I think the author is better off self publishing, based on my personal experience:
I wrote ten tech books for big publishers (McGraw-Hill, J. Wiley, Springer Verlag, etc.) and I was so happy being a published author. However, about twenty hears ago I moved to self-publishing, finally ending up using Leanpub. I am much happier only writing self-published eBooks now because I can update my old books as needed. I still write new books from scratch (just started a book that is basically a rant against over-spend of SOTA LLMs called ‘Winning Big with Small AI’) but hardly a week goes by without an update to an older book.
Writing is great, and even better when not attatched to a conventional publisher.
Austin: if you are here, good luck, and enjoy writing!
I use a Creative Commons share alike license and my eBooks can be read free online. Occasionally some readers purchase my eBooks, and I use sales as a signal for what readers enjoy and that is a guide for deciding where to put my energy. I only allocate three hours a day to writing and sales also guide what books I update.
I used to keep statistics: about 1 in 60 people who read online buy a book, except for my Common Lisp book that had a 1 in 20 purchase ratio. As you might imagine, I put more effort into the Common Lisp book.
For 30 years writing tech books was an economic driver for my career as a computer scientist. Now that I am retired I still write because I enjoy writing and interacting with my readers.
I wrote ten tech books for big publishers (McGraw-Hill, J. Wiley, Springer Verlag, etc.) and I was so happy being a published author. However, about twenty hears ago I moved to self-publishing, finally ending up using Leanpub. I am much happier only writing self-published eBooks now because I can update my old books as needed. I still write new books from scratch (just started a book that is basically a rant against over-spend of SOTA LLMs called ‘Winning Big with Small AI’) but hardly a week goes by without an update to an older book.
Writing is great, and even better when not attatched to a conventional publisher.
Austin: if you are here, good luck, and enjoy writing!