It is interesting that you shared all these information here that detail. I had written a few internet related books back in Hong Kong about 12 years ago.

It is very true that every publisher function in different and every author gets different ways of compensation too. I was a new author at the time and I didn’t know there was “advance” offered, so I didn’t have any advance at all. However, since I was doing it when I was on maturity leave, I was all good

I felt like “giving birth to a child” every time I wrote a book. Not sure if you have the same feeling (consider you are a guy, LOL).

However, I must say, not ALL smaller publishers are “easier” to talk to, as they have tight budget and they sometimes are picky to what they publish.

I had an experience that I had done a book on WAP (if you recall way back in the time when cell phone just started to be able to browse the web, it was in WAP). I had an offer from this Taiwanese WAP telecom company which planned to hire me and have my book published, fell through

Since the lifespan on WAP was so short (like beta tape), I lost the whole opportunity to even take it to another publisher.

So, anyone who has passion on writing, make sure you choose a good publisher

Mimi

I’ve done a number of books for various publishers and have some stories that would make you weep (well, they made me weep). I had an agent, briefly, who told me that my stories were nothing compared to what he had seen.

One publisher insisted that I do a Commodore-64 version of a book. I negotiated a substantial advance because I knew it would be a dog. It was, and the publisher subtracted the advance from the royalty payments on my other books.

Another publisher I wrote for was sold just as my book was about to go into production. The new owner wasn’t interested in publishing the book, but strung me along for three years before returning the rights to me. If I were to write another book for a major publisher, I’d insist on enough of an advance to soften the blow of the book not being published (or negotiate a hefty kill fee).

I’m not sure how well this would work with tech. books, but major publishers are often open to escalating royalties after a certain number of copies are sold. At that point they’ve recovered the initial costs of the book and can afford higher royalty rates. I had one contract that escalated to 18.5%.

People thinking about doing a book should keep in mind a rule-of-thumb that I learned from a successful author with many books under his belt: When you’ve finished your draft and have everything the way you want it, you’re about 1/3 done with the work. That’s been about right for all the books I’ve done.

Bob

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

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

Interestingly, we discover that 51% of their books earn between $10k-50k in royalties. Can’t sniff at that!

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!