Comments on: What I’ve Earned (And Learned) From Writing “Beginning Ruby”

By: Gavin Sinclair

Gavin Sinclair — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:54:31 +0000

Thanks for the great post, Peter, and the great comments (everyone else). If I was in the market for an introductory Ruby book, your frankness here would have me rushing to buy your book. I hope some Ruby newbies feel the same way. Good luck with any future books.

By: PK

PK — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:48:01 +0000

Great Post. Its a bold move to publish all these details openly. It helps immensely understands pros and cons involved in writing technical book.

Beginning Ruby is a great book for starters in Ruby. We have come up with “Interactive Programming Books” which helps beginners to pick up new language very easily. Readers can execute or edit code snippets right out of the book. Visit http://roorky.com to see “Interactive Programming Books” in action.

Thanks
– PK

By: Jusan

Jusan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:45:52 +0000

Thanks for sharing us your experienced on how you started. I absolutely loved your article. I am sure a lot of readers will inspire your post.

By: Daniel Steinberg

Daniel Steinberg — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:56:55 +0000

I worked for O’Reilly for years and loved my time there and respect the people there — including and especially Tim — but take exception to his saying “As Bill Pollock said, don’t confuse “50% of profits” from the Prags with a 50% royalty. I do think the Prags have one of the best deals around, but it isn’t as much better than others as it might appear.”

I have had this discussion off line with Tim and shared with him dollar amounts that I am earning from my Cocoa book that I am writing for the Prags. It is not just percentages, it is also dollars. It is MUCH better than other publishers. I’ve co-written a dozen books or so for a bunch of different publishers. My last four books have collectively well outsold this one so far and yet I’ve made many times more money off of this one already than the last four put together.

I may be biased as I currently edit books for the Prags but I edit books for the Prags because of the way in which they treat their authors. In my three years there our decisions always come down to how it serves our readers and how it serves our authors. I’ve never heard “how it serves us” trump either of those.

Daniel Steinberg

By: [Time code];

[Time code]; — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:50:36 +0000

[...] Peter Cooper posted a blog about his experience publishing Beginning Ruby for APress, a blog that got extraordinary traffic after being featured on Slashdot with a [...]

By: Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:45:46 +0000

Dave Thomas of The Pragmatic Programmers/Bookshelf has written a post to counter the FUD regarding their royalty practices (i.e. the deduction of costs before paying royalties). Interestingly, we discover that 51% of their books earn between $10k-50k in royalties. Can't sniff at that!

By: James Edward Gray II

James Edward Gray II — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:48:15 +0000

I wrote two books for The Pragmatic Programmers. I was 115% satisfied with how I was treated by them at all times. I can’t really imagine better working terms.

By: Julio Javier Cicchelli

Julio Javier Cicchelli — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:28:55 +0000

As a follow up on Amy’s opinion, there are a lot of people out there who prefer to avoid the publishers (no matter the reason) and keep control over the content and the publishing of their book. Of course, this option requires more risks than the publisher option but the satisfaction is worthy of it.

If for any reason, you want to write a book and you don’t know how to publish it, there is always http://www.lulu.com that will help you with that.

ROCK ON!

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:54:17 +0000

Very interesting read (comments, too)! I’m currently in the process of writing a book for Pearson/Addison-Wesley, and so far I’m having a hard time relating to alot of the complaints. Granted, I’m still in the early stages, but the publisher/editor has been nothing but nice, providing all kinds of luxuries for me as an author. We’ll see how I feel when I’m done

By: Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:31:38 +0000

@James Turnbull: Interesting to hear! Thanks for dropping a line (by the way, if any other authors want to comment, even anonymously, please do!)

It’s interesting to hear you were so persistent with chasing down the pirates initially. I’ve always been pretty pissed off if I didn’t see my book being pirated with all the others because “WTF? My book isn’t well known enough to be pirated??” but maybe I’m just a giant narcissist..