My question about books like this is always 'If you are doing so well at what you're writing a book about, why are you wasting the time writing a book about it?'

Surely you don't expect that your time spent writing a book is going to pay out at $300 an hour, or whatever your consulting rates are.

Hi. Good question. Why did I write this book?

I think bdunn and robbiea's suggestions are valid.

(And, man, I wish pyre's suggestion that I don't need money was true :o) though I'm lucky enough to consider myself pretty successful at what I do, so I wasn't writing to make up for missing revenue.)

But, in addition to the residual income and, to a lesser extent, publicity angles, the initial spark behind writing it was the fact that I found myself being asked time and again about what life is like as a contractor/freelancer. Which meant that a) there was definitely a knowledge gap/problem to be solved and b) the repeated nature of similar requests meant it made sense to optimise how I shared what I'd learned over the years.

I'm well aware that no one gets rich from writing a book - so I deliberately didn't sacrifice any client time; I was able to (just) fit it into what spare time I had.

Along with all that, there's the fact that I knew I could write this book and wasn't intimidated by the task (I had the knowledge and the skills -- I used to be a national-level journo) and the fact that writing is still fun, so it was a pleasure to make.

Yep, that pretty much covers it.

"I found myself being asked time and again about what life is like as a contractor/freelancer."

This was the same impetus behind indieconf, the conference I run in November (shameless plug - http://indieconf.com - we might even get bdunn speaking this year).

Hey Steve, I'm running a startup focused on making freelance dev easier, http://dragonflylist.com. Love to have a chat sometime on skype: riley.james.aus

Consulting: Will always require more of your time to make money.

Products: Long term, residual income and the ability to build up an email list that you can market to with other offerings.

The problem is that, if you can bill for your hours, it's guaranteed money. With products, you may build it, and they may never come.

You make it sound as if the choice is obvious.

Sure, because the only reason to do anything is money. <sarcasm/>

Maybe he's done well enough that he doesn't need to be making $300/hr and has a desire to create a book? There's also the publicity angle too.

Honestly, if you're really able to pull $300 an hour, you run out of things to do? Work more, donate the money to charity. You can easily save a life for $300.

No, but this does allow the author to get more publicity and thus allow him to survive even easier as a freelancer.

This is same as asking a teacher why he is teaching if he's so good at the subject.

Pay-what-you-want with a high minimum price gives me conflicted feelings. What I read is "this book costs $11.99, but you can give me more money if you want!".

Steve, this is great! As somebody who's a week or two away from releasing a book on pricing for freelancers (http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com) I'd love to compare notes sometime.

Buying now. I'm especially interested in the "Oiling the wheels" section.

Speaking of pricing, even your initial rate is too high for my blood. Are you going to be offering it up in different formats? I'm only personally interested in a Kindle Fire edition, but the only site reference is to "book", which I'd believe to be paperback but I could be wrong.

It's a PDF, but I'll be converting it to Kindle and epub after it's released.

Also, if the cost of a $39 book that might be able to help you raise your rates, thus resulting in thousands of extra dollars is too high... Well :-)

The kicker here is that word "might". I'd willingly pay $39 for a book that will get me thousands of extra dollars; I wouldn't for one that will do so with probability 0.1%. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle; perhaps the book is worth every cent it costs and much more; but it's no good just to say "it might make you thousands" as if that settles the matter.

Actually, by your logic, it is. If the book stands to possibly make you $10,000 with probability .1%, the book is worth $10. As you mention, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I'd conjecture the book is worth at least $39 if it stands to make you $10,000+ with greater than .1% probability.

Thanks, man. Happy to chat - email is in my profile.

Can we get it free then pay you back double once the advice starts to work? Call it an investment...

Why link to an ad for a book instead of an article that would add value, and maybe point to the book at the end?

I purchased this book and read it today. I think it's a nice collection of advice for the budding freelancer. It's a little light on the legal aspects such as business structure, taxes and contracts. I would consider it a beginner's book on freelancing.

For a little more depth on the business side of freelancing, I strongly recommend the following book: Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & Consultants, by Stephen Fishman J.D.

Thanks jiffyjeff. It was tricky deciding how much detail to go into on the legal/financial details, because it's hard to write things that are globally applicable and also useful. However, the plan has always been to add support for other geographical areas in 1.0 (as well as a bunch more general topics), so thanks for the US-specific book tip -- should come in handy.

This seems like a very interesting book. How relevant is it for people starting consulting businesses, i.e. not solo freelancers but rather freelance companies?

I'm talking about questions like: how to allocate the different people to different tasks, how/when to hire employees, hiring on-site employees vs. hiring freelancers who work from home (potentially form elance or similar), etc. Does this book get into any of these topics at all?

Hi - I wrote the book and its focus is on client work as an individual, rather than starting a company. In future releases, my list includes adding a section on sharing work with others, which might be more relevant. If you ping an email to feedback@freelancedeveloperbook.com with stuff you'll like covered, I'll add it to my Trello board

I'd like to recommend David Maister's book http://www.amazon.com/Managing-The-Professional-Service-Firm... It is similar but presents it from the angle of a company, not an individual. It focuses more on how to run a consultancy effectively.

Great - I've sent the email, hope it helps. Will definitely be picking up this book.

By the way, I've heard the book "Design is a Job" praised on HN as a freelance Designer's guide to freelancing. I'm currently reading it. It seems your book is very similar in its goals and content, only for programmers instead of designers. If I'm right, I would definitely consider marketing it as "Design is a Job - for developers", or at least include that message somewhere on the leanpub page. I know I looked for it.

Email received and Trelloed :o)

Thanks, too, for the suggestion. I've tried not to make my pitch copy on the leanpub site too SEO-ey, but I certainly get the point about helping people understand what the book may be like compared to ones they know. I'll check out "Design is a Job" when I get a moment.

This looks good. But it wasn't clear to me that the author is talking about the UK (primarily? exclusively) without reading a fair amount of the page.

Hi wodow - thanks for your interest.

Someone over on the Leanpub page has asked about how UK-centric it is, so I thought I'd post pretty much my answer to that question here, because I think it's relevant:

"The majority of the book is relevant to going freelance wherever in the world you are. There are some sections, though (basically the money and legal ones) where, because I have first-hand experience of operating in the UK, I've framed it in UK terms. However, the principles/topics covered are still pretty relevant wherever you are in the world and will set you on a decent path to finding out about the local equivalents. 

While it's impossible to write a book that covers legal/financial stuff relevant to the whole world in one go, I do want to add in more territory-specific detail where people ask for it. So, in a future release of the book (which you'll get for free, remember) the plan is currently to refactor the UK-specific stuff to be generalised and then 'add support' for versions of that info applicable to additional territories (most likely in an appendix, but I'll see how realistic that is when I've had more feedback about the territories people want the book to cover).

But, like I said, the advice in most the book is location-independent."

Great answer - thanks - and I see it on the leanpub page too. But maybe move it up top in case your comments there scroll it off the bottom of the Disqus section?

I am actually resident in the UK and buying a copy shortly!

I'm going to buy a copy because the author is based in the UK and is less likely to have irrelevant information in it for me.

Running a successful freelancing business, recruiting and working for clients, balancing your work/life relationship are all things that have nothing to do with location. And that's the difficult part of this business.

Taxes, accounting, legalities, etc. can all be localized by doing a little Googling.

Does anyone own this book? I am actually thinking of going the Freelance way and am looking for a good overview of the outcomes and challenges. I feel a bit lost with all the various information that I have read on the Internet, so am looking for something I can trust and that reflect the reality of freelancing well.

Hi moystard

The Leanpub page contains a run-down of the main sections and (now that the book is published) also auto-includes the real table of contents - not sure if you've scrolled down the page all that way (it's quite a scroll to get there).

For what it's worth, of the experienced freelancers I beta-tested the book on, the key peice of (pleasing) feedback that I got was a bunch of them all saying "I wish I'd had this book X years ago, when I started out".

I had scrolled down that far before asking my question. I have been disappointed by a few books where the contents looks good but the writing style does not convince me or the author just scratches the surface. That's why I am interested in the feedback of people who have read it.

Bought it, I don't know if you are interested in the feedback of your readers, but will probably post one on this topic in a couple of days.

Hi - yep, feedback always welcome, and - indeed - the plan has always been to shape future 'releases' of the book based on feedback from this release; that's part of the whole 'lean publishing' thing that Leanpub.com promotes.

In case I miss it on HN, please send it over to feedback@freelancedeveloperbook.com - the same goes for feedback from anyone who's read it.

I am almost done reading it. It is definitely a good read for someone who wants to go the freelancing way. However, I think it might be difficult to give a feedback without applying the concepts presented in the book. I could do it in a couple of months if I start freelancing, for now I am still hesitating and the book did not answer some of my incertitudes.

What I can say is that this book seem to give advice, the ones you read and think it is common sense are usually the best.

Hi moystard - please do drop me a line (email in profile, or feedback@freelancedeveloperbook.com) and I'll see what I can do in terms of answering other questions. Some stuff will be too specific to be relevant in a book, but other stuff will may be worth adding. Also, the Stack-Exchange-style Q&A site I'm setting up (questions.freelancedeveloperbook.com) might become a handy resource for you and others (once it's live!)

Steve

Email sent, thank you for your time.

Request of someone interested in your feedback: if you're writing a detailed review, please post it somewhere other than this thread (blog?) and post it on HN's frontpage. Otherwise, I doubt that people like me will ever see it.

I bought it, although I still have to read it. A quick glance tells me it contains the aspects it should have as a freelance book.

No free chapter?

The introduction would be nice, especially since it contains a "note for non UK readers", a group I'm part of.

Still, I'm thinking about going freelance, the book is reasonably priced and the table of contents looks interesting.

Sample now added - hope you like it.

The hard part is finding good clients who have lots of money. How do you do that?

I bought and read the book. It is a good overview of many aspects on freelancing work. Being a freelancer myself most of the stuff i knew, experienced it or read elsewhere, so nothing ground-breaking. However it's a good compilation of all the advice out there. Recommended

Just bought it. As a new full time freelancer, I really appreciate your effort to take time and write this book. Thanks.

Thank you for this highly relevant contribution to the present discussion.

Groan. You mean like, any language with class methods in which "Process" is a class? Like, say, Ruby?

In which case you're not calling it on an instance, are you? Also, in ruby Process is a module, which kinda proves my point.

The only reason I point it out is that I find it difficult to take anyone who posts titles like this seriously.

You must be fun at parties (couldn't resist the snark).

In ruby, everything is an object, including modules. Boom.

The title of the book is actually "career.fork()" not "Career.fork()"

I wouldn't have been happy with a title that throws an exception :o)

I believe HN auto-capitalizes the first letter of titles.

Can't wait to read the book :-)

In Smalltalk, fork is an instance method on a block.

Yes: an environment called life, where you have a career object and you fork it.

Smalltalk. You can fork any block IIRC.

Edit: sorry, I posted reflexively before reading other comments. Turns out I'm not the only one who values Smalltalk to the extent that I actually want to remember something about it :)

Woots! Learned something new.

Uh yes, Smalltalk.