A recent post by a former colleague/co-worker of mine, Josh Maher, offered suggestions on what sort of things to consider when conteplating becoming an author – “What about a Book.” He references another post by MSDN author Eric Gunnerson. Eric suggests a few motivations for authoring – Money, Fame, Respect, Enjoyment, Learning.
As they indicate in their posts, there are a number of ways to accomplish those things with regard to writing about the IT industry, including blogging, articles for websites and magazines, and responding to message boards.
I’m a prolific reader, and often have multiple books that I am trying to slog through on various topics, not to mention the audio books I listen to in my car and on my Treo while in my vanpool. All good authors read. One of my favorite quotes, from Mark Twain, states “The [person] who doesn’t read good books, has no advantage over the [person] who cannot read.”
In a effort to to live up to that, specifically as it relates to technology, I’ve persued another alternative to the ones listed about, Technical Editing/Reviewing. Being a technical editor grants some of the same motivations. The money is decent, though not quite the level of royalties. Often paid per word or by project (up to $1000/book).
There’s nothing like seeing your name in black and white, albeit buried inside the book and not blazoned upoon the front cover. If you’re just getting started, then tech editing might offer the fabled “foot in the door” with a publisher, should you decide to go on to write your own Widget Configuration Explained tome.
Besides, what could be more enjoyable than tearing apart someone elses work, pointing out the inadequacies of his use of language and examples, that the flow is completely wrong, and – oh wait, that’s just me. }: )
Lastly, and this is what got me into technical editing in the first place, is the ability to learn more about a topic, often something new or relatively so. I used to do trade-show support for Microsoft a decade ago, and we often saw lots of cool stuff long before the general public. Technical Editing a book can offer some of the same benefits. You get a copy of the manuscript before (almost) anyone else, you have a hand in shaping its direction, and often get a free copy when it’s release to show off to you co-workers.
