Comment by Zigurd
7 days ago
I've been lead author and co-author on several books on programming. My first book sold tens of thousands of copies even though the writing was not just trash but a crime against humanity against anyone who had to read it. This was back in the day when the source code for the book was provided on request on a floppy, which was actually quite rigid because it was a Mac floppy.
My writing got better and better, and I got better publishers who actually hired editors, but the books sold fewer and fewer copies. Even crappy self-serving poorly written stackoverflow posts are often good enough. Then LLMs killed stackoverflow. Is that real ironic or Alanis ironic?
But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a book deal from OpenAI.
> My first book sold tens of thousands of copies even though the writing was not just trash but a crime against humanity against anyone who had to read it.
I’m sure I never read your book, but there is something cathartic about reading an admission like this. I have no doubt people got value out of your books, but I distinctly remember as a kid saving up to buy a couple expensive programming books from the bookstore and then being sorely disappointed in the way they were written. At the time I thought I was too young to understand adult writing, but when I went back to the books later as an adult it was obvious they were just written by amateurs. I still cherished them and learned a lot, but I will always remember the struggle of trying to follow along with what was probably some first-time writer’s attempt to learn how to write as they went along.
> Then LLMs killed stackoverflow.
I think the common consensus is that stackoverflow killed stackoverflow, quite a few years before LLMs became entrenched.
> But I'm not holding my breath waiting for a book deal from OpenAI.
Was this title eligible for class action status in the recent Anthropic scanning case? I know people who popped up on the list decades after writing obscure or forgotten technical titles. The estimated payout is $3k per title, usually split between publisher and author.
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2025/09/07/the-anthropic-set...
There was some specific thing about which ID number, not ISBN as I recall, your book had to have to be part of the settlement. Some of my books qualify some don't.
Copyright office registration. If you or your publisher didn't do it, you don't qualify. Some publishers, even big ones, were exposed as neglecting this basic step when the Anthropic case was settled.
I would check the settlement db just to make sure: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup
You may entitled to a share assuming the publisher registered with the class action and there is a copyright registration in your name.