OT: writing a book, creating a community, etc....

[Rajinder Yadav]

Well,

I just came across this blog and found out you really don't make much money 
writing a tech book? It seems some of the authors are really smart, some cover a 
vast amount of material, others may go into a subject a bit deeper. Yet you get 
pimped by the publisher at the end.

http://beginningruby.org/

These days my mind is all over the map trying to be an entrepreneur. So I am 
playing with several ideas.

I started to write my own cheat sheet while learning Ruby, it's now grown and 
become to be known as 'RubyQuickNotes'. Being a programmer, I kept to small 
notes about language syntax and usage (mostly for me), it's not long winded with 
fluff (yet) and still some areas are not complete and I am already up to 76 page 
with no page breaks, picture, or diagrams.

I also gave up on LYX and Latex, it (Lyx) is buggy and annoying as hell, you 
still ended up fight Lyx trying to get things to layout, I don't care too much 
for their mantra. The few times, I would have an error when trying to view, and 
had to undo the last few edits to figure out where the dam stupid error was 
coming from. I got paranoid with my writing as it started to get long that I 
would type, save and try to view. It was not the most effective way to work. 
Trying to add sample code was annoying, never mind trying to add picture with 
layout, I didn't even bother.

I know I was headed down the wrong path to hell with Lyx so I bailed and 
transferred the tech notes to using OpenOffice. It's like night and day! I am a 
MS Word kind of guy and this does everything Lyx can do but easier and without 
the stupid view build error or learning Latex code that stop you cold at odd 
times. The version of Lyx I have (latest on Kubuntu)  could not export to text, 
my code sample was missing. I had to learn Latex to insert code section by hand, 
was a pain in the neck, and in the end the sample code output was lost.

OpenOffice I added a test picture with ease, TOC, tables, can generate my PDF 
without errors. I am sure I can save it in MS format and open it in word on my 
Window box.

For my notes, if I were to even try looking for a publisher for a book with the 
idea of my notes becoming a workshop style book with examples and (short) walk 
though exercises it would only be for fame? but not fortune. Well not fortune 
from the book, the real money would be found in doing the talk show thing, be a 
speaker and having your own lecture and training class charging peepz $2000 to 
attend your class! So, in the end, if you're smart and talented in that area, 
you end up giving away your ebook for free on the internet, you sell the printed 
version, get your name out there and give talks and classes.

I would love to do that if I could find someone smarter or more experienced than 
me to hook up with or passionate enough to just go for it.

A year from now I would like to see how far I can take my ideas, before I joined 
TLUG I ended up taking one of those personal growth seminar and I have to say it 
had a strong impact on me. It got me off the fence about thinking to sharing and 
talking and being in action. Anyone know or heard of any good local, must be 
local entrepreneur network / mentorship places. I know I need to keep moving 
with my ideas and make something of them, but want to leap-frog those 
stages/areas where people make a lot of trial and error learning that other have 
figure a way around or learned to ignore, case in point forget publishing, go 
for the training classes if that's your think about teaching.

My real reason to learn Ruby and Rails is to be able to slap up a online 
merchandising website, starting off selling custom designed printed (geek) tee 
shirts, it's more for the experience and learning to create a powerful 
community. FYI: the online tee shirt thing, looked into it, its been done 
(working model) to show you can make money, visited local print shop and one 
owner told me there was money to be made, he started off like I did printing a 
few tees. There is one site online that is selling over 1 million tee a year, it 
was started up by 2 web developers who fumbled their way to success, and they 
don't design the tee, the community does, they just pick, print and make money. 
That didn't happen over night unfortunately, but it's possible for anyone, not 
rocket science here.

I've been told most successful entrepreneurs failed at their first few ideas 
before they got it right, so the tee shirt thing is not my ultimate goal, but I 
am not starting it up to fail either. If I succeed cool, it will become my cash 
cow for my other ideas, if not I will take everything from it and the experience 
and try again with something different. Think of criagslist, it's built a 
community and it's something anyone with some programing skills can reproduce 
with little starting cost, it provided a good live for its creator/owner and a 
few of his employees.

If anyone on here is trying to get something going or knows of a good network 
site or just wants to talk, I would not mind meeting up from time to time for 
beers and motivating/stimulating talks with each other liked minded geeks, or 
starting up a social group, etc. I know trying to be a lone entrepreneur in your 
house, one can feel burden at times, and other people just don't seem to get 
you! Most have heard your stories a million time how you're going to do something =P


-- 
Kind Regards,
Rajinder Yadav

http://DevMentor.org
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