Foojay Podcast #67: Writing a book and fame and fortune!

Let me share a personal story. I started experimenting with Java on a Raspberry Pi about five years ago and blogged a few articles about it. But the more I experimented, the more I wrote down, and eventually, I had written a book… I worked on it for six months in a row, every evening and a lot of weekends. But the moment I received the box with my author copies was an incredible feeling. Holding a paper book with your name is a special moment.

Fast forward to now. The 1000 paper copies are sold out. I have the last 10 copies in case you still want one 😉 But as I self-published the ebook, it’s still for sale on Leanpub, and I keep updating it. That’s one of the first significant differences between publishing a paper book and an ebook…. As an author, I got about 2 euros per paper book from the publisher, and LeanPub pays 80% royalties. Don’t forget that I have to pay taxes on what I earn. So, if you do the math, you’ll understand that the book didn’t make me rich. But yes, it helped me in my career and was one of the reasons I became a Java Champion. So, we can argue about the “becoming famous”.

But that’s only my story. I invited several guests to share their knowledge about book writing:

Marián Varga is finishing a book and tells about publishing a book with a publisher.
Wim Deblauwe wrote a few books and has much experience with self-publishing.
Len Epp is the co-founder of Leanpub, so he can tell us a lot about ebooks.
And we start with Trisha Gee, who wrote a lot of books!

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Guests

Trisha Gee

Len Epp

Wim Deblauwe

Marián Varga

Content

00:00 Introduction of the topic and guests

01:53 Books by Trisha Gee

02:24 Trisha’s motivation for writing books

04:13 Difference between publisher and self-publishing

09:53 Publishers are looking for authors and course creators

12:55 How long do you work on a book?

17:35 Can we expect a new book by Trisha?

21:00 Automating the writing process

24:50 Len Epp about Leanpub and how it started

27:18 On Leanpub, you can publish a book-in-progress

27:51 Different publishing processes with Leanpub

30:20 You can use LeanPub to generate your book, but you don’t need to sell it on Leanpub

32:57 80% of the selling price goes to the author

40:09 How to market your book

45:35 Let an expert handle the payments…

50:55 Books by Wim Deblauwe

51:45 Wim’s motivation for writing books

53:15 Earning back the time spent on the writing

54:37 How to sell paper books on Lulu

57:19 Tools used to write a book

58:34 Wim’s author-plans for the future

59:42 How the books influenced Wim’s career

01:00:02 Marián Varga about the topic of his book

01:03:07 Current status of the book

01:04:03 The book is a teamwork with a publisher

01:07:06 Organizing the work between multiple authors

01:09:17 Time worked on the book

01:10:40 Feedback from the community for the content

01:12:13 What Marián wants to achieve with the book

01:14:38 Conclusion

Foojay Podcast #67: Writing a book and fame and fortune!

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