Charles Petzold, well-known author, writes about Hard Work, No Pay: What’s the Point?, a response to Jeff Atwood’s post on publishing his own first book.

I looked into the economics of writing books, and, considering the amount of time it takes to actually write a book (Charles says six months to a year of full-time work), writing software seems economically more viable.

Well-known .NET author Chris Sells takes in five dollars per book he authors, but, with gross margins in the 90%, I could easily fetch thirty times that amount per software license. A unique piece of software could fetch far more copies than any individual book.

Also, software upgrades and subscriptions provide an annuity stream with low effort and risk. I doubt that new book editions pull anywhere the same repurchases. The code-base of one software package can be reused, modified and repurposed to produce a second related software package.

I do wonder sometimes about a very targeted e-book, which combines aspects of software and books. E-books typically have less content than books, but are often priced the same (without the middleman).