HN Explorer

Ask HN: Have You Written a Book?

6 points by russell ↗ HN
HNers frequently contribute to lists of the best books for this or that. Which got me to wondering what have you published that would be of interest to the rest of us. Product documentation or user's manuals dont count, because even I have done that. Technical works are of most interest, but I'll take good SF. And if you financed your first start-up by writing bodice-rippers, that has to be of some interest.

4 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 9.4 ms ] thread
pauldi
Have never written a whole book but back in the day I contributed a number of chapters to various Wrox books on ADO.NET. Glad I did it but the Wrox editorial process was a bit of a shambles and it showed up in many of their books at the time.

If nothing else it means I can refer back to Amazon every now and then to remember what I looked like with hair. http://www.amazon.com/ADO-NET-Programmers-Reference-Adil-Reh...

01PH
I published one of my thesis as a book. Always tried to get into writing a mainstream book, but working against a self set deadline with all the "other" distractions in life is tough.

What I can recommend you is taking a look at "Steve Manning How To Write A Book On Anything In 14 Days or less". Even so the title sounds very scammy and marketing'ish it provides really a solid advice for non-fiction books and gives a very structured approach. You can find of cause copies of it in various online "repositories".

dholowiski
I wrote a book, it might be of slight interest to the HN crowd. It's non-fiction. I wrote it for fun and I've sold over 60! copies of it. I self-published on Lulu.com and was shocked when Apple picked it up earlier this year and put it in the iBook store! It's "Outsourcing and using a Virtual Assistant for Fun and Profit" and it's avaialble in the iBook store, or on lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/outsourcing-and-using-a-vi...