Comment by didip
1 day ago
You didn’t share the complete deal details but just from what you shared, it seems like the payout is not worth it for this big of an effort.
What if you self publish yourself using Amazon toolings? Will the numbers be worse? At least you will be in charge of your own quality and deadlines.
For most books, but technical non-fiction in particular, the payout isn't nearly worth enough for the effort.
And by "most" there I mean "all". Yes, there are exceptions, but those exceptions prove the rule.
I've written 2 technical books, for incredibly niche audiences, where the total number of potential buyers is numbered in the low thousands.
I self published as a PDF. and charge $200 a copy, of which I keep $200. It's -marginally- worth it. But the hourly rate is much lower than my day job.
The marketing benefit (as it affects my actual business in the same field) is likely real, but hard to measure. Still, having "written the book" opens doors, and brings credibility.
Disagree, a blog that gets tens of thousands of unique visitors could clear huge numbers on KDP. Maybe your niche is too narrow (probably, given your TAM is in the thousands) but this post is about "timeless programming projects" and is going to be extremely broad. The number of hits to the blog is itself an indicator of a very big and very eager potential market.
A mentor once told me, 'half of the effect of marketing is hard to measure, the other half you have no idea'
Do you have any links to your books? Can't see them in your profile.