LOL. It's not quite as lucrative as all that. I calculate that if I write another two books (not counting the one that's in edit right now) and all of them continue to sell at the rate of the first one, the quarterly royalties will cover my rent. That's about six years' work, by the way.
Merely being an engineer is the ultimate sexual stimulant to all the members of the opposite sex that any engineer ought to care about. If I may quote from the introduction to my third book (and I think I may):
"Both online and in real life, almost every day I see people asking what they need to do in order to become embedded engineers. Some are new graduates, some are still college students, a few are teenagers in high school, and a large minority are hobbyists, hardware technicians or application-level programmers looking to improve their salary prospects and/or diversify their skills in order to avoid the twenty-first century plague of white-collar commoditization.
Why do so many people want to become embedded gurus? The obvious explanation is that young (and not-so-young) programmers and technicians are being lured by the glamorous, high-profile work, easy conditions, relaxed lifestyle and limitless wealth, delivered by adoring crowds, that only embedded engineering can provide. Since none of that last sentence is remotely true, however (I've been working in the field full-time for somewhat more than ten years, and I don't clearly recall the last time I was pelted with cash by an adoring crowd), I can only assume that there is some major marketing campaign in progress and it is drawing people to the embedded field.
This, of course, leads to an intractable moral dilemma. Should existing embedded engineers steer these young hopefuls towards other fields, thereby keeping the pool of fresh embedded talent small, and consulting rates correspondingly lucrative? Or, should we beckon these poor innocents in the door to work on the bottom level, thereby pushing all us embedded guys one step up the pyramid?"