There are three immortals in ancient times, the so-called morality, meritorious service, and proposition. If a programmer publishes a book of his own, it may be too lofty if it is said to be a lie, but it is also considered an elegant thing in the end.
Publishing books does not actually make money, and the cycle from writing to finally getting the money is not short. But if a programmer has a technical book of his own, he can at least prove himself well in the interview, and gradually accumulate his own reputation in the industry, and he can have a lot of confidence in the interview and other things. In this article, I will combine my own experience and the pits I have stepped on to talk to you about programmers publishing books.
1 Author's remuneration income and time required for publication
Let's talk about the benefits of publishing the book and the price that needs to be paid. Let's not talk about the "intangible assets brought by the publication of the book". Let's talk about the real money and silver for the author's remuneration.
If you contact the publisher directly, the general author’s remuneration is a royalty, which is 8% of the book price multiplied by the number of prints (or the actual number of sales). If you are a big cow, you can increase it in the past, but the general royalties are estimated to be 10%. To 12%. Please note that the price here is the full price of the book, not the discounted price.
For example, the full price of a book is 70 yuan, and it is sold at a 30% discount on Jingdong and other places. Then the royalty is 8% of 70 yuan. That is to say, the author can get a profit of 5.6 when selling a book. Of course, you will need it after you get it. Tax deductions.
At the same time, please also note that the contract stipulates whether the payment method of the author's remuneration is the number of prints or the number of actual sales. I talked with the publisher. Generally, it is the number of prints. What is the difference? Nowadays, computer books are generally first printed 2500 copies, so the actual amount of money received is 70*8%*2500, of course, tax deduction is also required. But if it is calculated according to the actual sales quantity, if the first print only sold 1,800 copies, then the money must be calculated according to this quantity.
Nowadays, a 300 book is generally priced at around 70. If you calculate the royalties at 8% and 2500 copies, the pre-tax income is 14,000, and the after-tax estimate is about 12,000. For novice authors, 300 books will take at least 8 months to write From this, everyone can calculate the average monthly income, which is actually 1,500 monthly income, which is really not much.
I dare not talk about the situation of others, but after I publish the book, what other benefits will I have besides the remuneration?
1 In the current and previous company interviews, after telling the interviewer that I have published a book in related areas, the interviewer will directly think that I am very senior, which has saved me a lot of things.
2 I'm still doing offline training, so I just use the python book I recently published as a textbook, so I don't need to prepare for lessons.
3 Talking about projects with others, I can use my book to prove my technical prowess. If it is the first time to deal with others, then this kind of proof can be effective.
Especially for the first point, in fact, for some small companies or some expatriate development positions, if the candidate has published a book in this area, they may even be admitted directly without an interview. I have interviewed an expatriate from a large company before. Gang, has received this kind of treatment.
2 The time point of payment of the author's remuneration and the income after printing
I directly contacted the publishing house to publish the book. The time point for payment of the author's remuneration is generally to get a part of the first-print part of the remuneration (specifically 50% to 90%) within 3 months after the first printing, and then after the book is published One year later, I will get other part of the remuneration. There are a lot of books at the moment. It’s good to be able to sell off the first printed volume, but there are also many books that can be reprinted, even the second and third editions. Generally, the royalties for the additional copies will be half a year after the reprinting. Settle within one year.
From the point of time of payment of the author's remuneration, there will indeed be a delay for the author. In addition, the author's remuneration is not high. Compared with the hard work of the author, publishing a book is really not a matter of making money, and the cycle of taking money is still long. If, on the one hand, the staff of an individual book company is not helpful to the author during the publishing stage, on the other hand, they have to make a difference in the price.
3 What you see and hear when dealing with book companies
Before communicating with the editor of the publishing house, I also communicated with the staff of the book company. Many of the staff also respected me. Although the communication was not in-depth, it was considered polite. However, in the end, I did not publish the book through the book company, which is also a pity in comparison with the conditions such as the remuneration given by the publisher. Below I give some specific experiences.
1 I often receive messages from some book company staff in blogs and other places, asking if they want to publish books. Generally, I don't ask, they will not say that they are editors of publishing houses or staff of book companies. The staff of some book companies will tell authors, especially novice authors, that "publishing editors generally don't directly contact authors" and "book publishing is generally through book companies". In fact, these words can’t be wrong. For example, if you don’t contact the editor of the publishing house, then the other party will naturally not contact you directly. On the contrary, if the author directly contacts the editor of the publishing house, the first is not difficult, and the second may be more direct.
2 When I communicated the outline with the publishers, even if the outline was inadequate, they could directly give specific suggestions for amendments, such as what should be written in a certain chapter and how should the outline of a certain section be written. When I exchanged the outline with the staff of a certain book company, most of the feedback I got was "to rewrite". How to rewrite? These staff members may only give abstract opinions, and I have to figure out everything by myself. In my previous blog post How a programmer published a technical book , I gave specific experiences.
3 Due to the lack of deep communication, I have not signed a book publishing agreement with the book company, but I know that only publishers can publish books. Since I have never experienced it, I don’t know if the book company has clauses such as evasion risk in the contract, but I have seen some rejection cases given by a book company staff member, and vaguely revealed the blame for the author. meaning. It doesn’t feel right to think carefully. First, the docking staff cannot find out the problem in time and give feedback to the author. Second, fail to coordinate and eventually reject the manuscript after the problem occurs. Third, after the manuscript is rejected, the author is in In the case of labor, the book company does not have to bear any risk, and can also accuse the author. In this regard, the rejection of the manuscript certainly has the author's factor, but I am also the author, but I have a sad talk about the rabbit and the fox.
When I published a book in a publishing house, sometimes the editor would even take the initiative to care about the material, even if there was a problem, he would revise it as soon as possible, so even a large-scale revision of the manuscript did not appear.
4 Let me talk about the author's remuneration from the book company. I have seen paying money per page, such as a page of 30 to 50, and selling off the copyright, that is, the author can no longer get remuneration after the book is reprinted. If it is paid on royalties, I have also seen it give 6%. As for the book company can Whether it is 8 points or higher, I haven't seen it before, so I don't know, and I dare not make it.
There are not many staff in the book company that I have communicated with, and the exchanges are not deep, because I mainly communicate with the editors of the publishing house. So the above is just my feelings about the editors of individual book companies. I don't intend to generalize, and the staff of some book companies I have communicated with me at least respect me in attitude. So you can compare and try different ways of cooperating with book companies and publishers. In any case, before you write the book or even sign the agreement, you need to ask the following things clearly, and the other party is obliged to let you know the following facts.
1 You have to ask clearly whether the identity of the other party is a publishing house editor or a staff member of a book company. This should actually be the other party's initiative to tell.
2 Which publisher is your book published in? This point needs to be clearly stated in the book publishing agreement, and it cannot be finalized before finalizing the publishing house. Moreover, it must be the publisher, not the book company, that can publish the book in the end.
3 The payment method of author's remuneration, even if the book company may make a price difference, but at least you have to understand the author's remuneration that the publisher can give. If you publish a book through a book company, no matter how the book company talks to you, the publisher will not give less money to the book company, and the middle part should be the book company’s profits.
4 Whether the book company or the publisher will finally sign the book publishing contract with you, this must be understood before you sign. Even if you end up signing the agreement with the book company, you must at least know that you can still directly sign the agreement with the publisher .
5 You should not have the idea of "low book publishing requirements at a book company", let alone the idea of "I have average abilities, so I can only publish books at a book company". Book companies themselves are not qualified to publish books, so they will also hand over manuscripts to publishers, so the requirements are not low at all. Your syllabus cannot be passed on the publisher’s editor side, and the book company’s staff can’t pass it either. Even if you ask for a low remuneration, the book company’s corresponding requirements will certainly not be lowered.
If you know the "differences between book companies and publishers" and still cooperate with book companies, this is a matter of wishful thinking. But if the other party "does not take the initiative to inform", and you cooperate with the book company without understanding the difference between the two, then the other party is also blameless. However, if you listen to it, you can compare it with publishing houses and book companies if you want to publish a book.
4 How to directly contact the editors of well-known domestic computer book publishers
I have published books at Tsinghua University Press, Mechanical Industry Press, Peking University Press, and Electronic Industry Press. The publishing process is relatively smooth, and dealing with editors is more enjoyable. I personally have no intention of dividing domestic publishing houses into three or sixty-nine categories, but in the computer industry, there are four well-known publishing houses, Tsinghua University, Mechanics, Electronics Industry, and People Post. Of course, other publishing houses have also published fine books on computers. .
How to deal directly with the editors of these well-known publishing houses?
1 Go directly to the official website, generally there are direct contact information on the official website.
2 If you publish an article in the blog garden and other places, someone will ask you to publish a book. In addition to the staff of the book company, there are also publishers editors. The editors of general publishers will directly state their identity. For example, I am the editor of xx publishing house. .
3 I have also contacted the editors of some publishing houses. If you want, I can give it.
How do I find the staff of the book company? Generally, you don’t need to take the initiative to find it. After you publish a few blog posts, they will take the initiative to find you. If you ask carefully, "Are you an editor of a publishing house or a book company", they will show your identity. If you ask about it again, they may explain the difference between the publishing house and the book company from the standpoint of the book company.
You can see from this, whether you eventually write a book or not, it is not difficult to find an editor from a well-known publishing house. And, after you find it, they will further communicate with you about the topic.
5 The process of selecting topics and publishing the book
Here is the flow of the final book publishing between me and the publisher’s editors.
First, after contacting the editor of the publishing house, discuss the topic first. You can choose a direction you are more familiar with, or a direction you are willing to specialize in. This direction can be java distributed components, Spring cloud family bucket, microservices, or It is python data analysis, machine learning or deep learning, etc. In this regard, if you have solid project experience, it is best. If you are unfamiliar at the moment, but you have the perseverance to make sure that the content you write can be systematic or help others through a short period of systematic study, then you can also be in this area. Published books.
Second, after setting the direction of the topic, you can list the outline first. For example, taking python data analysis as an example, you can set 12 chapters. The first chapter talks about grammar, the second chapter talks about numpy classes, etc., and so on. When you set the outline, you can refer to the catalog of other people's books to formulate your writing content. After setting the outline, you can communicate with the editor, and when the editor also approves the outline, you can make a publishing agreement.
For the average author, the publishing agreement is actually similar. The remuneration is usually 8 points. The writing cycle is negotiated with the publisher, and the payment cycle may be similar. Then the publisher will buy out the copyright of the book's electronic and various texts. But if the author is a big cow, then these details can be negotiated with the publisher.
Then there is writing books, which is very boring, especially when writing the last few chapters. I usually spend half an hour a day on weekdays and 4 or 5 hours on two weekends and weekends, so that I can usually write a 300-page book in half a year. The skills of efficient book writing will be mentioned in detail later.
When writing a book, it is generally recommended to hand it over to the editor for review every time a chapter is written, so that it will not cause too much problem. Moreover, if you are a novice author, you need to accumulate the initial wording and writing skills, so that the publisher’s The editor can also help the author in time at the beginning.
After you finish writing the manuscript and submit it to the editor, there may be three proofreading and three reviews. The editor who cooperates with me will help me correct grammar and typos, and then form a revised opinion for me to confirm and revise. I understand that if the book is published by a book company, the risk of rejection generally occurs at this stage, because the book company may submit the manuscript to the publishing house at one time. But because I will submit each chapter directly to the publisher for review, so even if there are major problems, they have been exposed and revised when writing the first few chapters, so the final revision opinions are generally not too long. That is to say, if you communicate directly with the publisher, the workload may not be large in the third review stage of the third school. I usually do this after submitting a book, and then I continue to plan and start writing. a book.
The last thing is to get the remuneration. I have done it before. In fact, the author should not have too much expectation on the remuneration, that is, it is better than nothing. But if you accidentally write a best-selling book with a sales volume of 5,000 or even 10,000, you may have an extra income of 50,000 or so within a year, and you can accumulate some fame in the industry.
6 Publishing case books is faster than publishing experience books
For some authors, especially novice authors, it is not easy to publish books. They are often motivated in the first few chapters, and later found that the problems accumulate more and more, and if they are busy with work, they will not stop, or use more than 1 year. Time to complete a book. In this regard, my feeling is that the longest writing cycle of a 300 to 400 book is 8 months, if it exceeds this time. In order to be able to complete a book within this time period, my corresponding advice is that novice authors can write case books instead of writing experience books first.
What is a case book? For example, a large case is used throughout a book to introduce a knowledge point systematically, such as small program development, or full-stack development. Or put one case per chapter in a book, and give about 10 python deep learning cases in a book. What is an experience book? For example, the interview books I wrote before belong to this, or some books written by technical experts that introduce the experience of distributed high-concurrency development.
Please note that the difference between the two types of books is not distinguished here, but for novice authors, case books are easy to write. Because in it, more is to look at pictures and talk, first give a case (such as the image recognition case in python deep learning), and then introduce the usage of the API (such as the usage of the python corresponding library) through the case, and the comprehensive key points of the technology ( For example, how to use the python library to comprehensively realize the image recognition function). In addition, there are few points in the case book that require the author to exert subjectively, and the author does not need to use his own words to organize relevant experience. For novice authors, when organizing the text to introduce the experience, they may feel that they understand but cannot say it. On the one hand, the expected effect cannot be achieved, and on the other hand, the progress may be delayed due to the inability to effectively express it.
But on the contrary, for case books, the first case can generally learn from others, the second is easier to introduce the existing technology than to introduce your own experience, and the third is generally that there are similar books for the author's reference, so the author does not need to consider the wording. , It is possible for novice authors to write a book in half a year to eight months. After the author has accumulated a certain amount of experience by writing a few books, he will then challenge the experience books. In this case, the written experience books may sell well.
So specifically, how to efficiently produce a case book?
1 For the entire book, a few chapters are used to introduce the content of the environment and general basic grammar.
2 When writing each chapter case, use the structure of the total score. First, give a general introduction to the required functions of your case and the technical points to be used, then separately introduce the code implementation of each function point, and finally summarize it. Key points for the use of these function points.
3 When introducing the specific code in the case, you can also use the structure of the total score, that is, first introduce the structure of this code in general, and then give an explanation of the key codes, and finally give the running effect and summarize the technology. Realize the essentials.
In this case, it can be a chapter one month at the beginning, and it is estimated that two chapters can be written in one month after being proficient in the later. In this way, it is not impossible to complete a book in eight months.
7 How to avoid copyright issues based on reference to existing content
When writing a book, you generally need to refer to existing codes and existing books, but this is by no means duplication of work. For example, an author integrated multiple cases on different websites, and then systematically described the python data analysis, so that although there are ready-made materials, for readers, they can learn one-stop. Similarly, in terms of python neural network, the existing 2 and 3 books respectively give several cases such as face recognition, but if you integrate them effectively, and add your functions on the basis of others, then It is also valuable to readers.
This involves copyright issues. First of all, the author should not have any illusions. If there is a copyright issue, the book is not published. If it has been published, the author will not only lose money, but also have a bad reputation in the industry. , Can be described as ruined. But it is not difficult at all to avoid copyright issues.
1 Don't plagiarize the existing content on the Internet, not even a single sentence. In this regard, the author can rewrite it on the basis of understanding the meaning of other people's sentences.
2 Don't copy the existing catalog in other books, let alone copy the words in other books, the same sentence will not work, the corresponding solution is also to rewrite on the basis of understanding.
3 Don't copy other people's code on github or anywhere, even if the code is open source. In this regard, you can first run the link on the basis of understanding the other party's code, and then you must create a new project by yourself, and refer to other people's code in your project to implement your function. You can't copy and paste large sections in this process. operating. That is to say, your code and other people's code cannot have the same place in comments, variable naming, class name and method name. Of course, you can also add your own functions.
4 As for writing technical and case introductions, you can use your own words so that there will be no copyright issues.
After using the above method, the author can fully add the functions that belong to you on the basis of referring to the existing materials, and write your unique understanding, so as to efficiently publish your own books.
8 Issues that novice authors need to focus on avoiding
In the above, the book publishing process is given in detail, and the specific study methods are given through case books. Here, especially for novice authors, some practical points that need to be paid attention to are given.
1 Technical books are different from literary books, in which one must first make sure that the skills and knowledge points are clearly stated, and then on this basis, some interesting and vivid words can be added appropriately. Therefore, for novice authors, they can even directly introduce case techniques in plain text without having to consider the vividness of the text too much.
2 The content needs to be aimed at beginners. When introducing technology, start from the most basic zero foundation, don't talk too deeply. Taking Python machine learning as an example, we can start with what machine learning is and how python implements machine learning, but if you first talk about the practical experience in machine learning, you may not be able to ensure that beginners can learn it.
3 Novice authors can't wait to write everything they know. This attitude is very good, but you need to consider the reader's objective acceptance level, so you need to set an expected effect before writing the book. For example, a zero-based python developer can at least work after reading my book. This expected effect is not feasible, for example, it cannot be "a zero-based python developer can reach the level of 3 years of development after reading my book". In this way, you can formulate the content of writing according to the pre-determined effect, and you can focus more on the basic knowledge in your book, so that readers can have real gains.
But having said that, if the novice author directly contacts the publisher's editor, finds a hot spot, and carefully explains the technology based on the case, it is even possible to write a bestseller with over 10,000 sales.
9 Summary: Publishing a book in a well-known domestic publishing house is actually an individual effort
It may be that the current methods of writing official accounts and recording videos are more profitable than publishing books. However, it can be said that operating official accounts and recording videos is also a long-term matter, and there may not necessarily be profits in a short period of time. If you don’t publish content systematically, you may not even benefit from it. So publishing a book may be a very good preparatory work. You rely on the book publishing system to accumulate material, and rely on the book to integrate your knowledge system. Then, on this basis, relying on the official account or video recording to make money may be twice the result with half the effort.
As you can see from the above, in the early stage of publication, it is not difficult to contact the editor of the publishing house and choose the topic. If you want to write a case book, it may not be too high to finish writing a general book based on the content of others. Unattainable things. It can even be said that publishing a book is an individual effort. As long as you persevere, it is not difficult to publish a book. It is just a question of whether you are willing to persevere. But once you have your own technical book, when you are looking for a job, you can confidently say to the interviewer that you are an expert in this area, and in your video, official account and text, you can also be honest Say, you are the author of computer books. More importantly, like the experience of famous schools and large factories, the technical books that belong to you are also important evidences to prove the ability of programmers. When you have effectively integrated the knowledge system of relevant aspects through the publication of books, then in this regard, no matter what If you are looking for a job, or doing private work, or taking on a project, you can confidently say to others: I can do it!