I've written a book (a decade ago, for Prentice Hall), and I talked with Apress about writing a second one. Apress, it should be noted, forgot about our discussions, and I didn't push, so the project dropped.<p>The first thing to realize about writing a computer book is that you probably won't make much money off of it. Indeed, you'll probably make very little money from it. So it's not a surprise to hear that the author made so little.<p>It's also not surprising to hear that Apress didn't promote the book. I'm on the receiving end (as a Linux Journal columnist) of book press releases, and I easily get 1-2 such messages per week. The publishing business is in a terrible state, and while it seems paradoxical that it costs too much to market the book in a serious way, that is the case. When I wrote my book (and granted, this was before Facebook Twitter, and the like), I was responsible for ensuring that it was reviewed on Web sites and magazines; I didn't feel like the publisher did very much.<p>Given that my book got very positive reviews, you would have thought that they would have pushed to market it more, or to do a second printing. But they didn't. Most books are basically thrown out there, and the few that make a lot of money, by some combination of skill, contacts, and luck, get additional printings.<p>Apress was founded by someone who was fed up with other publishers, and so it's sad to hear that they have problems with contracts. But it's always unwise to into into a business agreement without a contract of some sort; I've learned this the hard way on a number of occasions through my 15-year consulting career. Writing the book before the contract was set was a mistake that the author made.<p>When I wrote my book, I also hired an agent. On the one hand, he got 10 percent of whatever I earned, which wasn't much to begin with. On the other hand, he got rid of many clauses in the contract that I never would have thought to notice or remove. It was probably a wash financially, but knowing that someone was there, helping me out, was a good feeling.<p>If I had to write a book nowadays -- and I'm certainly thinking of doing so -- I'd probably go the self-published, Ebook route. Ebooks can be shorter, are more flexible in terms of format, and will probably net a good author about the same amount of moeny as they would get from a publisher, minus much of the hassle. True, a good publisher will give you good technical edits, indexes, and distribution, but with rare exception, I have to wonder how useful those really are nowadays.<p>The bottom line is what while Apress might not have been professional about how they treated this author, it seems pretty par for the course in today's world. It's a shame, given how much work goes into writing a book, that he had to have such problems. I'm guessing that if had signed a contract in advance of the work, and perhaps even had an agent helping him, it would have worked out better. But maybe Apress has lost touch with their author-centric roots (that's the "A" in Apress, by the way), and smaller publishers such as the Pragmatic Programmers are the place to go for aspiring authors.