And now for a more concrete interpretation ... also, if this is your first book, prepare to get screwed a little. unless > you are a real celebrity, your advance will be paltry because the > publisher > wants to mitigate the risk [...]
Writing a tech book is a labor of love. It's not going to be a golden ticket to fame and fortune unless you happen to write another "Don't Make Me Think", and there's exactly one author in all of the tech world that has sold that many copies of a single book: Steve Krug himself. Nielsen has also sold a lot of books—a huge amount, in fact—but from what I can tell, he doesn't have nearly the numbers Krug has. Not even close. In most cases, a book is a really good business card. It helps you get your foot in the door for a lot of opportunities. It's not something you do because you want to retire to the tropics. It's something you do because you want to affect the industry, because you love it and want to take your career further. In the tech industry, from what I've seen, you can expect somewhere between $8-12k for an advance against royalties to write the book, if you negotiate it on your own. With an agent, you can get more regardless of whether you've written a good book in the past, but the agent will also take a sizable cut. If you view writing a book as a labor of love, as I've described, $8-12k is pretty decent. If you think you're going to quit client work for six months and do nothing but write, you might consider playing the lottery often while doing it. Oh, and be sure to move into a very small, very cheap apartment first. And abandon your family. And forget about eating for a while. You get the idea. Many authors assume their books will never earn out, and in *most* cases, this is true. The small percentage of books that earn out are the ones keeping the tech publishers alive right now. It's definitely a saturated market. If you are confident that your book will earn out, go for the standard advance, market the heck out of the thing at every opportunity, and hope for future royalty checks. unless its a seminal work, most trade books > have a shelf life of 3-6 months - if that. This depends on the topic of the book. If you're writing something that is tied to a product release cycle, such as a book on Flash CS3, the shelf life is definitely limited, and you'll want your book on shelves the second a new version of the app is released to maximize your chances. If you write a book on a broader topic that can stay relevant for a long time, such as some aspect of interaction design, you'll have a much longer shelf life. There are plenty of books not considered "seminal" that have a much longer life than 3-6 months. My book, Designing the Obvious, has an expected shelf life of 2-3 years. I'm a little over a year into that now, and my book is selling more copies per quarter now than it did the first two it was out. I don't know if this is common or not, but it definitely illustrates my point. writing a book is hard. writing a book on deadline is very hard. writing a > book that sells well is extremely hard! This depends on how comfortable you are with writing, particularly on a deadline. I'm very comfortable, and I wrote Designing the Obvious during nights and weekends over a 3-month period with little stress. A giant tome like Designing Interactions (Moggridge) would have taken substantially longer even if he is a very confident writer. If you're not a confident writer, writing a book will be nothing short of ... well, nightmarish. Writing a great book is not hard, per se. It's actually closer to "magic". Even the most experienced publishers and editors have little idea how well a book will do, if any. It's a guessing game, every single time, unless you bring in someone who is already well-known, such as Zeldman, Meyer, or Maeda. All you can do is keep improving the structure of the book as best you can, make sure you speak *to* your audience and not *at* them, come up with a catchy or powerful name, and trust the publishers to do their jobs. Once that's out of the way, you can speak at conferences, user group meetings, build up your blog, etc—anything to raise your profile and build up credibility to help sales. It's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. If most design projects are like sprints, then books are like marathons. You have to love it, else it can be a horrible experience. That said, a book you believe in and communicates something of real value in a very effective way can and likely will sell very well, and can lead to many opportunities in your life. As long as you're prepared to ride the wave while it lasts, you can do some great things with a book-shaped business card in hand. -r- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
