I wrote Programming Bitcoin for O'Reilly and it was published 3 years ago. Some observations:<p>* You won't make that much money directly, but I have probably made a good amount indirectly. The credibility from having published an O'Reilly book is not to be underestimated.<p>* I got the animal I wanted (honey badger) by asking for it. I did justify the ask by showing my editor the Bitcoin honeybadger memes.<p>* The book writing process was a grind. Because my book was so focused on programming exercises, I wrote my own suite of testing tools to make sure everything was consistent. It felt more like a software engineering project than a bunch of blog posts.<p>* I have since introduced more people to my intake editor and they've published their own O'Reilly books.<p>* I don't get much of a discount on my own book. I just buy them through Amazon.<p>* They give you a framed picture of your cover when your book publishes.
Only 10% royalties? Seriously? Seriously?!<p>That is <i>insanely</i> low. Like, "why would anyone even remotely consider publishing with O'Reilly" low. Even if they have a large audience reach, 10% should be rejected out of principle.
I'm doing both.<p>- I published my first book after 8 months of intense writing and editing. I wrote everything from scratch. For the format, I first started with markdown and converted to pdf. I later realized the latex formula is not well supported so I rewrote in Latex. I outsourced other tasks on fiverr: proofreading & grammar checking and editing (about $180), latex touch-up and restructure about $100, book cover $100. I self-published on Amazon and got 60% royalty. It's too early to say but I wouldn't be surprised if I can get 12k for the first year. In terms of time spent, I would probably better off do something else for better ROI.<p>- I'm working on another book with Packt. They contacted me and the royalty is slightly higher (16%). They tend to push authors to meet deadlines etc. I still have no idea who the editors are and their background.<p>So if you're passionate about something and you already have followers, you'd be better off with self-publishing.<p>And here is the book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YQWX59Z" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YQWX59Z</a>
Interesting to see the process and royalty rates from a big (tech) publisher.<p>I wrote and self-published a book (really a web app structured like a book) on Ruby on Rails to Gumroad earlier this year and so far I have made ~$4,000 after Gumroad's small cut. Based on the royalty rates quoted here, I expect self-publishing is probably going to produce more raw dollars for most people, even those like me with no name recognition or built-in distribution channel for their book.<p>Of course, even with more money in self-publishing, the hourly rate I've made from writing is a small fraction of what I would have made filling that time with consulting work instead. I expect that in the long run, going with a traditional publisher would be more valuable just from the prestige attached to publishing a "real" book rather than going the self-publishing route. I've gotten a few consulting leads from my book, but a self-published book carries very little weight with most folks.
Author of "Hacking Healthcare" here. Myself and Fred were able to contribute to the discussions on our cover selection. I suspect some animals are probably much more in demand than others. Our editor was Andy Oram and he was outstanding. He is no longer with O'Reilly unfortunately.<p>Having worked with different publishers in different contexts, 90% of your experience will be as a result of your relationship with your editor.<p>I get asked sometimes by new authors, should I write for X or Y or Z. My answer is to always try and see who your editor will be and how well you think you can work with them.
I've written couple of books for a publisher (Practical Docker with Python - first & second editions - published by Apress) as well a co-authored a self published book - The CDK Book.<p>Apress has similar royalty tiers (10 to 20% of revenue, based on books sold) and I did get decent amount of copy edit support.<p>With the co-authorship, despite being four of us, some things slipped through the cracks. That said, with self publishing we were able to get it corrected and shipped - we maintain/ed bug reports, feedback in GitHub issues, and even the book build process is done using GitHub actions.<p>As I said elsewhere, the monetary aspect usually isn't the goal, you're far likely to spend more money in working on the book than recover it but it does give a nice boost if you wish to go the consulting route in terms of establishing authority/credibility.
I reviewed an oreilly book.
The process was well run, and most of my suggestions were acted upon by the editors/authors. Everyone was quite professional.<p>Compensation was de minmus, plus a copy of the book.<p>I strongly suspect that tech books do not sell as well as they did 25 years ago, and most tech books make little if any profit. There's an advantage to the publisher in having a wide variety of titles for a subscription service (I loved having a safari subscription), but, at least for me, the days of buying a giant and expensive tech book for just a few relevant chapters are over.<p>So the addressible market is smaller, and compensation is generally lower, though there are still indirect rewards
I've had a fantastic time writing books (Python Workout and Pandas Workout) for Manning. They do great work, and are incredibly patient with me. They have helped to make my books far better than they otherwise would have been. I have no doubt that O'Reilly does a similarly good job. (I don't publish with O'Reilly, but I do teach for them online, and have been impressed.)<p>That said: Writing a book is a long slog. It's hard and frustrating. And at the end of the process, you have an amazing feeling and some money -- definitely less than you would have gotten if you had done consulting during that time, though.<p>I do corporate Python training. Do companies hire me because I've written books? Not really. But it definitely adds to my credibility.<p>At the end of the day, I write because I enjoy explaining and teaching, knowing I'm helping people all over the world, and seeing my name on a book cover. If you're doing it for the money, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed. Knowing that I'm working with great professionals who share my goals and want to create the best possible product adds to my motivation.
They aren't always great books. They're better now, but I remember over 25 years ago I bought "DNS & BIND" (Bat Book). I had to read the whole thing cover-to-cover three times before it began to make sense. It was so full of forward references that I just couldn't comprehend it, and I'm no stranger to technical content.<p>The later edition is better.
Wow, that process seems great.<p>I wrote a kids programming book for Bloomsbury and it was a nightmare. I wrote in org-mode, converted to docx and then sent off the copy. It was then commented on in Word, which I didn't own, so I had a weird libre-office back to org-mode workflow that was just painful. Then proofs were sent through as PDFs that inevitable messed up simple things like indentation, which I then had to fix, via comments on the PDFs.<p>Never again.
Listen kid, you probably think lots of crazy stuff goes on in there, but this is just a place of business.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlDDZkGONs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlDDZkGONs</a>
>The biggest issue I have in editing is that the official language of the book is American English, and I'm British, so I'm having to constantly correct my spellings. Changing 's' for 'z', removing silent 'u's, that sort of thing.<p>So no copy editing then? Thats the literal job of the copy editor, the author shouldnt be thinking about this at all. what are o'reilly doing to justify their 90% cut?
I've been approached by a few publishers but the math on revenues doesn't make any sense. If I could get myself to write a technical book I would 100% self publish.<p>Some of my peers accepted with the same publishers and now they can boast of being book authors for some online clout or some extra linkedin post.<p>It can be useful if you're building an online audience you can convert to money. I'd love to do that but I can't stomach the thought and I'm not willing to put effort into that.<p>In terms of CV it won't serve you to get a raise or get into places that pay more (for that, just leetcode). In this regards it is similar to doing talks and blogging.
It may be useful if you're applying not into software development but into a software evangelist role.
John Resig (inventor of Jquery) has written books across a variety of publishers. He has also written extensively about how he fared financially. These are worthy counter points to the discussions here about "only 10%."<p><a href="https://johnresig.com/blog/programming-book-profits/" rel="nofollow">https://johnresig.com/blog/programming-book-profits/</a><p><a href="https://css-tricks.com/so-you-want-to-self-publish-books-and-courses-on-programming/" rel="nofollow">https://css-tricks.com/so-you-want-to-self-publish-books-and...</a><p>TL;DR: for a person as Internet famous as John, discoverability and getting a full click on the "buy" button are still very hard problems.
> What Animal Will I Get?<p>> I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. The editing team have no say in which animal goes with which book. Aparently there's a team somewhere in O'Reilly whose job is to make the Animal selection. It'll be determined close to release date - some time next year.<p>15 years of wondering answered in a single blog post.
> What Animal Will I Get?<p>That's the question for O'Reilly, but now how does Manning decide what goes on their covers (that's the only other publisher that has somewhat interesting ones... the Packt ones look more vanilla to me). Maybe a Manning author here would interject and give us some insight into that?