[Catalyst] O'Reilly Radar

[Ovid]

--- apv <apv at sedition.com> wrote:

> Just to put the idea out there. Today, it's not even really 
> necessary 
> to have a publisher. The main benefits are the distribution and 
> automatic market. But, of course, you do give up a huge chunk of 
> the  money too.

Not really.  You don't make very much money being an author.  In fact,
some authors of the best selling Perl books will quite happily tell you
that the money is not from the book (it's very small and you can easily
earn less than minimum wage).  The money is in resume building.

I also have friends in the book industry outside of tech books (both
authors and sellers) and they'll all tell you the same thing: 
self-published books are nearly worthless in terms of money made --
it's usually money lost -- and credibility.  There's a good reason that
self-published books are referred to as "vanity books".  That's not to
say that all self-published books are just vanity books, but that's the
stigma they're stuck with.  Booksellers will usually refuse to carry
them.  I don't know about online booksellers.

For a Catalyst book to be taken seriously, I highly doubt that
self-publishing is the way to go but I've been wrong before.

Cheers,
Ovid

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