Dear Hacker News,<p>I have recently been contacted by a publishing company and have been asked to write a 150 - 180 page book covering the essentials of Zendesk (a large company that sells support request software) and I am wondering what would be fair compensation for this work. My timeline is 1.5 months for the 1st draft and here is their explanation of payment:<p>"We would be paying you an advance against future royalties of 16% which is worth around $1000 (depending on the estimate writing timeline) and split across the writing timeline. Shorter the timeline higher the advances. Normally the breakdown of the advance is:<p>50% of advance for delivery and acceptance of the first draft of all chapters.
25% of advance for delivery and acceptance of the final draft of all chapters.
25% of advance upon publication. "<p>If I understand this right, 1000$ with no future royalties sounds extremely low, given the time it would take to write a book, but what would a fair price be?<p>Thanks,
Eric
The vast majority of tech books sell fewer than 5000 copies.<p>A typical advance is $4000 - $10,000 (for well known authors), split into several parts.<p>Royalties vary, 8-15% is standard. Programatic Programmers is much more generous.<p>$1000 advance is unusually low.