Comment by redsymbol
1 day ago
I had written and self-published three books, and in 2024 decided to publish the most successful one with O'Reilly. It went up for sale in December 2024.
The whole experience was wonderful. I had basically none of the problems that this fellow experienced with his publisher, and I am delighted about how it went.
I did some things differently. For one, I had already been selling the book on my own for a few years, and was essentially on the 3rd self-published edition. Because of this, they were able to see what the almost-finished product was.
I told them I would not make massive changes to the book, nor would I contort it to the AI trend (the book barely mentions AI at all), and they never pressured me once.
Their biggest contribution was their team of editors. This book has code on just about every page. I had 3 technical editors go through it, finding many bugs. How many? Let's just say "plenty".
And the feedback from the non-technical editors was, to my surprise, even more valuable. Holy crap, I cannot express to you how much they improved the book. There were several of these folks (I had no idea there were so many different specialties for editors), and all of them were great.
(They also accepted my viewpoint when I disagreed with them, immediately, every time. The final published version of the book was 100% my own words.)
From all of that, I made improvements on what must have been almost every page, and rewrote two chapters from scratch. I also added a new chapter (I volunteered for it, no one at any point pressured me to do that). The result was making a book that IMO is at least twice as good as what I was able to accomplish on my own.
I do not resonate with the article author's comments about compensation. He negotiated a pretty good deal, I think; it's not realistic to get much better than what he did, since the publisher is a business with their own expenses to pay, etc.
I was pretty disciplined about meeting deadlines that we agreed to for certain milestones. That helped my relationship with the publisher, obviously.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I am glad I did it this way.
Reading the article, it sounds like my publisher (oreilly) was better to work with than his, but I think he could have done some things differently also. In the end, though, I agree with him that it was best to walk away in his situation.
There's a reason that ORA have huge credibility in technical publishing, and have for decades: a reliably good product.
That was definitely my experience.
Did they let you choose the animal to appear on the cover?
Haha good question. No, but I did not ask; I wanted to give them as much freedom as I could bear on aspects of the process I was not too attached to, so I let them pick.
I will say I was very happy with the animal they came up with! If I was not, I would have asked them to change it, and I bet they would have. They showed me a preview version early on, so there would have been plenty of time to do so.
I’ve published several books with them. Only once I asked and they managed to find the beast. They didn’t promise but they did deliver.
That's great! I am not surprised.
I'm almost certain I know the publisher he's talking about in the blog post, and I can see why it didn't work out. You have to be willing to be open to feedback while also being able to push back on that feedback. You also have to accept that you are committed to certain outcomes.
The publisher he worked with will push you but also make a better book in the end. You have to be willing to do your part.
(Not naming the publisher because I don't want to out myself.)
That's interesting, thanks for sharing this. Yes, I can see that as a big part of the value a publisher can add, in making the book better.
Thanks for sharing your story, I was going to ask what book it was, but it is appropriately linked in your bio.
Yep, linked there for anyone who is curious! Given the topic, I was concerned they might push me to stuff AI into it, but like I said they did not do that at all.