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Your a full-time employee specializing in a particular platform/technology : This means that you are the go-to person in your company or department behind a particular technology, you name it : Linux, PHP, Java, Ruby, Windows IIS, SAP, Oracle.

There are many pluses to this scenario, for one you are still under the safety net of your employer so there is no added pressure to keep yourself cash-flow positive. Secondly, you work hands-on day in and day out with such a technology, so it should come natural to elaborate on all the issues you face, and finally, even your employer may support you in the project, after all , you will become not just the go-to person inside the company but a recognized and published author on the subject, hence a more valuable employee.

But since nothing is perfect, there are a few drawbacks to consider under such circumstances. By their very nature employers are very conservative, this means you will rarely work on the most bleeding edge version of your technology/platform -- in-house at least -- so while you might be immersed in your day job, you will need to step it up a notch to make it as a technical book author in any area.

Remember, you will need to provide enough unavailable information in the book that many users just like yourself will shell out $20-$40 to get it, if you get enough "aha! moments" when working on "x" platform, you just might be well on your way to writing a good book on the subject.

An added benefit if you happen to fall under this scenario would be making it on your own. As I pointed out earlier, much of the economics behind writing a book is not the money of the book per se, but rather the marketing value it brings to you professionally.

Having a book can set you apart for getting more lucrative contracts in any area, there may be many knowledgeable people on the subject but there can be so many book authors, you will of course live and breath the stuff, but if you are looking for a little more freedom and independence from your corporate job this may be a route out.

You do contract work in IT : If you have doing this type of work long enough, you know that chasing clients, making follow-up calls and maintaining yourself cash-flow positive is all part of the job. Time and patience will be the biggest issues to overcome if you fall under this category, which is where I fell.

While it might be true that as contractor you have more freedom to do with your time whatever you please, such as researching or working with the most recent technologies in order to produce a more compelling book, there is only so much time you can take up before you get yourself in deep financial trouble, in light there is no safety net.

As an employee you would need to do something disastrous to get fired for writing a book, point is, as an employee you have more leeway to bullshit yourself out of trouble or get away with a wrist slap, but as a contractor your only as safe as the next contract, which even if you have excellent anchor clients is not very secure.

So when your faced with the possibility of investing 400+ hours of your time with a return of say $2000, plus future royalties, plus the marketing intangible of a published book, the project might seem appealing. But what happens if you reach your 200 hour plateau, your editor ain't happy, there are no signs of getting a dime and on top this you will need to split all your earnings with a co-author ? or two co-authors, may be even three ? Well, the clock isn't going to stop for you, and what might have seemed like a worthwhile project can quickly become a death trap.

Any consultant or contractor who says they don't keep track of their cash-flow or how many hours they allocate for a particular task is lying through their teeth. The issue here is that the time writing a book can grow exponentially while your returns can diminish exponentially, so its risky territory to say the least.

The only upside to all of this is that once the book is finished, you will hopefully make up the time invested with new contracts as an established expert on the subject. Will you get the necessary contracts to break even ? May be, that's the risk.

But I guess you already knew that from the title : "Writing is not for the faint of heart (or the money)".

Bottom Line: Writing a book is risky business whether your are an employee or an IT contractor, each one comes with its own set of pros and cons. If you are risk averse, then it shouldn't matter, you should stay clear out of this area.

If on the other hand, you are willing to endure the risk and take a shot at becoming an established expert through your own book, I wish you the best of luck ;) and hope these blog entries help you get there without the unexpected headaches I had to go through.

Update: Found a series of posts over at Oreilly the technical book publisher -- which needless to say is not the publisher I worked with -- containing some interesting facts about the technical book market in general, some dating back as early as 2005, here they are in most recent order : State of the Computer Book Market - Programming Languages '07 , Ruby book sales pass Perl '06 , Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator '05 and Ruby Book Sales Surpass Python '05, besides some internal metric tools they seem to mention Nielsen Bookscan , which is a division of the same company that keeps track of TV ratings, but alas, no hard-data on this last web-page except a blurb and contact info.

Update 2: Found this other blog post on Programming Book Profits which includes more hard numbers on writing a technical book -- pretty much in-line with what is mentioned in this post -- the comments from other authors on the post are also very interesting.