June 1st, 2009

Whew, I’m not doing *that* again!

When I met Sara Ford at the 2008 PDC, I got to talk to her authoraauthor. I asked her how the book-writing experience was.

“I’m never doing that again!” she replied.

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel about it, too. Steve Makofsky agrees. (Though, to be fair, what Sara was not going to do was write a book in three months, as opposed to swearing off writing books entirely.)

By the way, my book is now available in Chinese. I don’t get any royalties when people buy a translated copy, so buy it or not, I don’t care. Actually, I make barely any money from the book at all. During one six-month period, I sold a net of two copies in the United States. Enough to maybe buy a cup of tea. Seeing as most of the book content is available for free on this Web site, I’m not entirely convinced that giving away your book for free increases sales. (Or maybe the conclusion is that my book’s sales would have been even worse if it weren’t available here online. Perhaps it would have sold only one copy.)

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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