Four years on writing a tech book: pitching to a publisher

In 2019, I decided to write a book about software engineering. As an experienced software engineer and manager, I had the topic clear in my head, and assumed the whole project would take between six and 12 months in writing and publishing it.

In the end, this process took several times longer; 4 years, in fact! Happily, it was worth it: readers’ feedback about The Software Engineer’s Guidebook has been overwhelmingly positive, and on launch, the book became a #1 bestseller among all titles in two Amazon markets (the Netherlands and Poland), as well as a top 100-selling book in most Amazon markets. In 24 months it sold around 40,000 copies, and was translated into German, Korean, Mongolian and Traditional Chines – with the Japanese and simplified Chinese versions releasing later this month.

A lot of people ask why I chose to self publish, and it would be nice to say this was always the goal, but it wasn’t! Originally, I wanted to work with a top tech publisher, who would get the book to market fast, and give it a higher profile. This didn’t happen, but during the process I learned a lot about how publishing works, how to pitch a book, and how to choose which publishing route might be the right one. 

This article shares my learnings from writing and publishing a book which has done pretty well with readers, and it includes the experience working with an established publishing house:

1. Tech book publishing landscape
2. Financials of publishing
3. Publishing process and the publisher’s role
4. My book pitch
5. Working with a publisher
6. Breaking up with a publisher

1. Tech book publishing landscape

Today, there are reputable book publishers whose titles are good and authoritative, and there are other publishers whom this doesn’t apply to. Each publisher also has a subject area: some are mainstream and publish titles about every software engineering area from languages to engineering management. Meanwhile, others stick to a topic of expertise they focus on.

Here’s my mental model of the book publishing industry in 2025:

Highly reputable mainstream publishers

In tech book publishing, three publishing houses really stand out, in my opinion, and form a ‘big three’ among all players in this sector: 

• O’Reilly: if I had to pick a #1 tech book publisher, it would be O’Reilly. They publish some of the most referenced books – like Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann, Tidy First by Kent Beck, The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly, and more. The book covers are distinctive, using images of animals.
• Manning: a broad range of titles on both specific and general tech topics, which employ historical figures on the covers.
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf: also referred to as the “Prags.” Founded by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, the authors of what might be the best-selling tech book ever; The Pragmatic Programmer. Since its founding, The Prags has refused digital rights management (DRM) on their ebooks.

High reputable “mainstream” publishers that are tough to pitch to

The publishers in this section have strong reputations, like those above. However, they are harder to pitch to, usually because they publish fewer tech books. I couldn’t find an author pitch template, or clear pitching instructions, and contributes to a sense of “don’t find us, we’ll find you” among the following publishing houses: 

• Addison-Wesley: one of the best-known brands in tech. It has been an imprint (a trade name within a publication) of Pearson since 1988, and is the publisher of many “classic” book titles like Clean Code by Robert C. Martin, The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, and some recent ones like Modern Software Engineering by Dave Farley. I couldn’t find any way to pitch to this publisher, and new books they publish seem to be by established authors.
• Pearson: This business owns the Addison-Wesley imprint. Recently, it started to publish tech books as “Pearson” instead, author Martin Fowler shared.
• Wiley: formerly a well-known tech book publisher behind the “X for Dummies” series. It publishes lots of computer science textbooks, but I can’t find recently-published, well-known tech books for software engineers.
• Springer: another massive publisher for whom tech books are a small part of the business. I couldn’t find how to pitch tech books to them.
• Morgan Kaufmann: a well-known tech books publisher founded in 1984, and acquired in 2001 by Elsevier. As I understand, these days it prints far fewer technology book, and focuses on academic topics. No clear way to pitch to them.

Highly reputable “niche” publishers

The following publishers are standout in quality, covering fewer topics than those above.

• No Starch Press: “The finest in geek entertainment” is the tagline, featuring fun visuals, and high-quality content on specific technologies like machine learning, Python, JavaScript, etc.
• IT Revolution: titles for technology leaders: DevOps, technology delivery, workplace culture, and similar. Publisher of The Phoenix Project, Team Topologies, and Accelerate.
• Artima: focuses on Scala.
• CRC Press: publishes on technology, engineering, math, and medicine.
• Stripe Press: “works about technological, economic, and scientific advancement.”
• MIT Press: “a distinctive collection of influential books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide.”

Other mainstream book publishers

Apress is a reputable publisher with a lower profile, which publishes on a wide range of topics, from specific technologies and frameworks, to more generic topics on computing. Because they publish many books on many topics, they are usually open to pitches.

Packt. A tech book publisher with a focus on quantity over quality, it feels to me. There is limited support and feedback for authors, and titles could often use more editing. But also, Packt is likely to say “yes” to a serious proposal.

2. Financials of publishing

Financial matters really come into play when your proposal is accepted by a publisher and you receive a contract offer.

Advance: $2,000 – $5,000. An advance payment to the writer is a tried and tested way to make them deliver a completed manuscript. It’s often paid in chunks: 50% when a milestone is hit, and 50% when a full draft appears.

The “big three” publishers typically offer $5,000, usually as a flat, non-negotiable rate; at least, it’s what I was offered. Smaller publishers offer closer to $2,000 for more niche books. The advance is non-refundable; even if your book sells zero copies, you keep it. The publisher is making an investment in you, and taking a risk.

As an aside: if you are thinking of writing a book: for guest authors in The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter guest authors I offer a $4,000 per article payment – and you can later publish your guest article in a book. Several authors working on their book have written a guest articles such as Lou Franco on Paying down tech debt or Apurva Chitnis on Thriving as a founding engineer. Writing a guest post can help refine ideas, broaden your reach, and prove helpful when publishing the article.

Paperback royalty: 7-15% 

Royalties are earned on book sales, and taken from the net price of the book. Net price is what a publisher gets after the retailer (e.g. Amazon, or a bookshop) takes their cut. Let’s see how it works for a $40 book:

It matters financially where your title is purchased; be it an online shop, physical book store, or purchased directly from the publisher. Many tech books are sold on Amazon and online stores. Amazon’s 40% cut seems high, but it’s actually the lowest among book retailers. Up to 60% is a common cut for a physical bookshop.

Most publishers offer 10-12.5% royalties, is my understanding, and Packt around 15-20%. Keep in mind that brand reputation plays a role; for example, Packt’s reputation is less elevated than Manning, which can make a difference to sales.

Ebook royalties: 10-25%

For ebooks, several publishers pay 25% royalties, but not all. But even with a higher royalty rate, an author might end up making less per sale. For example, on the Kindle platform, the cut for Amazon is high at 65%. Let’s look at a $30 ebook with a 20% royalty rate:

Ebooks are almost always priced lower than physical books, and when sold on Kindle, generate much less revenue for the author, while earning more per copy than the paperback version. I was offered 10% royalties on ebook sales, which is at the low end.

“Earning out” 

When an author needs to pay back an advance before being paid anything, this is called “earning out”. If you get a $5,000 advance for a title costing $40 per hard copy and $25 for the ebook version, and most sales happen on Amazon, it means:

• ~2,080 paperback sales on Amazon
• Or ~2,850 Kindle book sales
• Or ~1,250 paperback sales on the publisher website

The author needs to sell at least 1,000 copies across various platforms to “earn out.” The good news is that a publisher sends quarterly or annual royalty payments if a book keeps generating revenue, which would effectively be passive income.

The Prags’ unique approach

One publisher that calculates rates differently is The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Instead of offering a low-digit number on revenue, they offer a 50% split on profit.

50% on profit sounds much higher than 10% on revenue, right? However, the devil is in the details, because paying on profit means that the upfront publisher costs – editors, cover design, printing, distribution, marketing – all are deducted before any profit split.

Authors who have used this approach tell me the numbers end up pretty similar to the revenue model.

Real-world case studies with actual earnings

Designing Data Intensive Applications author, Martin Kleppmann, shared the cumulative royalties he made in 6 years. The breakdown is interesting; ebook and Safari Online sales generated more revenue for the writer than the print version.

Cloud Native Infrastructure earnings: author Justin Garrison published with O’Reilly, and was offered 10% for print and 25% for ebooks (split into half, thanks to working with a coauthor). His book sold 1,337 copies in 4 months; and made about $22,000 for the two authors (and around $11,000 for Justin.) Justin concluded:

“Going into this project I had a rough estimate in my head to make about $2000–3000 so this is much better than I expected. Set your expectations accordingly.”

Don’t forget that publishers are also in this to make a positive return. This means that it is unlikely for a highly reputable publisher to invest into a book that they do not believe would sell at least a few thousand copies. I don’t have the data here: but if I was a publisher, I would reject any book that didn’t look like it could hit 1,000 copies sold in the first year of publishing.

3. The publishing process, and publisher roles

Why does a publisher take so much of the revenue? Part of this is because they do a lot of the work around publishing, and need to hire (and pay!) people for those roles. Here is my understanding of how the publishing process works, based on four months of pitching to publishers; two months of working with one of them; and researching how the rest of the process works:

Here are people I worked with, and my experience with them:

The acquisitions editor. If you write a technical blog, you might get a reachout from someone called an acquisitions editor, who will ask if you would consider publishing a book. Also, when you submit a pitch to a publisher, chances are that you will first communicate with an acquisitions editor.

A publisher’s goal is to publish books that will be profitable for them. They find authors who could write these books two ways:

• Inbound pitches coming from authors – reviewed by editors or acquisitions editors
• External reachouts done by acquisitions editors

These people need to have a good understanding of what kinds of books sell well at the publisher (and why); what their current catalogue is; what the gaps are; and what competitor publishers are commissioning.

When I pitched my book to 3 respected publishers, in two cases I talked with (and worked with) the acquisitions editor to improve my pitch. The acquisitions editors were my “champions” at the publisher. Their goal was to get a pitch that the company would say yes to.

The development editor works on the structure of the book. They ask the author to come up with a detailed table of contents – in my case, they asked me to estimate even the length of the chapters. They also help develop – and maintain – the narrative of the book.

Had I not worked with a publisher, I would have had no appreciation of this “high-level editing” – which, turns out, is key for writing a well-structured tech book!

The project manager checks in with timelines, organizes reviews—like editorial reviews—and helps keep you accountable. One of the best things about working with a publisher is that you are on a tight deadline—without which it would take you several times longer to publish the book!

The publisher owns a lot of rights for your book! One thing that I realized only after signing with a publisher is that while publishers help a lot with writing the book – and taking a higher cut is sensible because of this – they also hold on to a lot of rights that impact your book! These are all things that you give up on, versus when self-publishing. These are:

• Global publishing rights. Although you are the author of the book – and usually hold the copyright to it – the publisher own wordlwide publishing rights. This means that they are the only ones who can publish the book, or longer excerpts of it. In practice, this means you need to get permission if you’d like to publish some parts of your book on e.g. your blog, or social media. They’ll usually grant this as it’s good marketing – but it’s still that you need to ask, as the author.
• Foreign rights. The publisher will own the publishing right, and will usually be the one who owns selling foreign rights. In theory, this could sound like you are losing out on things. In pratice, publishers are much better positioned to sell and administer these rights. Most publishers offer a 50% cut on these rights – it’s what my publisher offered. Also, the majority of tech books are not translated to other languages – a book that “only” sells 2,000 copies in English is unlikely to sell a significant number in a non-English market!
• The cover. The publisher decides what cover they will design, though they tend to check the author for feedback.
• The title. One of the surprises for me was how the publisher ultimately decides on the title and subtitle.

In short: this book is owned by the publisher. You are the author, but they are the only ones who can distribute it. In practice, many authors would prefer to have it this way – because all the work related to distributing the book is taken on by the publisher. However, it’s good to know that you need to give up all the above when working with a publisher.

4. My book pitch

My secret hope, back in 2019, was to get a contract with one of the “Big 3” tech book publishers: O’Reilly, Manning or The Prags. I pitched my book to all three: got a “no” from two, but a “yes” (and a contract) from one. Here’s how I went about my pitch.

Write a “one-pager” about your book

What will this book be about? Who is it for? What will readers take away when reading it? Answer these in a short pitch, before even seeking out publishers. Here’s what I put together as my “one-pager:”

Do some market research

What are similar books in the market that would be competing with this book, directly or indirectly? How is this book different from them?

What is the demographic of people who would be interested in buying this book? Can you estimate how large this crowd is? Realistically, what percentage of this group could be interested in buying the book – assuming they know about it? Don’t forget that publishers will invest into books that can generate decent sales: it’s good to do a little research to help confirm your title could be one of these!

Shortlist publishers you would be interested working with

While there are quite a few publishers out there: what are your top preferences? And what are ones you’re willing to consider, even if your “top” choices turn you away?

Self-publishing is always an option (I’ll cover more on how I went about this in later parts). However, going with a good publisher can significantly speed up your book production, while also improving the quality.

Write a draft table of contents and a draft chapter

Some publishers will want to look at what a draft chapter will look like – but not all of them. Still, I found it helpful to do writing before submitting to a publisher. If for no other reason, this was to confirm that I’d enjoy longform writing!

I spent about a week putting together a table of content, and around four months writing drafts of chapters. These chapters turned out to be helpful later on.

Submit a tailored pitch your the publisher(s)

Once you identified your top publisher choices, submit a pitch. Most book publishers have a pitch document they want you to follow. Here are common ones:

O’Reilly’s pitch template:

• Description
• About the topic
• Audience
• Keywords
• Competing titles
• Related O’Reilly titles
• Book outline
• Writing schedule

Manning’s pitch template:

• About the author
• About the book topic
• The book plan
• Q&A
• Reader overview
• Book competition
• Book length and illustrations
• Writing schedule
• Table of contents

The Pragmatic Bookshelf template:

• Overview
• Outline
• Bio
• Competing books
• PragProg books
• Market size
• Promotional ideas
• Writing samples

Most of these templates ask for similar content, so if you completed one pitch: the others are much easier. Here are some tips I’d have for building a pitch.

Put yourself in the shoes of the publisher. This book is a huge deal to you: but it’s just one of the dozens that the publisher will publish just this year. You want to write an amazing book: but the publisher wants to publish one that will sell.

And these are major differences! The publisher will care very much about competition for the book, and how their existing titles relate to them. Like a VC firm, a publisher will not want to fund two investments competing on the exact same market: so if the publisher recently published a book that is a deepdive on Go; they will almost certainly pass on the next one, no matter how good your pitch is.

Pitching to several publishers parallel is totally fine and you should do it! This is one thing I wish I’d done differently. In my mind, I was 100% certain that my first publisher-of-choice would jump on the opportunity to publish this book. I thus felt that it would be “unfair” if I pitched to other publishers, without hearing back.

In hindsight, as a first-time author, this strategy was a waste of time on my end. Most publishers are unlikely to take a risk on a first-time author with no books published in the past – like I was in 2019. And so the likely outcome is rejection in most cases.

In my case, I spent about two and a half months waiting on the response from this first publisher. My acquisitions editor was championing the book – making the case for the publisher to offer a contract – but in the end, the publisher chose another book with a similar topic that was in their pipeline. This made perfect business sense for them – but for me, I was spent waiting for months, instead of pitching the book to other publishers!

My book pitch ended up being a helpful resource on my self-publishing journey. Even though I did not release with a publisher: pitching to publishers helped the book become an eventual success. It was for these reasons:

• Defining the structure. I had my table of contents well thought-out by the time I submitted the pitch. This structure changed later, but it was a solid start.
• Positioning the book. I had a good idea of the “competitive” landscape, and what books my title would “go up against.” It also helped me focus on how my book is different to what is already out there.
• Forcing me to think about marketing. The Pragmatic Bookshelf asked for a section on promotional ideas. This forced me to think about where (and how) I would promote the book – even before getting into the thick of writing. When going with a publisher, it’s safe to assume that the publisher’s brand will do some marketing. However, authors will still do the lion’s share of marketing – and it’s good to think about this ahead of time.

5. Working with a publisher

I got lucky with one of the three publishers, in the end. This publisher was looking for a book just like mine, right at that time! What happened was one of their best sellers had to be pulled from publication, for reasons outside the control of the publisher. Apparently, when my pitch arrived, they had just started a search for a book that could plug the hole – and they saw my book being a perfect fit for a “software career advice” book.

At the time, this felt like great luck. In hindsight, my relationship with the publisher might have soured exactly because they were looking for me to write a specific kind of book that would be similar enough to this old book – but I had no intention of doing so. More on how things went sour in the section after this one.

From signing the contract, I worked with a publisher for about a month – so I’m not exactly the most experienced in this front. However, a couple of things stood out as strong positives – and things that I “lost” when deciding to self publish, in the end.

Strong pressure to write – thanks to the contract. My contract had pretty strict deadlines included. We signed it on 11 January 2020, and these deadlines were part of the contract:

“The Author shall prepare and deliver to the Publisher a machine-readable electronic copy of the manuscript for the Work, including all its illustrations, code listings, and exercises, as mutually agreed upon by the Publisher and the Author as follows:

– Not later than March 15, 2020, a partial manuscript for the Work totaling not less than one third of the planned finished Work.

– Not later than June 1, 2020, a partial manuscript for the Work totaling not less than two thirds of the planned finished Work.

– Not later than August 15, 2020, a draft of the complete manuscript for the Work suitable for review.

– Not later than September 1, 2020, the final, revised and complete manuscript for the Work acceptable to the Publisher for publication.”

Talk about pressure! Also, my first payout was tied to reaching the first milestone – which was delivering at least a third of the finished work. My publisher also set up regular check-ins to help me stay accountable. And this kind of pressure was good – because without it, I would have pushed back writing, or got stuck on relatively trivial parts! 

6. Breaking up with the publisher

While I greatly appreciated that a publisher took a chance on me, lots of things felt wrong from the start. A month into working together, I felt that things were getting worse, and not better.

The small things that I dismissed, in the beginning:

• A (very) opinionated structure. This publisher had strongly opinionated templates I was told to use for all chapters. They included each chapter to start by stating what the reader will learn; and then summarize this at the end of the chapter. It wasn’t how I imagined my book to be – but it didn’t seem I had a choice. I figured, I’ll give it a go. The publisher knows better after all, as they’ve done this hundreds of times. Right?
• Needing to ask for permission to share drafts on social media. I originally planned to share screenshots of some of the parts I am writing to get feedback as I go – and to also increase visibility of the book. I thought that this is a no-brainer. Not only does this kind of “early sharing” makes the book better: but it will also make more people excited about the book, leading to more eventual customers. To my surprise, my contact at the publisher said I will need to ask for permission whether I can do this. Permission? For something that will market the book? Yes: because the publisher owns all publishing rights, including for the draft!
• I won’t decide on what the title will be. I had strong opinions about what I’d like the book’s title to be. My publishing contact also had ideas on what they thought would be good to add to it – like introducing the “mentoring” term either to the title or the subtitle: which was an idea I disliked. As I talked with them, it became clear that the publisher will set the final title: not me. Hmm – odd, no? It’s another reminder that, although it’s my book: it’s really the publisher’s book, and they have the final say on all important decisions.
• Nudges to “dumb down” the book. My editor was giving more suggestions on how to edit the content to make it more “beginner-friendly” and suggested I introduce e.g. “Alice and Bob” examples to make it easier to digest the contents. One of the recently best-selling books of the publisher heavily used Alice and Bob, and it seems the publisher thought it helped their sales.

The first major editorial review was where I decided we should part ways with the publisher. About a month-and-a-half in, the publisher pulled together several experienced editors, and offered suggestions on how I could improve the book. The suggestions were these:

• Focus on reader engagement. Tell stories and develop them with emotion, mystery, aha moments, and unexpected conclusions. Tell the stories from the “we” or “they” perspective — make stories team-oriented.
• Exercises. Develop exercises for use within the chapters (not just end) or a story about what happened when one person did the exercise.
• Mini-projects. Guide readers to discover and come to conclusions on their own (see Donald Saari story in What the Best College Teachers Do). Mini project topics: testing, architectures.
• Word of the day feature. Example: Dependency injection (what is it)? Scatter these across the book.
• Quotes. Include quotes from luminaries such as [Well-known-person 1] and [Well-known-person 2] that relate to advice given. Ask other [Publisher] authors to relate experience about how they followed similar advice and were successful.
• Tech map. Create a diagram of the current technology landscape. Example big-picture topics: architecture demystified, distributed systems demystified.

While I appreciated the suggestions: I hated all of them. I saw what implementing them would do: they would turn this book – which I already had reservations with the “forced” style on me – to something I would not want to read. Much less write!

I envisioned writing a more matter-of-the-fact book that doesn’t have exercises, “mini projects” or “word of the day” gimmicks.

I sat down to reflect why I chose to work with a publisher, to start with. As an author, I’m giving up a lot of things: editorial control, the bulk of revenue, all publishing rights… and for what? For the publisher to make the process easier, and for the end result book to be better than if I was working alone.

But I felt that this book would be far worse if I continued with my publisher: and the only way to get it back to what I envisioned was if I spent a lot of time and energy pushing back on them.

It would cost me less energy to self-publish. So I decided to terminate my agreement because it didn’t feel my publisher was helping write the book that I wanted to write.

My publisher was understanding and professional in terminating the contract. I explained to them that all the feedback suggested they wanted to see a very different book to what I wanted to write. And that, frankly, I am not the author to write that kind of book.

Truth be told, I was embarrassed that I had wasted their resources – working with their development editor and the editing team – for these two months. At the same time, I was vocal in voicing to my editor that I was hesitant about this mandated style. I also made the decision that there is no point in continuing at the first formal feedback session. I’m not sure I could have come to this conclusion any further, as I was still learning how this book publisher worked, up until that point.

To show how professional this team was, this is the termination letter they sent as a signed PDF:

“This letter is in reference to our Publishing Agreement with you for [what would become The Software Engineer’s Guidebook] dated January 11, 2020. By mutual agreement, we are terminating the publishing contract.

Since no advance was paid to you under the terms of this contract, all rights in the content you originally submitted will hereby return to you and we will consider this matter concluded.

The decision to cancel a project is never an easy one to make. We thank you for all the efforts on this project that you made and wish you the best in your future endeavors.”

At this point, I learned enough about publishers and myself to decide: I’m doing it by myself. Having my book accepted by a major publisher gave external validation that there’s a strong business case for The Software Engineer’s Guidebook. And working with an opinionated publisher – and continuously pushing back on styling suggestions made me realize that I already have my own opinonated style that I like using.

I did lose a very important thing by deciding to self-publish: the accountability of meeting a publishing deadline. Working with the publisher, this book would have been out fall 2020 or spring 2021. Self-publishing, I launched it November 2023.

One of the reasons for publishing my book two years later than it would have taken with a publisher was because I now knew I could no longer rely on a well-known publisher to lend my book their brand. For my book to have an even slim chance of being successful: I would have to compensate for the lack of being associated with a publisher, and fill the gap in marketing and awareness, leading up to the book launch.

Not having a publisher was a reason I started writing The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter in August 2021 (a year-and-a-half after breaking up with this publisher) – and the sudden success of this newsletter gave me less time to wrap up the book. At the same time, by the time the book was ready, there were plenty of people who looked forward to reading it: and many of them were already readers of the newsletter!

I’ll cover more about how I went about the actual self-publishing process in a follow-up article, how the book ended up selling, and other learnings. Subscribe to The Pragmatic Engineer to get notified when it is out.