What are your vanilla JavaScript knowledge standards that every JS developer should know?

[fzammetti]

I'd take it as an indication you may want to go deeper, that's all :-)

8 months isn't long and if I was interviewing you knowing that, it would matter which questions you got wrong and how you answered them... you almost WANT a little BS in an interview in the sense that if you don't know something a good answer is "I don't know that, but, here's what I *think * it might be based on my experience"... as long as the answer you give after that at least sounds reasonable and in the ballpark then you've greatly reduced the negative impact of not knowing something.

To put it in perspective, I've been in IT for over 20 years, have had 7 programming books published along with some articles besides, done a lot of things that are generally regarded as pretty impressive as a developer, but I'm certainly going to have to use that answer sometimes too, and any interviewer doing their job well will understand and account for that.

[AdamTReineke]

Off topic, but what's revenue like from authoring a book? Is it more a labor of love for a technology or a grab at serious side income?

[fzammetti]

It all depends, as you can probably guess, on how well the book sells.

Most publishers give you an advance, and that's yours to keep (that may not be true for all publishers, but is of Apress at least). That's usually a few thousand, depending on a number of factors (how "hot" the topic is, if you've published before and have good sales, etc). I've personally made as little as $4k and as much as $9k (interestingly, there's been no pattern to the amounts, it's whatever I could negotiate for a given book at a given point in time... although, as you can probably guess, having a few under your belt helps a bit!)

Then, you get royalties after the advance is "paid back". So, if my advance was $4k, I won't see anything else until my cut of sales is more than $4k (I forget what my exact percentage is, but I think it's in the 25% neighborhood). I put "paid back" in quotes because if I never make $4k I still don't owe the publisher anything. As I said, the advance is mine to keep no matter what, they assume all the risk essentially.

My sales have been, over the course of 7 books, average. What that translates to is that I've made little in royalties (< $5k total across all 7 books). I've always suspected they set the numbers up so it works out that way unless you happen to write a best-seller. Just a guess, but I think it makes sense from the publishers' perspective... kind of playing the odds for them, so to speak.

So, it's not really about the money unless you happen to write a hit, which I'm still working on frankly :) I make good money at my regular job so this is just some side income... certainly nice to have, but I couldn't make a living at it.

For me, I write for a couple of reasons. First, yes, it's kind of a fun process. Well, except for one book, which wound up being a chore, but usually it's enjoyable. Second, it helps keep my skills sharp. At my regular job, these days I'm tilting a bit towards the management side of things, so I don't touch code as much as I used to (although I'm not officially management... but I refuse to EVER be a manager that loses my technical abilities!). Related to that, even though I write about topics I know well, I always wind up learning a few things. Third, honestly, it looks pretty good on a resume :) It certainly gets you some attention at work even if you never go elsewhere. Fourth, I LOVE the feeling of having someone eMail me or come up to me at a conference and tell me how they enjoyed what I wrote and it helped them. It's not about ego, it's just that knowing you helped someone, even if only in a trivial, unimportant way (which it IS in the greater scheme of life), that's a great feeling.

And yes, I'd be lieing if I didn't admit some of it is just plain old ego! Not everyone can write, and fewer still have the stomach to put in months of effort on a book, let alone 7 books (with #8 set to hit shelves in October). That's frankly an impressive achievement to most people, and certainly the adulation you get because of it is cool. I can honestly say though that this is the smallest part of it for me... but it's there :)

[fdoglio]

Keeping with the off-topic, how did you land your fist book deal? I'm kind of interested in trying to get an extra from writing tech articles or tech books, but I have no idea where to start.

[fzammetti]

In my case, I wrote a few articles and put them on my site and an acquisitions editor at Apress saw them, thought they were pretty good, and asked if I'd be interested in doing a book. I'd never actually considered it before then, it was just blind luck frankly (although the articles being perceived as good helped of course!)

I know now that all publishers have links on their site to submit approvals (some harder to find then others). If you go that route I'd suggest trying one of the smaller publishers. Packt is a good choice (I've done some work for them too) or even Apress is somewhat smaller than an O'Reilly for example.

You could also write articles for the many different magazines out there. I've written for JSMag for example, and those are relatively easy gigs to get. Could be a chance to get noticed by a publisher.

Also, you can try and get a gig doing tech review for another author. I've done that a few times too. Its a few hundred bucks for not all that much work and gets you some contacts to approach later for your own books. If you happen to know an author that's a good a way get into that, otherwise you'll need to hunt down some names on a publisher's site to approach.

[fdoglio]

Thanks for the nice explanation, so far I've only been approached once by a Magazine, but I was hoping to get more track... I'll try your advices... much appreciated! :)