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Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

OP makes valid points but there is value to having your "ticket punched" by a major publisher vs. self publishing.

That may change but it still has value today. It's not all about money or how many are sold. Being vetted and accepted by a major publisher can open doors and opportunities to other things. Can get you mainstream media attention which can be parlayed into opportunities as well. Selling a large quantity of books on your own can also obviously (key: large quantity) however don't discount the value of chokepoint.

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This is the kernel of every publisher's pitch to every first-time author. But tech publishers run so many books every year by so many random people that their curation value is dubious at best, and certainly not worth the enormous cost of working with them. And, as most of the stories about working first with a publisher and then independently have testified, there's no media attention or promotional value a publisher gets you that you can't build for yourself at a lower cost.

There are still handy boxes they can tick though. I know people who've used being published by major tech publishers as the core of their O-1 visa applications to get into the US.

I swear that I have been hired for jobs several times mainly because I have a book on the shelves of book stores by a publishing company they recognize. Don't underestimate the value of having an O'Reilly book to your name.

I'm pretty sure that 90% of the books published by O'Reilly and the like are written by consultants as self-promotion, with no expectation that they'll provide a return on their own. Presumably O'Reilly has adapted to take advantage of this fact.

It's also possible that writers start out really excited to make a book to help people, and then in the end all they have left is the self-promotion out of it once their publisher didn't do anything to promote it.

Look, I don't doubt that an ORA book is a credential. I just doubt that it's a cost-effective credential. A prominent Github project will serve most people just as well as an ORA book.

Agreed. However, you can grind out a book with more certainty than you can create a prominent open-source repo.

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