Writing a book. Does it make you rich and famous? (#67)

Let me share a personal story. I started experimenting with Java on a Raspberry Pi about five years ago and blogged a few articles about it. But the more I experimented, the more I wrote down, and eventually, I had written a book… I worked on it for six months in a row, every evening and a lot of weekends. But the moment I received the box with my author copies was an incredible feeling. Holding a paper book with your name is a special moment.Fast forward to now. The 1000 paper copies are sold out. I have the last 10 copies in case you still want one ;-) But as I self-published the ebook, it's still for sale on Leanpub, and I keep updating it. That's one of the first significant differences between publishing a paper book and an ebook…. As an author, I got about 2 euros per paper book from the publisher, and LeanPub pays 80% royalties. Don't forget that I have to pay taxes on what I earn. So, if you do the math, you'll understand that the book didn't make me rich. But yes, it helped me in my career and was one of the reasons I became a Java Champion. So, we can argue about the "becoming famous".But that's only my story. I invited several guests to share their knowledge about book writing:Marián Varga is finishing a book and tells about publishing a book with a publisher.Wim Deblauwe wrote a few books and has much experience with self-publishing.Len Epp is the co-founder of Leanpub, so he can tell us a lot about ebooks.And we start with Trisha Gee, who wrote a lot of books!Guests   Trisha Gee       https://www.linkedin.com/in/trishagee/       https://jvm.social/@trisha_gee        https://bsky.app/profile/trishagee.bsky.social       https://x.com/trisha_gee     Len Epp       https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenepp/       https://bsky.app/profile/lenepp.bsky.social       https://x.com/lenepp    Wim Deblauwe      https://www.linkedin.com/in/wimdeblauwe/        https://bsky.app/profile/wimdeblauwe.com         https://www.youtube.com/@WimDeblauwe         https://www.wimdeblauwe.com/        https://www.widit.be/      Marián Varga       https://www.dastalvi.com/book/        https://www.linkedin.com/in/mari%C3%A1n-varga-4869a042/        https://mastodon.social/@mrvarga  Links   Book by Frank      https://webtechie.be/books/        https://leanpub.com/gettingstartedwithjavaontheraspberrypi/     Books and links by Trisha Gee      https://trishagee.com/books/       https://trishagee.com/2022/12/12/tools-and-processes-for-collaborating-on-a-book-remotely/       https://trishagee.com/2022/12/01/writing-a-book-is-hard/       https://medium.com/97-things       https://youtu.be/RzaNJzz5jW8       https://learning.oreilly.com/search/?q=trisha%20gee&rows=100&language=en&language=es    Books by Wim Deblauwe      https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/spring-boot-api-backend-version2/         https://www.wimdeblauwe.com/books/modern-frontends-with-htmx         https://www.wimdeblauwe.com/books/taming-thymeleaf/      Book by Marián Varga      https://www.dastalvi.com/book/         https://bsky.app/profile/love2integrate.com     Leanpub      https://www.youtube.com/leanpub        https://twitter.com/leanpub       https://mastodon.social/@leanpub       https://www.instagram.com/leanpub       https://bsky.app/profile/leanpub.bsky.social     Lulu      https://www.lulu.com/   Content00:00 Introduction of the topic and guests01:53 Books by Trisha Gee02:24 Trisha's motivation for writing books04:13 Difference between publisher and self-publishing09:53 Publishers are looking for authors and course creators12:55 How long do you work on a book?17:35 Can we expect a new book by Trisha?21:00 Automating the writing process24:50 Len Epp about Leanpub and how it started27:18 On Leanpub, you can publish a book-in-progress27:51 Different publishing processes with Leanpub30:20 You can use LeanPub to generate your book, but you don't need to sell it on Leanpub32:57 80% of the selling price goes to the author40:09 How to market your book45:35 Let an expert handle the payments...50:55 Books by Wim Deblauwe51:45 Wim's motivation for writing books53:15 Earning back the time spent on the writing54:37 How to sell paper books on Lulu57:19 Tools used to write a book58:34 Wim's author-plans for the future59:42 How the books influenced Wim's career01:00:02 Marián Varga about the topic of his book01:03:07 Current status of the book01:04:03 The book is a teamwork with a publisher01:07:06 Organizing the work between multiple authors01:09:17 Time worked on the book01:10:40 Feedback from the community for the content01:12:13 What Marián wants to achieve with the book01:14:38 Conclusion