy more tech books if we would like to have authors compensated fairly... which will hopefully attract more talent and effort towards creating more good tech books.

I guess my point though is that there's basically no way you're making much money - so the compensation really is the brand building.

https://twitter.com/marick/status/455143028177764352

$45K is good money as far as I'm concerned.

That's definitely the exception, not the rule, which is the point of all of this!

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