Expert needed - McGraw-Hill professional technical book author/contributor

How many copies would you expect to sell in, say, the first five years, and what would be the ballpark revenue to the author?

John

Having read (read 'scanned') and been so sorely dissapointed with so many books advertised with ballsy marketing phrases such as "cutting edge" and "emerging", I have now concluded (with benefit of infinite wisdom), that books in the traditional sense of being a labour of love, joyously written over a number of years by a literate real author with a real need to share their hard won knowledge and enlighten the world (just a little), no longer exist. "Authors" they now are not, just cut and paste experts, assemblers of second rate text, poor diagrams and obscure analysis. Like rap, this stuff could even be assembled near randomly by computer.

10 weeks, at least 800 pages, a lot of white space and hey-presto! another 'learned' textbook to be bought at a ridiculous price by the institutes and libraries. A few big drinks for the publisher, a few scraps for the 'author' and then off to the pulpers and landfills. john

Thanks for your post, Victoria, but you should know that there are plenty of experts here in the specific topics you mention, but most are not likely to respond.

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 Thanks,
    - Win

Thanks Win. Your manners are much appreciated.

A suggestion: Rather than (or perhaps in addition to) trolling the newsgroups looking for volunteers, go looking for likely victims (er -- authors) and contact them. I was recruited at the Embedded Systems Conference, because I was giving a talk. My editor-to-be asked if I had thought of writing a book -- and dangit if I didn't have a table of contents already prepared.

Find folks with well-written, on-topic web sites, or who are giving well-constructed, on-topic talks, or who write good, cognizant posts on topics you may wish to publish. Then ask them if they're interested in writing a book.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google?  See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

Mine's only been out for a few weeks, but everyone I talk to with any experience tells me that I won't recover my effort in royaltie checks (although they may buy more than a coffee). I'm hoping that it'll lead to more business, but if not then I've at least done my bit for explaining a corner of human knowledge in (hopefully) a bit more accessible way than has been done to date.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google?  See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

On 18 Apr 2006 21:34:54 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@mfx.net wrote in Msg.

Only his manners?

robert

Wait till I tell my mom.

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 Thanks,
    - Win

The publishers are in the business to make a profit and that means popular acceptance of their product. The keyword here is popular. If the book is too challenging or not entertaining enough for the readers, they will trash it in the customer reviews and sales will fall. This is especially true of textbooks intended for additional reading or self-learning. The end result is that the products with the most superficial presentation and content win the market. You will always have the high-end super specialized market, but the volume is apparently so small these books are pushing close to $200 average.

I was in the college textbook racket...I mean business for a number of years. Although not in electronics, the books I worked on were basically rehashing of other books; they were overpriced; and you could get the same information on the internet. There is a movement about to lower college textbook prices. It is gaining a lot of momentum; if you want to learn about it, check out my blog:

Fred Bloggs wrote:

Yeah. Vic chooses to not address my question. I suspect that the deal is that her company gets the money, and you get to furnish the work and the "strong promotional platform" (ie, do the marketing for them as well) for the honor of being a "published author."

It's almost as bad as the scientific journals gig, where *you* pay

*them* to have your paper published.

John

I like Hans Camenzind's approach with his IC design book -- it's available freely as an eBook, or you can get the printed copy on Amazon for all of $22 hardback/$16 paperback. His book is perhaps not as "high-end" as something like Zverev (hardcover new $285!!! -- but at least paperback is $70) or Matthaei, Young & Jones ($139 hardcover), but it still demonstrates the point that technical books don't *have* to be spendy.

I imagine that Tim's new book would have a price tag considerably higher than $60 if he had published through someone like McGraw-Hill, Wiley, Cambridge Press, or Artech House rather than Newnes. I've seen some truly awful books from Newnes that really never should have been published, but I'm willing to accept that if it means the really good books are considerably cheaper than going with the "big boys."

I do find it somewhat entertaining that authors such as Rudolf Graf and Joeseph Carr (and, if we shift to computers rather than electronics, Herbert Schildt) seem to manage to get what's often more or less the same material published over and over again in different books! Those guys can sure crank out pages...