Thanks for sharing. I always enjoy reading author-publisher process articles as they get to the true behind the scenes story. I can relate to most things mentioned, and the terms seem identical to what I had when writing Modern Fortran with Manning. I also started with the intent to write for experts, but the publisher pushed for targeting beginners. The author can concede or (usually) give up the project.
One important aspect to this is that a typical first-book technical author knows well the subject matter, and sometimes knows how to write too (but usually not, as was my case), but does not know how to edit, typeset, publish, market, and sell well. That's what the publisher knows best. And of course, they want sales, and they understand that overall beginner books sell better than advanced/expert level books.
I encourage the author to continue writing and self-publish, and at a later time a publisher come to package and market a mostly finished product.
This was quite a fun read and I appreciate the insight. A couple of my peers have suggested me to write a “stuff you should know” book. Some technical in nature (like linear algebra. It blows my mind how many engineers hardware or software do not understand linear algebra) and some not technical (why stuff cost the way they do. “Why does this cost $200 when I can make it for $20!”). But reading your post was encouraging to see that self publishing for fun might be the way to go. Though I guess people would argue you can just ask a LLM now instead of reading my book.
>"All of our future books will involve AI."
>It is antithetical to the premise of the book (classic programming projects!) that they agreed to publish.
I hope this trend is not industry wide.
A publisher chasing fads and trends over enduring quality, so sad. I wish I knew who the publisher was to avoid but I can foresee their pivot to AI authors with titles like "From Zero to Hero, ChatGPT 5.2 Top Prompting Secrets for Dummies"
I can't detail it much further than just this, but I understand that Tim O'Reilly has the AI virus bad and makes his reports tell him what they've done with AI that day every day. So I've got a first guess.
This is why most publishers won't even talk to you unless you have a finished manuscript already, but I appreciated this look into a different situation.
The idea of doing a thing (or having done the thing) and the actual DOING of the thing are very different. See this a lot where people think they want to be a woodworker or a baseball player or an author, but the actual _work_ of sweeping dust, doing 200 hits a day off a tee or grinding out words by deadlines are not as appealing as the halo or mystique of the final product once made the activity seem. this doubles on the effect that humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. so, i am glad this author was self aware enough to follow their bliss, but the last paragraph made me wonder if their introspection was fully resolved.
This story is a prototype of thousands of other stories going on right now. Of course we can't blame the book businesses. They are in survival struggle. They have no clue what to do. Every business is barely holding onto whatever that might keep them in business. AI is bad, but it is the new mafia in the town. Just erase all your beliefs instincts and make friends with it.
Maybe write a book about "Classic projects using AI", whether it makes sense or not. And use AI to write that.
This sounds like my experience with a "major" technical publisher except we managed to get to the end.
I'd say that almost no one should work with the major technical publishers more than once. There's some good basic skills you learn but otherwise, they contribute very little that you couldn't get done on your own.
Somehow, I miss the time when I was writing a book. It's nice to do the work and research and also nice to refine. Getting money later without doing much anymore was also cool.
But my consecutive attempts of writing a book failed because of my ADHD and missing guidance. I can't do employment, but I really need someone to "nag" me 2-3 times a month to keep focus.
Traditional publishing is a weird world. They have the shortsightedness to want to force AI into everything. But also it sounds like they still assigned human technical editors who took the job seriously.
I am honestly a bit puzzled by this description and I wish they had named the publisher. I'm fairly familiar with this space and the usual experience with tech publishers is that they don't get all that invested in what they publish because 99% of technical books sell somewhere between 500-5,000 copies. That's barely enough to pay the copyeditor to do the bare minimum (often paying attention only for the first couple of chapters), then pay the layout guy, then the proofreader.
The usual accounts I've heard from my friends who published with Wiley, Addison-Wesley, or O'Reilly is that they sign up, get some in-depth feedback on the first couple of chapters, and then are on their own. I've never heard of a tech publisher exercising this level of creative control. I don't doubt that this happened, but it just sounds out of the ordinary.
I appreciate you sharing this! I just published my first book (nothing about programming, its about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a tech/e-gov hub in a single generation) and I can sympathize with a lot of this. My experience was a bit different -- I also knew the advance was going to be nothing and had a day job so I said I didn't need one (which was a relief for them as I was with a smaller publisher) and instead asked for more books to give away and some other contract terms. It took many months of negotiating to finalize the agreement and then they wanted the manuscript in ~7 months from contract signing. I guess they also assumed that I'd miss at least one deadline but instead I took a bunch of time off to get it done. I think the most important lesson for me is that book publishing, unless you're focused on trying to be the top 1% (maybe even .1%) in a popular category, is not going to be very lucrative, especially with a publisher that takes a major cut. It's easier than ever to go direct, in my case because I had a niche book and I wasn't doing it for money, I valued the prestige (or perceived prestige anyways) of having a book with a name brand publisher as I thought it'd be more helpful for my career in other ways, and candidly was mostly a passion project that I didn't feel strongly about monetizing!
If any folks want to talk about nonfiction publishing, I'm always happy to chat as many people were incredibly generous with their time for me and I'd like to try to pay it forward.
Thanks for sharing! I have been dreaming of writing (or better yet, finding!) a similar book for a couple years now. A hands-on guide that peels back the layers of abstraction to teach how things actually work under the hood by building them yourself. I hope one of us gets to it one day :-)
Writing for publication is a ridiculous amount of work, smoothing and digesting to the point of pablum, because it's just hard to please everybody. Now that LLM's can tailor to chapter-level discussions, why write?
Still, that's what it takes to reach N > friends+students.
It's beyond ironic that AI empowerment is leading actual creators to stop creating. Books don't make sense any more, and your pet open source project will be delivered mainly via LLM's that conceal your authorship and voice and bastardize the code.
Ideas form through packaging insight for others. Where's the incentive otherwise?
Reading the full context, this is a textbook case of a "Failed Pivot" driven by investors (the publisher).
As a banker, I see the "Advance" not as a loan, but as an Option Fee paid for the author's future output.
The publisher tried to exercise that option to force a pivot: "Inject AI into this classic book."
They tried to turn a "Shinise" (classic craftsmanship) product into a "Trend" product.
The author refused to dilute the quality, so the deal fell through.
Keeping the advance is financially justified.
The "R&D" failed not because of the engineer's laziness, but because the stakeholders demanded a feature (AI) that broke the product's architecture.
In finance, if the VC forces a bad pivot and the startup fails, the founder doesn't pay back the seed money.
It didn’t sound like they got the advance (or rather the first half) as they never fully completed the first 1/3 of the book before the deal fell through.
I had written and self-published three books, and in 2024 decided to publish the most successful one with O'Reilly. It went up for sale in December 2024.
The whole experience was wonderful. I had basically none of the problems that this fellow experienced with his publisher, and I am delighted about how it went.
I did some things differently. For one, I had already been selling the book on my own for a few years, and was essentially on the 3rd self-published edition. Because of this, they were able to see what the almost-finished product was.
I told them I would not make massive changes to the book, nor would I contort it to the AI trend (the book barely mentions AI at all), and they never pressured me once.
Their biggest contribution was their team of editors. This book has code on just about every page. I had 3 technical editors go through it, finding many bugs. How many? Let's just say "plenty".
And the feedback from the non-technical editors was, to my surprise, even more valuable. Holy crap, I cannot express to you how much they improved the book. There were several of these folks (I had no idea there were so many different specialties for editors), and all of them were great.
(They also accepted my viewpoint when I disagreed with them, immediately, every time. The final published version of the book was 100% my own words.)
From all of that, I made improvements on what must have been almost every page, and rewrote two chapters from scratch. I also added a new chapter (I volunteered for it, no one at any point pressured me to do that). The result was making a book that IMO is at least twice as good as what I was able to accomplish on my own.
I do not resonate with the article author's comments about compensation. He negotiated a pretty good deal, I think; it's not realistic to get much better than what he did, since the publisher is a business with their own expenses to pay, etc.
I was pretty disciplined about meeting deadlines that we agreed to for certain milestones. That helped my relationship with the publisher, obviously.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I am glad I did it this way.
Reading the article, it sounds like my publisher (oreilly) was better to work with than his, but I think he could have done some things differently also. In the end, though, I agree with him that it was best to walk away in his situation.
I'm almost certain I know the publisher he's talking about in the blog post, and I can see why it didn't work out. You have to be willing to be open to feedback while also being able to push back on that feedback. You also have to accept that you are committed to certain outcomes.
The publisher he worked with will push you but also make a better book in the end. You have to be willing to do your part.
(Not naming the publisher because I don't want to out myself.)
I would have 100% bought the book the author initially pitched. I could do without the junk the publisher wanted him to add, and really it would have probably caused me to not buy the book.
I've come to hate every cookbook that starts with 100 pages of here is a tour of my pantry, which sounds a lot like, here is how to use pip!
Ironically, I was working on a book with a similar concept in the same time frame that came out as "Computer Science from Scratch: Interpreters, Computer Art, Emulators, and ML in Python" with No Starch Press a couple months ago. Like Austin's book it contains a CHIP8 chapter and a couple chapters on making a programming language. The difference with regards to his experience and my experience in writing it with a traditional publisher, is that I was an experienced author so I felt comfortable finishing the entire book first before shopping it around to publishers. I didn't want too much scrutiny around the core concept and I was getting similar signals of "every chapter must have AI."
I wrote a similar blog post a month ago describing the process of creating the book and getting it published called "Writing Computer Science from Scratch":
Some in this thread have wondered what publisher Austin was working with. Based on my experience working with three different technical publishers and the setup and terms Austin was offered, my educated guess would be Manning.
I will critique the blog post a little bit. It's presented as a critique of the experience of working with the publisher, but ultimately I'm reading between the lines that the book failed because he was missing deadlines. He wrote that "life got in the way" and I think he lost his motivation only partially because the publisher wanted AI in more of the book. Many of the trials he had along the way: dealing with a development editor who wants to tailor your style to a particular audience, a technical editor who needs a couple chapters to warmup, back and forth on the proposal, etc. these are all really par for the course when writing a technical book. Ultimately you have to be self-motivated to finish because of course the development editor, technical editor, etc are going to disagree with you from time to time and try to push you in different directions. If that alone is so demotivating to you, it's just not for you to work with a publisher.
PS I think his blog is really good and he should think about self publishing under a time frame and terms he is more comfortable with.
89 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 67.6 ms ] threadYou “froze” the contract instead of telling them you intended to stop all together and it also seems like you didn’t return their advance.
One important aspect to this is that a typical first-book technical author knows well the subject matter, and sometimes knows how to write too (but usually not, as was my case), but does not know how to edit, typeset, publish, market, and sell well. That's what the publisher knows best. And of course, they want sales, and they understand that overall beginner books sell better than advanced/expert level books.
I encourage the author to continue writing and self-publish, and at a later time a publisher come to package and market a mostly finished product.
I hope this trend is not industry wide. A publisher chasing fads and trends over enduring quality, so sad. I wish I knew who the publisher was to avoid but I can foresee their pivot to AI authors with titles like "From Zero to Hero, ChatGPT 5.2 Top Prompting Secrets for Dummies"
I hope you finish the book. I would buy it.
Maybe write a book about "Classic projects using AI", whether it makes sense or not. And use AI to write that.
I'd say that almost no one should work with the major technical publishers more than once. There's some good basic skills you learn but otherwise, they contribute very little that you couldn't get done on your own.
But my consecutive attempts of writing a book failed because of my ADHD and missing guidance. I can't do employment, but I really need someone to "nag" me 2-3 times a month to keep focus.
The usual accounts I've heard from my friends who published with Wiley, Addison-Wesley, or O'Reilly is that they sign up, get some in-depth feedback on the first couple of chapters, and then are on their own. I've never heard of a tech publisher exercising this level of creative control. I don't doubt that this happened, but it just sounds out of the ordinary.
If any folks want to talk about nonfiction publishing, I'm always happy to chat as many people were incredibly generous with their time for me and I'd like to try to pay it forward.
Me: That doesn't sound too bad! They keep 12% of the profit, leaving him 88%!
".. and then 15% [after that]"
This reminds me of the scene in Queen of the South. FL (female lead) is new to power, negotiating some deal.
Guy: How much?
FL: Unsure how much to take 10%.
Guy: Thinking her cut is only 10%, seeing her as weak Oh.. heh.
FL: Detects her mistake For you.
Guy: Face gets red, angry But.. but..
Still, that's what it takes to reach N > friends+students.
It's beyond ironic that AI empowerment is leading actual creators to stop creating. Books don't make sense any more, and your pet open source project will be delivered mainly via LLM's that conceal your authorship and voice and bastardize the code.
Ideas form through packaging insight for others. Where's the incentive otherwise?
As a banker, I see the "Advance" not as a loan, but as an Option Fee paid for the author's future output. The publisher tried to exercise that option to force a pivot: "Inject AI into this classic book." They tried to turn a "Shinise" (classic craftsmanship) product into a "Trend" product. The author refused to dilute the quality, so the deal fell through.
Keeping the advance is financially justified. The "R&D" failed not because of the engineer's laziness, but because the stakeholders demanded a feature (AI) that broke the product's architecture. In finance, if the VC forces a bad pivot and the startup fails, the founder doesn't pay back the seed money.
It didn’t sound like they got the advance (or rather the first half) as they never fully completed the first 1/3 of the book before the deal fell through.
I’m doing it again soon for my next book. It’s fantastic, though having a following online is helpful to get the word out
The whole experience was wonderful. I had basically none of the problems that this fellow experienced with his publisher, and I am delighted about how it went.
I did some things differently. For one, I had already been selling the book on my own for a few years, and was essentially on the 3rd self-published edition. Because of this, they were able to see what the almost-finished product was.
I told them I would not make massive changes to the book, nor would I contort it to the AI trend (the book barely mentions AI at all), and they never pressured me once.
Their biggest contribution was their team of editors. This book has code on just about every page. I had 3 technical editors go through it, finding many bugs. How many? Let's just say "plenty".
And the feedback from the non-technical editors was, to my surprise, even more valuable. Holy crap, I cannot express to you how much they improved the book. There were several of these folks (I had no idea there were so many different specialties for editors), and all of them were great.
(They also accepted my viewpoint when I disagreed with them, immediately, every time. The final published version of the book was 100% my own words.)
From all of that, I made improvements on what must have been almost every page, and rewrote two chapters from scratch. I also added a new chapter (I volunteered for it, no one at any point pressured me to do that). The result was making a book that IMO is at least twice as good as what I was able to accomplish on my own.
I do not resonate with the article author's comments about compensation. He negotiated a pretty good deal, I think; it's not realistic to get much better than what he did, since the publisher is a business with their own expenses to pay, etc.
I was pretty disciplined about meeting deadlines that we agreed to for certain milestones. That helped my relationship with the publisher, obviously.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I am glad I did it this way.
Reading the article, it sounds like my publisher (oreilly) was better to work with than his, but I think he could have done some things differently also. In the end, though, I agree with him that it was best to walk away in his situation.
The publisher he worked with will push you but also make a better book in the end. You have to be willing to do your part.
(Not naming the publisher because I don't want to out myself.)
I've come to hate every cookbook that starts with 100 pages of here is a tour of my pantry, which sounds a lot like, here is how to use pip!
I wrote a similar blog post a month ago describing the process of creating the book and getting it published called "Writing Computer Science from Scratch":
https://www.observationalhazard.com/2025/12/writing-computer...
Some in this thread have wondered what publisher Austin was working with. Based on my experience working with three different technical publishers and the setup and terms Austin was offered, my educated guess would be Manning.
I will critique the blog post a little bit. It's presented as a critique of the experience of working with the publisher, but ultimately I'm reading between the lines that the book failed because he was missing deadlines. He wrote that "life got in the way" and I think he lost his motivation only partially because the publisher wanted AI in more of the book. Many of the trials he had along the way: dealing with a development editor who wants to tailor your style to a particular audience, a technical editor who needs a couple chapters to warmup, back and forth on the proposal, etc. these are all really par for the course when writing a technical book. Ultimately you have to be self-motivated to finish because of course the development editor, technical editor, etc are going to disagree with you from time to time and try to push you in different directions. If that alone is so demotivating to you, it's just not for you to work with a publisher.
PS I think his blog is really good and he should think about self publishing under a time frame and terms he is more comfortable with.