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So you want to self-publish books and courses on programming

by lorendsr on 7/29/21, 5:11 PM with 65 comments

  • by tsumnia on 7/29/21, 11:45 PM

    Honestly? Please don't.

    I don't mean to be rude, but the quality of some coding books is not good at all. The majority are rehashes of online documentation on what the function does with barely any examples on "real world application" and could easily be found online for free. I've seen enough chapters on how NumPy arrays work to completely disregard them. As an example, I recently picked up a book on Python for Civil Engineering because I was looking for said "real world" examples for a course I was teaching. In total, there are 6 civil engineering examples across the 160 pages and each needs ALL the basic concepts before you see them (although one is just "here's how matplotlib works").

    If you choose to self-publish, please have more than the bare minimum in examples. Take a page out of Miguel Grinberg's Flask Tutorial [1] and have the entire book build up to something. If you're doing something like how to do Data Science with language X, use some larger scale datasets, walk through them, and explain what you are seeing beyond "here's the print statement's output".

    Most of the videos on my YouTube channel that are about "How to use X in Y" get minimal views, because they're so simple that you only need to see it once via a video or webpage to "get it". However, some of my more popular videos are where I implement algorithms like the Luhn Check algorithm. Have that kind of material in your book.

    [1] https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial...

  • by synergy20 on 7/29/21, 10:05 PM

    Economically, a typical programming book will gain you around 20K USD, which is normally a two month pay as a good software(if you can write a book about programming, you're probably very good at it). I don't think it makes much financial sense unless your goal is something else, e.g. consult, fame, etc.

  • by dSebastien on 7/30/21, 5:10 AM

    For my first book (https://www.amazon.com/Learn-TypeScript-Building-Application...), I have gone down the classic path. Overall, that experience was far from great. I suffered through the process, and it was painful towards the end, as more parties got involved, and often created more problems than they brought solutions. Of course your mileage may vary; I have no doubt that there are much better publishers out there.

    I was forced to use specific tools/platforms to edit the content. Those tools were slow, buggy, didn't clearly show what was changed, etc. This was incredibly painful.

    Obviously, one should not do it for the money. You can get quite a lot if you're lucky enough to be an outlier and write timeless content, but it's very unlikely. I personally went through the process as I was getting started with freelancing and wanted to boost my visibility. It served its purpose, but the opportunity cost was huge.

    Once the book was released, my publisher didn't invest a whole lot in marketing the content. I did what I could on my end, which kept the sales going, but I felt left alone. Again, it depends on your publisher, and on their belief in your project; your mileage may vary there too...

    For my new project (https://dev-concepts.dev), I have decided to self-publish. Here are my reasons:

    - Freedom - Ownership - Financial - Responsibility

    While self-publishing, I can write at my own pace, without external pressure (apart the one I put on myself). I can set my own rules, my own process, use tools of my choice, etc.

    Importantly, I keep full ownership. Everything I write remains 100% mine, and I can repurpose anything I want to create new content (e.g., video courses, blog articles, etc). This is a key point for me! I also get to decide if I want to give away free copies of my book.

    From a financial point of view, 100% of the benefits will be mine. This means that I can sell ~5x less copies and still make as much money. I also believe that self-published projects that have a solid copy and are marketed correctly have much a better chances to generate money.

    The thing is of course that if you're alone, you're alone. Noone else is going to help, review the content, find technical reviewers, provide you a toolchain, fix typos, etc. Personally it doesn't bother me; I find that liberating and empowering!

  • by soapdog on 7/29/21, 9:18 PM

    I have written a post on the topic of writing a technical book recently which might interest people who are thinking about doing it: https://andregarzia.com/2021/04/writing-a-technical-book.htm...

    I have also launched a free eBook generation SaaS at: https://little.webby.press it is completely client-side, there are no accounts and no tracking, just have fun building your own books.

  • by agladlad on 7/29/21, 8:13 PM

    This was helpful to read, as someone currently collecting my own unreleased technical writing (possibly for a book). Thank you for focusing on the "why" here and sharing information on the range of possible outcomes.

    Also, congrats on the launch of https://graphql.guide/! It is so critical to have well thought out, long-form content available in this day and age.

  • by grecy on 7/29/21, 11:00 PM

    I wrote a an article [1] about how I self-publish my printed books on Amazon using LaTeX, pandoc and some shell scripts to automate the generation of a print-ready pdf and a standards compliant epub file all in one step.

    All in all it's been very successful for me, and I highly recommend doing so. The first time you get your printed book in your hand is a magical feeling not quickly forgotten!

    [1] http://theroadchoseme.com/how-i-self-published-a-professiona...

  • by dhosek on 7/29/21, 9:25 PM

    Any suggestions for fulfillment on PDF ebooks? My kickstarter for my LaTeX book¹ is almost over and I have enough backers that I think I want to do something a bit more sophisticated than just send people a download link (ideally, I'd like to have individually watermarked PDFs for each backer to act as a social deterrent to uploading the file to download sites). It'd be nice also if they could come back later to get a corrected version of the PDF if I do updates in the future.²

    1. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/preppylion/the-preppy-l...

    2. I'm working on being meticulous about typos but I know they will happen, plus there will likely be updates to LaTeX that will require some minor changes in the text as time goes by.

  • by shahinrostami on 7/29/21, 8:57 PM

    From this month I've decided to see if I can work on my personal projects full time... these include the books I've self-published through http://datacrayon.com/shop/, but now I wonder if it's worth while getting any of them into print...

  • by MavropaliasG on 7/30/21, 1:34 AM

    Has anyone tried LearnWorlds for publishing their course?

  • by virwheeler on 7/30/21, 2:19 PM

    It will good probably useful on counties without proper internet connection. But almost all of the information needed about programming is already on the internet. It's just a one search away and you can find your answer

  • by ipnon on 7/29/21, 7:36 PM

    Surely storing Unicode in thin layers of dried tree mush stitched together in a bind is a bit outdated these days, right? Yet the demand for transmitting useful information into brains is higher than ever. If we rethink of books as a medium for thought transmission, especially the actionable thoughts of domain experts, then physical books should seem to us like dinosaur bones. Its the inertia of the dusty university library and the Madison Avenue publishing industry that keeps book relevant. If the sole goal is learning, there is still much unrealized potential to be innovated in web and mobile apps.

    The iPhone is still only 14 years old. Somewhere between now and universal brain-computer interfaces are many education unicorns waiting to be found.