Interestingly, this was my exact experience when working with a publisher (Manning, in my case), and it was the main reason I decided to part ways when writing my book (The Software Engineer’s Guidebook). While I did appreciate publisher’s desire to please a broader crowd by pushing a style they thought would broaden the appeal: but doing so makes technical books less attractive, in my view. And even less motivation to write!
In my case, self publishing worked out well enough with ~40,000 copies sold in two years [1], proving the publisher’s feedback wrong, and that you don’t need to dumb down technical books, like this specific publisher would have preferred to do so.
Even if it wouldn’t have worked out: what’s the point writing a book where there’s little of the author (you!) left in it. Congrats to OP for deciding to stick to your gut and write the book you want to write!
[1] https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-software-engi...
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.
I’m glad I did it but I’m not sure how much the publisher added beyond some prestige and a few bucks. The first edition in particular I felt I needed to pad out a bit to meet length requirements.
Glad the author got out relatively unscathed.
Self publish - especially with AI available to get you through the stuff where you just need superficial or process knowledge, like which firms to hire and how to market a self-published work, what boilerplate legal protections you need. You'll get 99% of the value of a big publishing firm at a small fraction of the cost, and you won't have to put up with someone else taking a cut just because they know a few things that they don't want to tell you in order to justify taking your money.
-Do you release a physical book? If so, what are the mechanics of that and how much does each book cost?
-Do you release it in an electronic format? If so, what format and how do you stop it being mercilessly pirated?
Putting aside for a moment that nobody should be trusting a frequently-hallucinating AI algorithm with any of the above...
Your world-view is one of those that returns to the old adage "it only works if you value your time at zero".
Its the sort of thing we see in tech the whole time. Some dude saying "oh, I can just fix my motherboard myself".
Or in the automotive sector, someone with experience and kit fixing their own engine block.
Well, sure you can dude. Because you've got the domain expertise, you've got the kit AND you are willing to value your time at zero.
However in the majority of cases, if you do not value your time at zero, then spending even just a few hours waving an oscilloscope and soldering iron over the proverbial motherboard is time better spent on other tasks and the "more expensive" option suddenly does not look that expensive any more.
And that is all before we address the other elephant in the room.... Your suggestion that it is easy to self-market a self-published work.
Maybe if you are a well known and respected author, such as Mr Performance (Brendan Gregg) or Mr Oracle (Tom Kyte) etc.
But if you are just Joe Schmoe. And perhaps especially if you are Joe Schmoe who's just written your first self-published book. The outcome is unlikely to be the same.
In fairness to the author, he presents a reasonably balanced view and it did not read to me like “my publisher sucked.”
I assume that was about competing with LLMs writing content, rather than including LLM-related technical projects.
Happy New Years, HN.
Ironically though, your reply has another similar one. You read books every day; reading books is an everyday activity for you.
Write a sentence and ask it it is correct, if it is idiomatic, and to explain rules behind it.
- set up [1] (notice that it's a verb)
- setup [2] (notice that it's a noun)
- Phrasal verbs [3]
Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's mostly stuff one needs to know by heart, but I think it's often that the noun is the one that is all in one word and the verb is the phrasal one (composed of "base" and the particle, in several words). Note: I'm not a native English speaker.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/set_up#English
On the other hand, LLMs are very bad writing partners, they are sycophants and very rarely give substantial criticism, the kind of feedback an editor would give and is mentioned in the article.
This is the substantial service an editor will provide going forward in the AI slop era, where everyone and their grandma will self publish some personal masterpiece: a contact with the real world and setting the bar high, to the point you need to struggle to achieve the required quality. Writing a book, especially finishing a great book, is not supposed to be enjoyable, it's hard, grueling work.
Edit: actually, either way works, except when using with a pronoun. So, you can 'set it up', but you can't 'set up it'.
You can, however, set up us the bomb.
If you can't finish a partial manuscript when you have people reaching out to you and reviewers ready to provide feedback, how confident can I be that you'll actually write when you have a faceless pre-order instead? Or will life just get in the way again?
Considering all the confusion and questions in this comment section, maybe he should have been more open to an editor.
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"
Publishers are going to demand chasing the hot-new-thing which will most likely be irrelevant by the time the book is on the shelf.
"How to write x86 ASM... with the Copilot Desktop app! - Build your bootloader in 15 seconds!"
It's exactly the sort of financial pressure that will make them chase fads and trends, and it gets worse in difficult economic times.
That is true of many industries, including films, vc software startups, games and books. As the Internet increases competition and opportunity, it is likely to become more true.
The thing is, it’s not about getting chapters published on AI. The publishers are keenly aware that AI is using their content to steal their market and so anything they publish on AI will be obsolete before the final manuscript is published. It’s about getting potentially difficult first time authors to quit before their first third gets approved - that’s when the author is owed their first advance.
It’s a lot easier to slaughter sheep if the most docile select themselves.
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.
Some of them already replied saying the proposal seems interesting but they want to read a few chapters. I don't know if I am in the right path or not, but I'd love to read more about your experience and what can be shared!
The prestige probably isn't what you'd expect. Having an ISBN to one's name carries ~zero weight for the people that actually matter for your career (it may mildly impress some future coworkers in a decade's time, though). The real value of having written a book is that then you have written a book.
Having a publisher carries one extra benefit that was merely implied in the post: you get assigned a professional editor. If you're lucky (I was), the editor has a really good understanding of how to wield language and the lessons you get from the editing process are going to far outweigh any direct financial benefits. When I wrote mine, I had been doing freelance writing for a large IT magazine for nearly ten years - and as a direct result had been taught how to use written language as a weapon by a good number of old-guard journalists. The year I spent on the book project taught me a LOT more still, because I was assigned an editor who herself was studying (in a university) to become a language teacher.
The skills I picked up from that process are with me to this day, and ironically have been the single most valuable asset I have as an engineer and/or engineering leader. Being able to write well to a varying audience is a superpower. You also learn to appreciate professional authors, because what they do is decidedly not easy.
In the end my book sold well enough to earn out its advance, so I guess it was a non-failure for the publisher as well. I also picked up a lesson for all aspiring authors:
Writing a book is easy. You sit down by the keyboard, slit your wrists and pour it all out.
I think I lack all the last parts (that some publishers are requiring for) such as a social media platform to reach your potential readers. I find that a bit unfair because it means you first have to play the Instagram game and once you are popular there, you can write a book.
If you give me an email address I'd love to tell you more about my book!
It's not always a dealbreaker, I didn't have any social media following or anything -- the way I pitched it was by figuring out a bunch of conferences, niche podcasts, etc. and highlighting that there was an audience there I could activate (and marketing is a big part of the book process I've learned).
My bio has my email now!
Seriously, I’ve seen this exact genre of comment daily on hn lately and I don’t get what you’re gaining by trying to sniff out bots. Not what anyone has to gain by truly botting on here. Nobody is selling their HN accounts right? And how many pretty run-of-the-mill comments like the above would it take to have an account worth selling anyway even if there was a market for that? 100,000?
Goodreads seems to think so. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14291276.Joel_Burke
Edit: Added some context and I'd also mention that one thing that was quite helpful is that at the start of the writing process I created a massive spreadsheet where I'd add in quotes, writing, and anything interesting I thought I might pull from (some of it manually written, like when watching documentaries). This was hugely helpful when I was going back but also during the writing process so I had a single source of truth I could keyword search. I've just checked it and its got 4787 rows, with most entries being about a paragraph long
Rebooting a Nation: The Incredible Rise of Estonia, E-Government and the Startup Revolution Paperback by Joel Burke
Does this mean they get to keep the advance, and all the feedback from the editors, as well, for free? That seems like a pretty good deal - the publisher put resources into this project and got exactly zero in return.
The upshot is, they don't want to do the hard part - continuity editing, developmental editing, hell, just finishing the dang thing. Even the boring chapters you didn't really have any idea what was going to go on there.
Writing, as an occupation, is a whole lotta schmoozing, attending conferences, volunteering, promoting. Maybe 1 month of writing a year, for 11 months of the hard stuff.
I have a buddy who says he always wanted to start a bar. I said, You like budgeting? Taxes? Hiring? Firing? Stocking? Remodeling? Promoting?
Nah; turns out, he just likes to hang out in bars.
The only reason you start a business is, because you like to run a business.
The only reason you become a writer is, because you like the business of writing.
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 will say I was very happy with the animal they came up with! If I was not, I would have asked them to change it, and I bet they would have. They showed me a preview version early on, so there would have been plenty of time to do so.
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.)
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.
What killed this deal is that the author did not set aside enough time to do the work, and then lost interest. This seems pretty clear from the post. From my reading, it looks like the author was missing deadlines before they even brought up the topic of AI. And then continued missing deadlines and pushing out the schedule even after they said no to the AI ideas. And then ultimately put the whole thing on hold and never picked it back up.
If the publisher said “put AI in this or we kill the project”, your reading would be correct. But I don’t see that anywhere in this write up. I see an author who didn’t deliver. Not even the first third, so there wasn’t even an advanced payment.
And to be clear, I am not hating on the author here. Life happens. Interests change. All I’m saying is that this project was not canned because of the refusal to put AI into it.
Perhaps the root cause of the missed deadlines was actually a "loss of conviction." The author touches on his own doubts: "With LLMs around, no one needs this book anymore." While the publisher didn't legally force him out, the "AI pressure" (both from the publisher and the market) might have eroded his belief in the product's value.
It wasn't a murder (firing), but it might have been a death by loss of passion.
> this is a textbook case of a "Failed Pivot" driven by investors
It was a rejected suggestion. In no way did this actually cause the deal to fail.
You are right—if the carpenter just ran away, he would usually be sued. But in this specific case, the client (publisher) agreed to let him go. It’s more like: The carpenter said "I'm quitting to join the circus," and the client said, "Fine, keep the deposit, just leave."
In finance, we call this a "Write-off" to maintain relationships or avoid legal costs. It seems the publisher decided it wasn't worth fighting over.