It really is. I've been going through a fairly significant book revision the past few months. Of course it's been more work than I thought--even though I should have known better.

However, even though I'm making quite a few changes/additions including a new chapter, it's a lot easier to patch something that exists than starting with a blank page. The fact that I don't need to churn out a huge number of words lets me focus on the new material and refactoring as needed.

When I was an industry analyst, I used to joke that the effort to write something went up by something like the square of the page count. There are counter-examples but mostly I think it's at least somewhat true given that you need to sort of keep your head around the whole project.

I think that's true. If larger software projects need more time and resources than small ones (when comparing effort per LOC), I am pretty sure that with books it is the same.

And I agree with the blank page... The more of the book is written, the easier it gets (I think).

And if you are considering self-publishing outside of Amazon, there is a bunch more work to factor in. Some of the more successful self-pubbers I know say the sales/marketing takes more time than writing.

> It took an hour to read, I thought it would take an hour to write.

Also, "If I had more time, I would have made it shorter"