Writing a book: is it worth it?
<i>Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found in the same purse—</i>honora y provecho no caben en un saco.<p>-- Arthur Schopenhauer, &quot;On Authorship&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;On_Authorship" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikisource.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;On_Authorship</a><p>For professionals in technical fields where skills-assessment itself is expensive and uncertain, a book serves at a minimum as a signifier of one&#x27;s own skill and ability.  In exceptional circumstances, a book can lead to the author becoming part of both the skill-generating <i>and certifying</i> mechanism.  Writing &quot;the book&quot; on a topic, and the teaching, lecturing, training, or technical leadership roles availed ... <i>may</i> ... prove worthwhile.  Others then display their copies or familiarity of the book as evidence of their own ability.  (Knuth, Gang of Four, Kernighan &amp; Ritchie, etc.)<p>It&#x27;s critical to realise that this signalling capability, as with attention, is a fundamentally rivalrous and finite space (perhaps not fully zero-sum), such that there can only be one truly leading authority or reference at a time.  Though if like  Martin Kleppmann you hit that spot, it can prove rewarding.