Saturday, September 19th, 2026, 7:23 am
Writing Books
Filed under: Writing one isn’t the hard part (some use LLM slop)
think literature (per se) is very, very, very important. It sets up some barrier/obstruction to publication, such that typically (but not always) not every crank du jour can put out “stuff” out there, like on the Web or digital pamphlets…
Books are an old form of publication, which have always had a barrier to access (cost, or investment in them and their distribution, based on their prospective appeal and quality).
When I was much younger (around 2005) Mathworks encouraged me to write a book and later people said the same about Boycott Novell. But who would buy such a book? How many people? More importantly, how much efforts would need to be invested in it? It’s mostly: 1) writing one. 2) improving it. 3) promoting it.
Books are not worth the effort anymore, with some exceptions, unless you’re some famous celebrity or politician writing an autobiography or “big name” like Stephen King.
In tech, apparently Cory Doctorow made enough of a name for himself to sell enough copies to be worth the effort.
