I bet a lot of us have, since this is a group that is inclined towards A) intellectual pursuits, and B) making cool things. I'd be really interested to see what kinds of books we've all made. They don't need to be published through the traditional process. In fact, I'm actually more curious to see creative ways good hackers have gotten their ideas out there.
So, if you've written a book, would you link to it and talk a little bit about what it's all about?
It's times like these I wish hacker news had a user follow ability. You are probably one of my favorite authors of all time, and I had no idea you were present here on HN.
I'm currently reading your book "Accelerando" (in parallel with about 20 other books). HN readers would probably enjoy the density of ideas evident in it.
I had not heard of your fiction, but based on other comments here, I just bought "The Atrocity Archives" for my Kindle - looking forward to reading it!
It has left something of a bitter taste in my mouth though... I've made an order of magnitude more money from this article that took my a few hours to put together: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode as compared to weeks of work for the Tcl one.
Also, on the subject of authorship, I would be remiss if I didn't link to my latest project, a system to make the Kindle book production process as easy as possible: http://www.liberwriter.com
I originally put it together because I wanted to write something of my own, but I'm more of a hacker than a writer, and got sidetracked growing the program and still haven't got back to the writing.
Back when I was heavily into blogging, I co authored a book called Beyond Blogging http://amzn.to/mBHONG and self-published it via CreateSpace (for Amazon and BN.com) and Lulu (for iPad).
The idea was to create a Think and Grow Rich type of book for bloggers and writing types, but I'm not sure we executed as well as I wanted to. I think it reads well and a lot of people have enjoyed it (Sold around 750-1k copies to date), but it's on a topic I'm no longer interested in so I'm probably biased against it.
That being said, most of the people we featured in the book continued to be successful, so I'm proud of that (that we chose well).
Was also great to interview people. We had interviews recorded for the 2nd book (including Seth Godin, Andrew Warner, Mitch Joel, and 10 others), but opted against it.
Was a great experience though, and I not only enjoyed writing it, but also enjoyed the pieces of the publishing industry that I was able to experience.
Congrats! Sounds like a success to me. How'd you make the decision to self-publish? Did you try and shop it around to literary agents first, or go straight to the readers?
For folks who have suffered under various Agile, Kanban, and other improvement regimes and know that it's not supposed to be like this.
I'm about 80% of the way through the first draft. I have a few prominent community members that are going to review (and recommend, if they like it) but it's more of a personal statement than a commercial venture. It's a topic I have a lot of experience in, and the neat thing about a book is that it's there and can provide assistance for a long time.
I plan on taking my time finishing it. I'm also a self-publisher, so I had to learn epub and the ins and outs of self-publishing. There's a lot more to learning that stuff than I suspected. Probably enough for another book.
I wrote Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript and jQuery (http://professionalxmpp.com), which is a book about developing XMPP applications (and not just chat related) using the Strophe.js (http://strophe.im/strophejs) library.
There are a few books about the XMPP protocol itself, but I really wanted to see something that was more about how to get things done with it than schema descriptions. The book has a multiplayer game, collaborative whiteboard, shared document editor, and the usual chat-inspired examples.
People seem to enjoy it, and I had a lot of fun writing it.
I'd like to do the same with Erlang...Practical apps w/OTP... I have been thinking about it since your talk at Erlang Factory... although i think economically it makes the most sense to write books on iOS programming
This was probably the most difficult project I've ever completed.
It was funny; no-starch actually approached me about writing a book, I believe because some of my diaries at Kuro5hin were the first hits for 'pygrub' and 'pvgrub' and a few other xen keywords for a while. But my diaries, I thought, were rather poorly written. The man didn't mention my diaries, so it could have been something else, but that's the only thing I could figure.
I said "I'm semi-literate, but I know a guy"[1] and I called up my employee's roommate, a long-term student who switched from computer science to English. If it's readable, he deserves the credit, really.
Do I regret it? no. I didn't go to school, and this seems to help make up for that lack of credibility, and yeah, it was difficult, but it was also a lot of fun.
The book beginning to hit the bargain shelves, so I've been considering a second edition, but I've been busy with other things.
Really, I think no-starch press deserves a lot of credit; there is zero chance that Chris and I would have finished such a large undertaking without their prodding, and they gave us a really excellent technical editor.
[1] Actually, I think I said "My English skills are presidential." At the time, George W Bush was our leader.
I wrote a book on optimizing corporate portfolio management (publisher: Wiley). In English, portfolio mgmt means how large organizations handle resource allocation, i.e., whether to spend that next dollar on a marketing or IT or operations investment.
In terms of money from book sales, it is no Harry Potter but it's done well for a book with a very specific demographic of corporate types. From a larger business perspective, it's brought me opportunities for paid speaking engagements with the likes of the World Bank and companies/conferences throughout the US and Europe. And resulted in consulting opportunities and opened the door as being a "published author" does have some cache at times.
We actually created a training simulation/game (facilitated in-person) based on principles in the book which has done very well.
I've published two law-related books, one for business people, the other for lawyers:
1. When You Sign a Business Contract: A Final Pre-Flight Checklist.http://goo.gl/2PbFM This is a $9.99 PDF, downloadable from e-junkie.com. It lists five points that anyone who signs a contract should check to reduce the chance of personal liability, jail time, dangerous provisions, etc. The extensive notes contain numerous real-life stories. The five-point checklist itself and a link to buy the book are posted on my blog.
2. The Law and Business of Computer Software. http://goo.gl/OnqrO This was a treatise for lawyers, first published in 1990 and still in print. I stopped doing the annual updates about 10 years ago; another author's name is on the second edition.
It's about algorithms drawn from the fields of Computational Intelligence, Metaheuristics, and Biologically Inspired Computation and is intended as a reference for research scientists, engineers as well as a bootstrap for interested amateurs. Each algorithm has sample code in Ruby. I wrote it out of frustrations I had as a PhD student in not having a consistent "little black book of algorithms" for my field.
It's a lot of work, but it's worth it - I've been working with this technology (Rx) for two years now and I think it's a huge step forward yet very few people understand it. The book will help bring Rx to the masses which is definitely exciting.
I've written or co-written ten books, seven of them tech books and three novels. I've edited several others. I own and manage a publishing company, so perhaps that makes me part of the traditional process, but we deliberately avoid the (dying) traditional business model:
Not yet, although I'm just starting the process for a non-fiction topic I find fascinating: the intersection of wine and psychology.
I'll soon be starting to blog on the topic at http://winepsychology.com (subscribe if it's something you might like) and will be using that format to structure my thoughts and the material for the book.
I have no ideas of grandeur (i.e. making money or even being traditionally published), just a desire to create a long form collection of information that is hopefully accessible and enjoyable to a wider audience.
I'll look at self-publishing closer to completion and how to market and track my progress throughout. Hopefully this will spawn some good HN-worthy posts, too. Wish me luck!
I don't think I've got another book in me. For now I enjoy writing technical articles, mostly for IBM developerWorks. See http://seanwalberg.com for the list of articles.
Writen 3 books
Android Application Development for Dummies (wiley)
Android Tablet Application Development for Dummies (wiley)
Landing your dream tech job (self pub)
Two articles in Code Magazine
Not a day job.
Do consulting and bootstrapping work as my main source of income.
Yes, back in 1994. "Lenguaje Ensamblador de los 80x86", which means "80x86 Assembly Language", published by Anaya (major Spanish publisher). It's now out of print, but there were over 20 reprints and it was pretty successful, was recommended at many universities, etc...
I co-authored a chapter in "Beautiful Teams" at the urging of a friend, who was coordinating the project.
Writing a chapter is quite a bit of work, so a book must be quite an undertaking. I feel that it's worth doing, though. Writing anything -- a design spec, an email, a story from your past, etc -- forces you to coalesce and clarify thoughts that have floating around your brain. I gained new perspective on events that I thought I had a complete handle on years earlier.
I've written two books. My first book, Zero to Superhero: http://www.zerotosuperhero.com took four years to research, test and write. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. More than once I broke down and wept in frustration. In the end, for all I learned, it was worth it, times a thousand.
My second book is Economtricks: http://goo.gl/Fd8tW took only a year to write. I got some things off my chest. Not as rewarding, financially or personally.
While in college, I self-published a collection of stories featuring the stories, passions and dreams of students at my school. Sold a box of 50 copies to my bookstore. Got my own ISBN number and everything. You can still buy them on Lulu or read it online for free.
[+] [-] cstross|15 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
Which is not to say that I haven't written technical books, back in the day:
http://www.amazon.com/Web-Architects-Handbook-Charles-Stross...
I'm not self-published -- I've got Ace (aka part of Penguin USA), Orbit (aka Hachette) and Tor (aka Holtzbrinck) as my publishers.
Yes, I do this for a day job.
[+] [-] templaedhel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arctangent|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninjaa|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|15 years ago|reply
http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/09/15/tcl-and-the-tk-toolkit...
It has left something of a bitter taste in my mouth though... I've made an order of magnitude more money from this article that took my a few hours to put together: http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode as compared to weeks of work for the Tcl one.
Also, on the subject of authorship, I would be remiss if I didn't link to my latest project, a system to make the Kindle book production process as easy as possible: http://www.liberwriter.com
I originally put it together because I wanted to write something of my own, but I'm more of a hacker than a writer, and got sidetracked growing the program and still haven't got back to the writing.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nbashaw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhangen|15 years ago|reply
The idea was to create a Think and Grow Rich type of book for bloggers and writing types, but I'm not sure we executed as well as I wanted to. I think it reads well and a lot of people have enjoyed it (Sold around 750-1k copies to date), but it's on a topic I'm no longer interested in so I'm probably biased against it.
That being said, most of the people we featured in the book continued to be successful, so I'm proud of that (that we chose well).
Was also great to interview people. We had interviews recorded for the 2nd book (including Seth Godin, Andrew Warner, Mitch Joel, and 10 others), but opted against it.
Was a great experience though, and I not only enjoyed writing it, but also enjoyed the pieces of the publishing industry that I was able to experience.
[+] [-] nbashaw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|15 years ago|reply
For folks who have suffered under various Agile, Kanban, and other improvement regimes and know that it's not supposed to be like this.
I'm about 80% of the way through the first draft. I have a few prominent community members that are going to review (and recommend, if they like it) but it's more of a personal statement than a commercial venture. It's a topic I have a lot of experience in, and the neat thing about a book is that it's there and can provide assistance for a long time.
I plan on taking my time finishing it. I'm also a self-publisher, so I had to learn epub and the ins and outs of self-publishing. There's a lot more to learning that stuff than I suspected. Probably enough for another book.
The website isn't up yet. Email me if you'd like to be on the notification list. (Obligatory cool 3-D book cover image http://www.whattofix.com/ak2%203d%20book%20image.png )
[+] [-] nikcub|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metajack|15 years ago|reply
There are a few books about the XMPP protocol itself, but I really wanted to see something that was more about how to get things done with it than schema descriptions. The book has a multiplayer game, collaborative whiteboard, shared document editor, and the usual chat-inspired examples.
People seem to enjoy it, and I had a lot of fun writing it.
[+] [-] rubyrescue|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vnorby|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsc|15 years ago|reply
This was probably the most difficult project I've ever completed.
It was funny; no-starch actually approached me about writing a book, I believe because some of my diaries at Kuro5hin were the first hits for 'pygrub' and 'pvgrub' and a few other xen keywords for a while. But my diaries, I thought, were rather poorly written. The man didn't mention my diaries, so it could have been something else, but that's the only thing I could figure.
I said "I'm semi-literate, but I know a guy"[1] and I called up my employee's roommate, a long-term student who switched from computer science to English. If it's readable, he deserves the credit, really.
Do I regret it? no. I didn't go to school, and this seems to help make up for that lack of credibility, and yeah, it was difficult, but it was also a lot of fun.
The book beginning to hit the bargain shelves, so I've been considering a second edition, but I've been busy with other things.
Really, I think no-starch press deserves a lot of credit; there is zero chance that Chris and I would have finished such a large undertaking without their prodding, and they gave us a really excellent technical editor.
[1] Actually, I think I said "My English skills are presidential." At the time, George W Bush was our leader.
[+] [-] asanwal|15 years ago|reply
In terms of money from book sales, it is no Harry Potter but it's done well for a book with a very specific demographic of corporate types. From a larger business perspective, it's brought me opportunities for paid speaking engagements with the likes of the World Bank and companies/conferences throughout the US and Europe. And resulted in consulting opportunities and opened the door as being a "published author" does have some cache at times.
We actually created a training simulation/game (facilitated in-person) based on principles in the book which has done very well.
Book link - http://amzn.to/jp0Xf8 Portfolio Management Game - http://www.portfoliomanagementgame.com/
[+] [-] dctoedt|15 years ago|reply
1. When You Sign a Business Contract: A Final Pre-Flight Checklist. http://goo.gl/2PbFM This is a $9.99 PDF, downloadable from e-junkie.com. It lists five points that anyone who signs a contract should check to reduce the chance of personal liability, jail time, dangerous provisions, etc. The extensive notes contain numerous real-life stories. The five-point checklist itself and a link to buy the book are posted on my blog.
2. The Law and Business of Computer Software. http://goo.gl/OnqrO This was a treatise for lawyers, first published in 1990 and still in print. I stopped doing the annual updates about 10 years ago; another author's name is on the second edition.
[+] [-] thinkcomp|15 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Authoritas-Students-Admissions-Foundin...
It's self-published through my company, Think Computer Corporation, under the Think Press label.
The web-based version contains links on a page-by-page basis to primary source documents and is available free here:
http://www.aarongreenspan.com/authoritas.html
In case you're curious, my response to Peter Cooper's Amazon.com comment is here:
http://www.aarongreenspan.com/cooper.txt
[+] [-] jasonb05|15 years ago|reply
It's about algorithms drawn from the fields of Computational Intelligence, Metaheuristics, and Biologically Inspired Computation and is intended as a reference for research scientists, engineers as well as a bootstrap for interested amateurs. Each algorithm has sample code in Ruby. I wrote it out of frustrations I had as a PhD student in not having a consistent "little black book of algorithms" for my field.
[+] [-] xpaulbettsx|15 years ago|reply
http://www.apress.com/microsoft/wpf/9781430237471
It's a lot of work, but it's worth it - I've been working with this technology (Rx) for two years now and I think it's a huge step forward yet very few people understand it. The book will help bring Rx to the masses which is definitely exciting.
[+] [-] chromatic|15 years ago|reply
http://onyxneon.com/
[+] [-] fakelvis|15 years ago|reply
I'll soon be starting to blog on the topic at http://winepsychology.com (subscribe if it's something you might like) and will be using that format to structure my thoughts and the material for the book.
I have no ideas of grandeur (i.e. making money or even being traditionally published), just a desire to create a long form collection of information that is hopefully accessible and enjoyable to a wider audience.
I'll look at self-publishing closer to completion and how to market and track my progress throughout. Hopefully this will spawn some good HN-worthy posts, too. Wish me luck!
[+] [-] swalberg|15 years ago|reply
I don't think I've got another book in me. For now I enjoy writing technical articles, mostly for IBM developerWorks. See http://seanwalberg.com for the list of articles.
[+] [-] donnfelker|15 years ago|reply
Not a day job.
Do consulting and bootstrapping work as my main source of income.
[+] [-] jng|15 years ago|reply
http://www.keenzo.com/showproduct.asp?ID=2328952
I wish I had written it in English, it would have helped 10 times as many people and opened 10 times as many doors. Money would have been better too.
I'm writing other stuff now, but it's fiction and as of yet unpublished (and unattempted to). In due time.
[+] [-] renkeyes|15 years ago|reply
Writing a chapter is quite a bit of work, so a book must be quite an undertaking. I feel that it's worth doing, though. Writing anything -- a design spec, an email, a story from your past, etc -- forces you to coalesce and clarify thoughts that have floating around your brain. I gained new perspective on events that I thought I had a complete handle on years earlier.
BT: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596518028
[+] [-] rinkjustice|15 years ago|reply
My second book is Economtricks: http://goo.gl/Fd8tW took only a year to write. I got some things off my chest. Not as rewarding, financially or personally.
[+] [-] kalid|15 years ago|reply
I've written more about the numbers and process here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870015
The parent thread by Peter Cooper is very interesting too: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=869106
[+] [-] jasonshen|15 years ago|reply
http://www.stanford.edu/~jashen/home.html http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/stanford-spirit/448066