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I have been contacted by a publisher about writing a book on "Kubernetes for developers"
It was someone from Packt Publishing. They came across various articles of mine, and open source contributions such as my tool to create clusters and asked if I would be interested in this.
I am tempted but it would probably take a ton of time and I've heard money is not great with technical books unless you publish them yourself.
What do you think? Has anyone of you done it?
Comments
TL;DR: I did, twice. Not worth it if you'd ask me. PMed the details.
Thanks for the PM
From the point of money, the ROI on writing technical books is not that much plus it does take a LOT of time. These days video courses (not a single video) and hands-on training are in higher demand I think, plus you can charge a higher fee.
Or you can scam them.
Just make the book title: "Kubernetes for developers"
And inside the book make the 1st page about yourself.
And the second page in bold letters write "DON'T USE KUBERNETES"
I would love to do some courses of Pluralsight and similar. I have 24 years of experience as dev and devops so I have a lot I could teach, but I am totally not confident recording video with audio and my Italian accent is not the best
Totally agree, hearing one's own voice is off-putting
, more than the viewers.
My main problem is lack of confidence with these things.... I even get nervous when I have to do presentations and demos at work
I lurk a lot but I have read several of your tutorials, especially the dokku ones, to be clear and is my go to documentation about dokku. I think you should give it writing a book a go, see what happens
Thanks for the kind words
I'd say go ahead and do it. You will learn a lot in the process.
If the contract is for a $xxxx book advance + royalties I'd go for it. If it's just for royalties... nah.
@vitobotta I have written 2 books for Packt. It was 5 years ago. You will receive about $2000 for your 6 months worth of writing. I was co-author with another guys. If you write the book along then it will be $4000 but it may take a year to finish. That money is advance money for the royalties. If your book is awesome, you can still earn money for many years after. My books are suck but still receive a few dollars per month after 5 years.
My advice is that you should contact Manning or O'Reilly if you want to spend time on the book. Packt has bad reputation for bad quality control. A book with Manning or O'Reilly worths more money
I'd have expected this as a post title: How many times have publishers contacted you to publish a book on Kubernetes?
i would take it. Learn as i go along. Just be time realistic and evaluate progress.
good luck with it.
Someone suggested to me I try with LeanPub instead. The author gets the 80%, so it's a massive difference.