I canceled my book deal

Posted by azhenley 12/31/2025

I canceled my book deal(austinhenley.com)

614 points | 363 commentspage 3

HarHarVeryFunny 1/1/2026|

I wonder how many people choosing to write books, are expecting it to be a profitable use of their time, and make more than pocket money?

The article mentions the publisher saying that their median book sells in the single digit thousands, so half of the books are selling less - perhaps hundreds rather than thousands. If you are making a 15% royalty on a $50 book selling a few hundred, or few thousand copies, for something that probably took a year or more to write, then this is obviously more about the satisfaction of doing it than being a worthwhile financial endeavor.

Are most people choosing to write books fully expecting that it may only make a few thousand dollars?

nativeit 1/1/2026|

In my experience (which is limited, personally, but I have several writers/editors/publishers in the family), writing a book is something one feels compelled to do, irregardless of financial incentives, or even tangential incentives like notoriety/influence. I would compare it to my own endeavors writing/recording music. I would do it even if I know for certain nobody else will ever appreciate it. Because the drive is internal. It’s what I do to make myself fulfilled. The fact that others may find some meaningful value within that work is a nice knock-on effect, but wasn’t involved in my choice to create it.

sedatk 12/31/2025||

I'm glad that I released my book in 2022 before AI-hype took off. I'm familiar with the type of publisher mentioned in the article too. Those are very strict in their format and content guidelines, and I had also felt that such constraints were limiting at times. I can relate. But, I also learned a lot from the process, and in the end, my book got fantastic feedback. It became one of the print bestsellers in 2022, and got translated to many languages. I've found the whole experience positive.

But, I totally understand author's reasoning, and it's one of the reasons I want to explore different publishers as I want to deviate from writing strictly technical books.

kburman 12/31/2025||

I'm curious about the economics of canceling a deal like this. Since the editor spent significant time reviewing the drafts, did the contract require you to reimburse the publisher for those costs or return the advance?

zerocrates 1/1/2026|

They never got the advance because they didn't get to the first milestone.

syntaxing 12/31/2025||

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.

bigstrat2003 12/31/2025||

> Though I guess people would argue you can just ask a LLM now instead of reading my book.

I would certainly not argue that. LLMs do not understand anything, and are thus prone to non-deterministic inaccuracies in their output. Due to that, I think it is extremely foolish to use one for learning unfamiliar topics. Give me a book every time, because (if it's a good book) I am guaranteed to actually learn something. Not so with LLMs.

trinix912 1/1/2026||

Additionally, no matter how good LLMs get, they're always going to prioritize the most cookie cutter answers to questions because they're looking for the "best match" - the most common answer.

With books the author can give advice that's not as widely known and is thus much less likely to show up in an LLM output.

jimnotgym 12/31/2025|||

I think I could ask an LLM to explain linear algebra. I think it would be less good at the 'here are some things you should know' aspect. One reason for this is that people might not ask, but the LLM might not agree with your list anyway.

I think there is still a place for a book here. I think I might buy a book (or may have done 10 years ago when I was still coding) of things you should know (especially from a respected publisher), that being a longer form book I could work through over time.

nickpsecurity 12/31/2025|||

Udemy and Coursera both have Math for Machine Learning courses that start with Linear Algebra. Then, Calculus and Probability and Statistics. They're often $25-50.

You might want to look at their outlines to see what they're teaching. Then, decide if you can do something similar and/or cheaper.

soperj 12/31/2025|||

that'll only be the case if you actually write the book so that the LLMs have that info. Until then they can't regurgitate your know-how.

dbalatero 12/31/2025||

Why should I know linear algebra, ooc?

hermitcrab 1/1/2026||

Interesting. For a while I have wanted to write about a book about starting and running a small software company. Markets, marketing, sales, support, versions, promotions, websites, pricing, documentation etc. Possibly as a retirement project. Probably self-published. I have plenty of experience and material to draw on:

-have been running my own small software business for >20 years

-have written ~400 on blog posts on this and related subjects at https://www.successfulsoftware.net

-have consulted to other small software businesses

-know plenty of other people running small software companies

-have given a face-to-face course on starting a software product business

But...

-my experience is in desktop software, not SaaS or mobile software, which feel increasingly niche

-everything seems to be changing so fast with the emergence of LLMs, I am beginning to feel like a dinosaur

I could cooperate with others or work with a co-author to include more on SaaS. And human nature doesn't change that much, despite AI. But it is unclear to me whether enough people would be interested - for me to invest months of work into it.

cratermoon 1/1/2026||

AI! AI! AI!

It's been a bad couple of years to work on anything in programming that isn't somehow tainted by Altman and Amodei's fever dreams.

MagicMoonlight 1/1/2026||

If you don’t need money and they aren’t going to advertise it and they’ll only give you a tiny amount, why would you ever want this deal?

Roark66 1/1/2026||

Good to hear you decided to self publish. Don't let people online put too much pressure on you (is it done yet?)

On the subject of AI. I'm a great believer in that AI is a huge force for good (gives a single individual a huge power). I've been using every popular commercial and open weights models there are. I know their strengths and weaknesses.

But I think there will always be a need for human book writers. Just like there will be a need for human programmers. Although for different reasons. With software, humans are needed, because AI is still very, very far from being able to grasp actual, overall architecture of even modest sized hobby class projects (there is a special "trick" that is used to convince us otherwise, notice all very impressive examples are almost always "one shot" small prompts, with not a lot of refinement later. That almost never happens in real projects. In fact the opposite.)

With books, the AI is good explaining small chunks of knowledge. But an entire book, that is fun to read, consistent, and has a plan of "reader advancing in capability" through chapters and has some of the author's personality? No way.

Will I buy the book? I don't know. I have built a small library of physical books over the years (maybe about 200 books). But I also have about 50 of them on my kindle. I tend to buy an ebook first. If I really like it I buy a physical copy.

But I'm definitely reading a lot less than i used to. I've been working from hone exclusively since 2016. Before that I did a lot of commuting and that provided an opportunity of time to read loads of books. I certainly do not miss the airports, the budget airlines, the crowded trains and underground, but the reading took a big hit.

I imagine I'm not the only one. So the market for books probably shrunk substantially in the last decade.

manicennui 12/31/2025||

Are the people who are really into "AI" even buying books anymore?

thewhitetulip 1/1/2026|

I have written a foss python book on github. In the apst 5yrs, the same Acquisition editor from Apreas reached out to me about publishing my book. When he reached out to me for the first time, I was excited. He gave me a format and I expanded my book in their format. Then 6 months later dude emails me that it was rejected and if I could write something else, he recahed out to me and now he made a u turn asking me to write something different blah blah

I said no thanks and moved on.

A few years later, dude sends me the exact same email. I replied saying that get me in writing that you'll publish the book this time because the last time you wasted my 2 3 months.

Publishing is hard. Yess publishing is even harder. Royaltie are dwindling not to mention these days the documentation has improved so much that people learn from that.

My foss books have netted me more $ than if I had signed up with Apress, so not a loss!

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