出版与作家生涯2020martin.kleppmann.com编辑精选
写书：值得吗？
Writing a book: is it worth it?
导读
Martin Kleppmann（《设计数据密集型应用》作者）复盘写书到底值不值：金钱回报低、耗时极长，但带来了可见度、信任和职业机会。几位有出书经验的评论者补充了类似的账本——书本身几乎不赚钱，却像一张长期有效的名片。对写作者来说，这是一份难得的"投入产出"现实清单，帮你判断该为什么而写。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把写书当成建立可信度和职业机会的投资，而不是收入来源；版税往往只占书价的很小一部分。
- 02
写作过程中为了讲清楚而做的"功课"会让自己的知识翻倍——教是最好的学。
- 03
技术书很容易过时，动笔前就要想好它能否长期作为参考书存在，而不只是追赶当下热点。
- 04
如果写长文总是拖延，可以先从论坛答疑这类低门槛写作入手，把已有的输出整理成博客或书。
HN 评论精选
写书收益主要是声誉与机会，金钱回报低且不稳定。
我写过 8 本机器人方面的书。好处：在社区里非常显眼、带来咨询项目、有版税（被动收入）、开会时被人认出来、收到好大学的访学研究邀请、磨练出耐心、写书要做的功課让知识翻倍，还有成为作者的自我满足。坏处：非常耗时、需要全职投入、版税很低（只有书价的 17%）、书很容易被免费下载、技术书很快过时可能得写新版、靠书赚大钱像中彩票，只有少数人能做到。
lentinjoseph查看英文原文
I'm an author of 8 books in Robotics. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from this. Pros 1) Great visibility in the robotics community 2) Started getting good consulting projects 3) Started getting Royalties(Passive income) 4) People start identifying me in conferences 5) Got the invitation to do research in good universities 6) Got good patience which is very useful while working with the robots 7) Knowledge also doubled (I have to do a lot of homework in order to write things in the book). 8) Self-satisfaction to became an author Cons 1) Time consuming 2) Need full-time dedication 3) Royalties are very low (only 17% of the book price) 4) Books will easily come online for free download. This will definitely demotivate us to write another book. 5) Books will outdate very easily (Technical books), so you may have to update it by writing a new edition. 6) Getting good income from books is like getting a lottery. It will only happen to a few people. The list goes on. Just want to share my list of my books here https://robocademy.com/product-category/robotics/
论坛答疑式写作门槛低、产量大，关键是找到把它转化成正式作品的机制。
我大概花了几千小时在论坛上免费回答别人问题，因为这是我拖延的方式——今年我在 Rust 用户论坛发了 4000 多条帖子，在几个 Discord 求助频道发了 19000 条消息，现在大概是识别 Rust 小段代码错误的世界级专家。我真希望把这惊人的写作量导流成博客或书，但不知道怎么做到：我的博客三年只发了一篇。写博客文章需要消耗精力，而在论坛上写却完全不用。高中时我也是这样泡在 math.stackexchange 上的。
aliceryhl查看英文原文
I have spent probably thousands of hours writing random responses helping people on forums, just because its the thing that I do to procrastinate. For example, this year I wrote more than 4000 posts on https://users.rust-lang.org/ and 19000 messages on the help channels in a few Discord servers. I'm probably the world expert at spotting the mistake in small snippets of Rust code at this point. I honestly wish I was able to channel this incredible amount of writing into blog posts or a book, but I don't know how. My blog has had one post in the last three years. Writing a blog post just takes energy in a way that writing on forums simply does not. It's always been this way too. For example, in high school, I spent the time on https://math.stackexchange.com/.
出书是一种高信噪比的能力证明，回报体现在机会而非稿酬。
作者提到了一点，但没展开：面试时能直接说"这个主题的书是我写的"，价值巨大。能跨过让出版社接受你、把印着你名字的书印出来这道坎，本身就是极强的信号。我以前团队里有几个出过书的人，他们都很优秀，不断接到其他工作机会、甚至被邀约再写书。他们都说书本身除了最初那笔（不到五位数、不多的）预付金之外没赚到钱，按小时算还不如去快餐店打工，但它打开了很多门，至少让他们在小范围内成了"网络名人"。
kevstev查看英文原文
He kind of touches upon it, but there is a lot of value in being able to go into an interview and literally being able to say about a topic "I wrote the book on it." It's a tremendous signal to have overcome the hurdles of getting a publisher to accept you and print your book with your name on it. I used to have several guys on my team that had published books- and they were great, and were constantly getting contacted about other jobs, and even to write other books. They all said the actual book itself made them no money beyond their initial (small-hardly five figure) advance, and in terms of dollars per hour they probably would have been better off getting a fast food job, but it opened up a lot of doors and made them at least a little bit "internet famous."
好的技术书要同时服务两类读者：老手当参考，新手当基础。
Martin 在《设计数据密集型应用》上的心血配得上每一分钱。有经验的工程师可以把它当参考手册随手查，你也可以把它交给聪明的初级工程师，给他们打下很好的基础。说实话，这是我拥有过的最好的技术书。
alextheparrot查看英文原文
Martin deserves every penny of his hard-work on Designing Data Intensive Applications. Experienced engineers can easily use the book as a reference and you can give the book to smart junior engineers to give them a great foundation. Honestly, the best technical book I’ve ever owned.
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