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Book Authoring

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Awesome Book Authoring

A collection of Awesome resources for technical book authors.

Table of Contents

Must Reads

Scott Meyers' Advice to Prospective Book Authors
Writing A Technical Book: Is It Worthwhile?

Book Proposals

The Proposal (O'Reilly: So You Want to Write a Book?)
Scott Meyers' Advice on Preparing a Book Proposal
Write for Us (Pearson Education)
Drafting a Proposal (Que Publishing)
Anatomy of a TOC (Que Publishing)
Proposal Guidelines (The Pragmatic Programmers)

Contracts

Book Contract: What’s Negotiable and What’s Not
Scott Meyers' Advice on Contracts
The Contract (O'Reilly: So You Want to Write a Book?)
Apress Standard Contract
No Starch Press Standard Contract

Royalties, Advances, and Other Money Stuff

Scott Meyers on Royalties, Advances, and Other Money Stuff
Royalties and Advances (O'Reilly: So You Want to Write a Book?)
Writing A Technical Book: Is It Worthwhile?

The benefits for writing a technical book, and the basics of how book advances work.

How Book Advances Work – A Simple Explanation for Writers
Typical O'Reilly Advance Structure

Editors

Scott Meyers on the Importance of a Good Editor
The Editing Process and Editor Types (Que Publishing)
Writing and Editing (O'Reilly: So You Want to Write a Book?)

Publishers

Scott Meyers' Advice on Finding a Publisher

Marketing

Marketing Your Book (O'Reilly: So You Want to Write a Book?)

Misc.

Scott Meyers on Advance Sales, and How They Are Impacted by The Delivery Schedule
Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book?

A discussion on Hacker News where many authors discuss their experience.

List of Publishers

O’Reilly
Apress
The Pragmatic Programmers
Packt Publishing
Pearson (parent company for Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall Professional, Que, Sams, and more)
Que Publishing
Manning Publications
Wrox
No Starch Press

Self Publishing

Self vs Professional Publishing

The pros and cons of each, plus a look at many of the options available for self publishing.

Writing Workflows and Tooling

Living the Future of Technical Writing

Scott Chacon shares his workflow and tools for writing "Pro Git" in Asciidoc.

Personal Experiences, Post Mortems and Campfire Stories

Writing a Programming Book: FAQs after Writing Learning React Native
Do Not Buy This Book

Jeff Atwood's warning to potential writers.

Writing a Technical Book: Motivation, Publishing and how to stay focused without ruining your Life

Adam Tornhill shares experience gained writing his three books (two of them self published).

Writing a Technical Book

Michael Foord shares his experience publishing with Apress.

Tips for Writing a Programming Book