What's Book Writing Like?

Lots of people ask me questions like how I got started writing books, what's it like to do, how does it work, do I make lots of money, and so on. So one day, right after delivering a whole bunch of chapters, I decided to write some of the answers down.

Why Do It?

I write books, and chapters in other people's books, for lots of reasons. One reason is that I get paid to do so, but if that was the only reason I wouldn't be able to afford to do it. Some other reasons are:

• It's fun to create something out of nothing, and hold it in your hand.

• I feel proud of good sentences, fantastic sample applications, and clear explanations of difficult material. Writing well gives me a real confidence boost and it's fun.

• I get a little bit of fame, like my name on book covers and in catalogues.

• It helps me land other work when I can give the prospect a copy of a book I wrote. It has even happened that someone read my book and contacted me to do some work with no sales effort on my part.

• I get beta copies of software that I couldn't afford to buy, or couldn't otherwise get into the beta program.

• I can call software companies asking pointed questions and they usually answer because I'm working on a book.

• It forces me to learn all the gory details of a topic I knew well enough to do my job, but not as well as I could. I see a productivity jump after a book as I apply the things I learned while writing it.

• I get free copies of competitors books, vaguely related books, and my own books, and I use all of these regularly.

The Money

That's all well and good, you're saying, but the kids have to eat, the phone bill has to be paid. What does technical writing pay? Well, there are two ways to get paid:

1. Flat rate, cash by the chapter. Typically you will get $500 to $1000 for a chapter, depending on how long it is (20-40 pages,) how good you are, and how desperate the acquisitions editor is to get the work done. Your cash will come out of the lead author's royalties, and the AE cannot overpay you for fear the lead will feel ripped off. So let's say $25/page. (US dollars, by the way.)

2. Royalties, which is more complicated. Here's some sample numbers, though. Say the book is $50 US. Usually publishers do royalties on the net prices, which for my publisher is 45% of the cover price. So a 1% royalty is worth 22.5 cents per copy. A handy worst-case number for copies sold is 10,000. We've all done books that sold worse, but usually a publisher won't go with a book unless they are confident of 10-15,000 copies. The royalties available are 10-15%, depending on how many they think they will sell (there are fixed costs to cover and if they sell a lot the fixed costs per book are lower so there's room for more royalty,) how much they think they have to give you to get you to do it, and stuff you have no control over like how well other books have done this quarter and so on. Now you won't get all of that, certainly not on your first book. To meet the kind of schedules that are common these days there are usually other authors involved. Whether you pay them cash or share your royalties, probably you will do half the work and get half the money. So assume a 5% royalty on a $50 book (45% net) selling 10,000 copies. That's $11,250. You will probably write 400-500 pages for that, getting $22-$28/page. If the book bombs, you might see half that, or nothing if there was a lot of cash work. If the book soars? You multiply $1.12 per book by however many copies might sell. That's what puts stars in author's eyes.

So, how long does a page take? Obviously that varies from book to book and author to author, but as a good rule of thumb, an hour per page will do. Some days you might do 30 pages, other days 3. A screen shot takes up half a page: it might take you a minute to decide "I need a shot of the XYZ dialog" and less than a minute to load the product and shoot the shot, or it might take you half a day to write the program that produces the output you want a shot of. If you have to write a sample application for your chapter, you need to allow programming time. On long projects I set myself a pace and actually count pages each day to see if I'm meeting it. When I'm lead author and I'm working out what I'd like to earn for the book, I toss in 100 hours for developing the outline, looking over other people's work, reacting to last minute announcements, talking to my editor, and writing extra chapters I hadn't counted on.

Can You Live On That?

Sound enticing? If you have a day job, $25/hour work that is fun to do, keeps you learning, and gets you beta software and glory, really sounds terrific. And it is. But you can't keep the pace of an entire book (not for book after book, anyway) if you have a day job. You'll get lots of chapter work, and probably one chance at a lead. As a lead author, you'll have to find at least 4 hours a day to meet the kind of schedules they want, which is fine if you're single, or have a very understanding spouse and no young children, or an incredibly understanding spouse if you're a parent. I'm warning you now: there's a limit to how understanding your spouse can be, and taking on a three-month book project when you already have a full-time job is going to push that limit. Eventually you're going to either settle down to a chapter or two once in a while, or you're going to leave that job in the hope that writing will support you. Make sure you have something else that will at least help to support you: that understanding spouse again, or a trust fund, or the ability to train or contract program on the side. There are two reasons why $25/hour for writing won't support you, even if that's about what you're making now:

1. You have to buy benefits and save for retirement

2. You don't get 40 hours/week of work

Number 2 is the real killer here. No matter how fast you write, how hard you push yourself, eventually you have to sit and wait. You submit your chapters as you finish them, then wait to get the edited work back. You tell your AE you'd like a chapter or two of cash work, then wait two or three days while the AE talks to the lead or some other behind-the-scenes negotiation goes on, then you get the work, you race through it and again you have to wait for edited material to come back. You have to leave empty slots in your schedule to deal with the review when that material does come to you, as well. You are asked to write an outline for a book, then wait a week while ten different people look it over before deciding whether or not to do the book. No matter how hard you try, you cannot fill all your time with book work.

Depending on the lifestyle to which you're accustomed, what other sources of income your family has, and whether that understanding spouse of yours also has full benefits, you can figure out what you need per hour if you got 40 hours per week. Then double it. That's what you need to earn from books and the other bits and pieces of consulting and so on you will do. If one of your books sells 50,000 copies, you can drop some of the other sources of income then. 

How Long Does it Take?

Here's the life cycle of a typical book, from the point of view of a lead author.

Really, this is typical. Things never go as planned. Experienced authors might escape some of these traps, but last minute changes in software you are writing about, problems with the folks who are doing individual chapters, and forgetting to allow time for "extras" are perennial problems. These things don't happen because publishers and editors are cold-hearted fiends: they happen because publishers, editors, co-authors and software developers are all human beings, working to deadline, making mistakes, and forgetting things. Editors sometimes assume you know more than you do about what else has to be done: authors usually don't ask enough questions and don't read their Author Kits. Even the most experienced authors get let down by co-authors or surprised by major revisions in the product.

I chose an arbitrary start date so you can see how the time goes by, and I assumed you wrote at the one hour per page rate, plus some time for Author Review.

Wanna Know More?

Why does anyone do it? Because some books go faster than that, or sell more copies. Because there's more to this than money (see the list at the top of this page.) Because you always believe that this book will be different, and sometimes it is. There are some great resources available for those who want to be technical writers. Someday soon I'll add them, but for now, I've got some chapters to finish...