merlyn's yatch

xenchu on 2004-02-13T04:29:11

I mean he must have one right? He is an author with a hot book, so it follows he makes lots of money, right? So I am helping him fuel his yatch.

That is, I just bought a copy of Learning Perl(3rd ed.). I am on chapter 6 now and enjoying the experience so far. What I am reading is helping to solidify things I picked up elsewhere and didn't quite understand.

As little as I remember of the 2nd edition, this version seems clearer. Granted I have been studying since then and granted my memory is a bit hazy, this version seems better laid out and talks about things I need to know.

Anyway, if, like me, you are floundering in Perl waters, this ia good...uh, yatch.

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merlyn's yatch

echo on 2004-02-13T14:41:14

What's a yatch anyway? It's a well known fact that Merlyn has a yack. Some people go as far as to say that the yack is the cause of Merlyn's celibacy, but I don't think that's the reason.

Re:merlyn's yatch

xenchu on 2004-02-13T15:18:53

Gah! That should be yacht. I have no knowledge of yaks, but obviously know dyslexia.

Re:merlyn's yatch

chaoticset on 2004-02-17T14:28:06

It's actually a phonetic reference to the Monty Python sketch about a man named Raymond Luxury Yacht, whose name is mispronounced as 'yacht and then 'yatch', at which point he angrily corrects the interviewer as follows:

It's pronounced 'throat warbler mangrove'!

Author Rates

chromatic on 2004-02-13T15:44:08

He is an author with a hot book, so it follows he makes lots of money, right?

As a rough calculation, figure the author earns $25 or $30 per page. (That's likely a little low, as far as median figures go, but it has a nice averagey feel otherwise.) A good author can produce four finished, well-edited pages per day. Figure in the time spent proofreading after delivering the final manuscript as well as the time between advance payments and royalty payments too.

It takes a supremely popular technical book to earn the author enough to buy a nice yacht. I can only think of a handful of those.

The sad case for technical writing

merlyn on 2004-02-17T14:53:38

Even having helped with ten wildly popular books (counting major editions), I'm pretty sure my total royalties divided into my total time spent puts me at around minimum wage for every book. And I'm lucky: most people never even see money after their initial advance (which never exceeds $5K for O'Reilly books).

Also consider that the typical royalty contract puts 10% of the wholesale cost of the book into the collective author's hands, and a lot of books are co-written. Yes, I make about a dollar, pre-tax, per copy of the Llama. That's it. Put another way, I make more money off my amazon referral of the llama than I make off the actual book sale as an author.

So, why write? I write as a credential. The books have earned me a foothold into corporate america for my training and consulting services.

That, and I get a lot of free beer from loyal fans, which I appreciate greatly.