> I had been approached many times by tech publishers to write books from scratch, but I never found the process and economics attractive.
You might want to consider writing the book on leanpub, and then talking to a traditional publisher to adopt the book. At least that's my plan for https://leanpub.com/perl6 (a publisher has approached me, though it's currently in a too early stage, so we've deferred further discussions until version 1 of the manuscript is ready).
> Some of my biggest wins were the books I didn't write. LeanPub has a feature where you can cobble together a book title and a cover image, and it creates a landing page that collects emails from interested readers.
I believe you need to create a book on leanpub for that, which now costs USD$99. Not terribly much, but a certain threshold that prevents me from just throwing out ideas like this.
Yes, that is a new "feature." However, IIRC, once you reach a certain threshold of royalties, the $99 is waived. So,if I were starting today, I still wouldn't pay it because my very first book would get me over the threshold.
Now I had the benefit of having written a blog, so I had material and an audience. But these are important things to have even if you don't pay $99 to publish a book.
If you want to write a book, or start a software side-project, it is enormously helpful to "prime the pump" by building your brand a little. Speak at conferences, write a blog, be a thoughtful contributor on social media sites where your eventual customers go for help.
If you do those things, you needn't worry about the $99 for your first book, or whatever fee some captive app market charges you, &c.
Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, but online reputations can be built over time by plugging away, a little like gold-mining in MMORPGs...
I just checked my royalties. When I wrote CoffeeScript Ristretto, I estimated that the market for JavaScript Allongé would be 10x as large.
Obviously the market for JavaScript was more than 10x as large, but there are way more JS books, and my particular style of writing seemed like it would fit the kind of early adopter who would use CoffeeScript in those days.
Looking at my royalties today, I see that all editions of JavaScript Allongé have generated approximately 6x as much in royalties as CoffeeScript Ristretto.
You could take the line that I should have sold way more JavaScript Allongé. Or, you could take the line that CoffeeScript Ristretto outsold my estimate.
For various reasons, I take the latter view: You can be surprisingly successful in a smaller market, with fewer competitors, that has a very "opinionated" or "early adopter" culture, compared to a mass market with many competitors and a wide variety of sub-cultures.
I had been approached many times by tech publishers to write books from scratch, but I never found the process and economics attractive.
Then I spotted LeanPub--quite possibly on HN--and I thought, "Hmmm, there is nearly zero barrier to entry." They accepted Markdown, and I already had my entire blog in Markdown on GitHub.
So I published a collection of essays (https://leanpub.com/shippingsoftware), and launched it with a "Show HN" style post, making the book free. LeanPub allows people to pay more if they want, and an amazing number of people paid more, I made $2,000 in one day just from being on the front page of HN.
I've written a few other books since then, but I firmly believe that writing is a side project, not my profession, so I make a lot less than other authors who really put their backs into it.
But I'm happy, and my readers are happy, and I get a little money every month from people I like.
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A few observations that may be valuable for other side-projects, whether media or software:
Some of my biggest wins were the books I didn't write. LeanPub has a feature where you can cobble together a book title and a cover image, and it creates a landing page that collects emails from interested readers.
Several times, I have created landing pages for books I was interested in writing and when I promoted the landing pages... Crickets. I didn't write those books.
Another thing that worked for me is that when I decided to write the original JavaScript Allongé (https://leanpub.com/javascriptallongesix), I was going to write my first long-form book from scratch. My previous books were collections of essays with additional linking and filler material.
I resolved to write a trial book first, so I wrote CoffeeScript Ristretto. I had a rough idea that the market for a CoffeeScript book was about 10% of the market for a JavaScript book, so I didn't have big expectations for revenue, but I figured I could gain experience writing the book and a lot of valuable feedback.
The secret was, when I then published JavaScript Allongé, it was basically the same book, just in JavaScript. The big differences had to do with the differences between CoffeeScript and javaScript, obviously, but most of the chapters were identical.
I found this process was a really big win, when JavaScript Allongé first hit, it was already refined by all the feedback I got from CoffeeScript Ristretto. If I was doing a software side project, I might take the same approach: Start in a smaller market where I can refine the software and business, then repurpose into the target market.
JM2C, YMMCV, &c.