I'm an author of 8 books in Robotics. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this.
Pros
1) Great visibility in the robotics community
2) Started getting good consulting projects
3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income)
4) People start identifying me in conferences
5) Got the invitation to do research in good universities
6) Got good patience which is very useful while working with the robots
7) Knowledge also doubled (I have to do a lot of homework in order to write things in the book).
8) Self-satisfaction to became an author
Cons
1) Time consuming
2) Need full-time dedication
3) Royalties are very low (only 17% of the book price)
4) Books will easily come online for free download. This will definitely demotivate us to write another book.
5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books), so you may have to update it by writing a new edition.
6) Getting good income from books is like getting a lottery. It will only happen to a few people.
Regarding Con 5), it's generally true with some exceptions. I wrote a Fortran book (https://www.manning.com/books/modern-fortran) and expect it to stay fresh for at least several years thanks to the slow pace and the unusually high maturity of the technology. On the downside, it's a relatively narrow niche so I don't expect high total number of sales. For instance, about 800 copies have been pre-ordered in the first 2.5 years of writing. The book is done and will be out in print in November.
Thank you for your support! I'm happy that it was helpful for you. If you have any questions or get stuck at any point feel free to email me at milancurcic@hey.com. I'll be happy to help.
The issue is, if we are writting from 2020, we may publishing in 2021 or 2022. In the meantime, there may be lot changes in the technology that we are working on. So we may have to change lot of things in the book content even we finish all the chapters. This happened to me always. The version of software framework (ROS) is changing and to keep up the new version I will keep on changing all the chapters ( mainly commands and all).
Thank you! :) I totally get it. Same with my book: a new revision of the standard (Fortran 2018) was published half-way through the writing. However, thanks to the glacial pace of the Fortran standards development, I was able to plan for the additions to the language from the start.
I wrote a book, too (career advice for new devs). I had previously written a technical ebook (about Cordova) and wanted to write something that had a longer lifespan, but was still focused on developers. Writing a technical book was great, but, like you said, it became outdated very easily.
That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book. This is because it will force you to learn the topic very well (I remember spending an hour testing out something so I could write one sentence accurately) and because you can say "oh yes, I wrote a book on that" which gives you a lot of credibility.
I think it was totally worth writing the less technical book too. It makes you dig into thoughts and ideas in a much deeper way than blog posts or presentations.
It also opens up some doors in terms of presentations and speaking, if that's of interest. My book wasn't on a technical topic, but if you write one, I could definitely see that leading to some consulting.
I think the best way to write a book is to blog it first, then assemble the pieces (adding in more). This lets you do a number of things:
* you can outline the topic as a series of posts. If you can't do this, don't write a non-fiction book.
* you can see if you like the topic 5-10 posts in. If you do, then you have the bones of a book. If you don't, why would you commit to a full length book?
* you can build an audience. I didn't have a large audience, but had a list of 200ish people I could market the book to. And again, if you blog 5-10 times and no one is interested, they probably won't be interested in a book either.
* you can easily turn it into an ebook (using a tool like leanpub) if you determine you want to self publish. If you work with a traditional publisher, you can still pull and revise the blog posts.
Since the book was just released in August, I have no idea of the financial success. Like the author, I'm not looking to have this be a huge piece of my income stream. If I can earn out my advance, I'll be happy.
>That said, if you want to anchor yourself as an expert in a space, I can't think of a better way to do it than to write a book.
I think this depends on the field and the audience. I'm not sure about other sciences but, when I was working in Biology and Ecology, there was much higher regard placed on people who'd been published in reputable peer reviewed journals than those that published books on topics.
It usually came down to the assumption that if someone published their research in a book rather than submitting it for peer review, it meant the quality of the research wasn't up to standards and likely would have been rejected and information from scientists published only in books is looked at as questionable and not really a good source to use as a primary reference.
That being said, the general public tends to place book published scientists in almost higher regard than many working scientists and will take information published in such form as undeniable fact.
> I think this depends on the field and the audience.
Fair enough. I should have specified the "software engineering field" as the scope of my statement. I don't know enough about other fields (such as branches of science or history), and certainly writing a fiction book doesn't anchor you as an expert.
It seems like you are talking about publishing research work in book chapter rather than peer reviewed articles.
A book usually covers a selected topic in depth and in a coherent manner. This is particular useful for graduate students. Besides, some book authors also invite their friends to give comments. The impact of a book can be as rigorous and significant as journal articles.
Teaching the topic to students is the best way to learn it thoroughly because it closes the loop and you are challenged from many different angles. Something you understand weakly will be something you explain poorly, and be a big sticking point you'll need to revisit repeatedly.
The blog approach might get a similar benefit if you can get a lot of feedback and discussion for each one. But it seems like it would have a degree of self-selection of readers, where you only get the most motivated commenting on any given post.
I have to say I think you're right. I think the advantage of a blog format is that it forces you to capture your thoughts in writing. So you have to challenge yourself.
But, having taught some in-person and synchronous online classes, the different points of view from students definitely force me to understand the topic at many levels.
One issue teaching might have that blogging doesn't is that it may be hard to find your audience, if it is a niche topic. For instance, I doubt that anyone would have signed up for a Cordova automation course (the topic of my ebook). But perhaps in a world of Udacity I'm incorrect.
How much and what ways did your motivations change from writing book 1 to say book 4? At that point, what's keeping you going the most?
By the time you sit down to plan book 8, what's going through your mind especially when you factor in the cons?
Thanks.
I got an invite to write a book in 2014. Initially i thought it was very easy and can complete within 3 months. By this assumption, i agreed and start writting. When I start writting, i understood that, it is not easy at all. As a first time author, i was litterally struggling. The only factor that pushed me was, I already spent months for this, so If leave the project, I will lose that months. So I kept going.
After 1.5 years, my first book poped up and it was well recieved. Immediately after that, I got the next invitation to write second book. The thing is, the book subject was very good. So I agreed again by understanding all the cons of writting. I have spent 6 full months (full time for completing the next book. And I am keep on getting invitation and because of the experience of first book, I could easily draft the other books. It was a tough time for me too. Only less income, but only motivation was, I am doing something challenging and I am learning lot of stuff, also I am writting about the technology I like the most.
I can not fathom how you could write 8 books. I have written one book and got it published on Packt. It was a very tiring process.
> 5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books)
I feel you. I wrote a blockchain programming book. It was becoming outdated soon just after the book was being released. The pace of the blockchain technology is very fast.
I have started writing in 2014 and done by 8th book in 2019 I guess. It was just a roller coaster ride. I really like the technology I am working on and very interested in writing tutorials. I think that was the main overriding factor of writing books even though it's having a lot of cons. Still planning to write a book, but this time I will go with self-publishing.
Yes, I think if you are writing a technical book, it'd be better to focus on a more stable technology. That or plan for a revision or two after the initial release.
And I can tell you, after I finished my book, I didn't want to think about the topic for a month or so. Can't imagine committing to a revision or two.
Doing revision of a book is OK. but the issue is, when we start writing a book, the version may be say 0.2, and when we release the book, the version may be 0.4. So the main thing is, the book got outdated in the release itself. So just think about our situation. Do we have motivation to write another book? I had this situation and I have changed the content of the book at the end of final edit. This is painful.
That's a good point. That would be deflating to have a book where the code examples wouldn't work with the latest stable release. I guess this is where a self published ebook would be a better fit (plus automation to make sure that your code samples were up to date with the latest runtime).
I guess it depends on how much the technology evolves too. I think of my own experience in writing a book on cordova. The amount of work to revise it for new editions would be, I estimate, about 50% of the effort of a new book, just because there was significant overlap between the versions.
> 2) Started getting good consulting projects 3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income)
Yes, I think technical books are a great marketing asset when you're a consultant / freelancer. It gives you a ton of credibility, more so than one more project to your cv / portfolio. Plus, as a bonus, it provides a few royalties. It's a good way to stand out, too: "Do you have a business card so that I put it with all the other business cards I got today and will forget as soon as I get back home?" "No, Mr. Prospect, but let me give you that book I wrote, you'll enjoy it, and you have my contact info on the first page".
Rather than a potential source of passive income, I tend to see it as a marketing tool that has a very low to negative cost. Seen that way, most of your cons aren't that bad.
If I were a freelancer / consultant, I would definitely write books.
Pros 1) Great visibility in the robotics community 2) Started getting good consulting projects 3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income) 4) People start identifying me in conferences 5) Got the invitation to do research in good universities 6) Got good patience which is very useful while working with the robots 7) Knowledge also doubled (I have to do a lot of homework in order to write things in the book). 8) Self-satisfaction to became an author
Cons 1) Time consuming 2) Need full-time dedication 3) Royalties are very low (only 17% of the book price) 4) Books will easily come online for free download. This will definitely demotivate us to write another book. 5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books), so you may have to update it by writing a new edition. 6) Getting good income from books is like getting a lottery. It will only happen to a few people.
The list goes on. Just want to share my list of my books here https://robocademy.com/product-category/robotics/