My Experience Publishing My Flutter Flame Book in English with Apress Publishing
I'll tell you if they met my expectations when hiring the Apress editorial team.
Hello, I wanted to comment a little about my experience publishing the book you are seeing on the screen with the publisher called apress, which is the one you are seeing here on the screen:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/979-8-8688-0063-4
This by the way is a publisher that I knew and that's why I also got a little encouraged. They are famous publishers for the development books part. I really don't know many. The ones I know are more than all those that are published in the stores that I told you before, which is where I buy my courses and books, than those from the Humble Store above all and I think that a fan has published one or another book sometimes from time to time once in a lifetime they publish packs of books here that are usually selected by a certain publisher, in this case the packtpub one, which I think is also a kind of publisher since it has a lot of content and right now there is none from another but among them there are times that the apress one also publishes, which gives a lot of very good development books, so it is already a publisher as who says that for me it has a certain respect because the books that they upload are quality books so I want
My experience
From here I will comment a little on how the experience was. The first thing that happened here was that they contacted me. In this case, I remember that all my books are published not only on my Academia website, which is the one you are seeing here, but you can also find them published on various sites, which in this case are, I think, the most common ones, for example, here at Academia, on Amazon, leanpub, Google Play, Apple Book, and gun rata. In this case, they contacted me from lean, so obviously everything was in English. This is a publishing house that has its main headquarters in New York, in the United States, if I remember correctly, and therefore all the communication was here in English, which obviously is not my mother tongue and, more than anything, my English is technical, so it is always a bit of a difficult communication for me in that case, since I have to, as they say, translate it.
Apress contacted me
So they contacted me here for me this is always a very important point as well. This was one of the first contacts they have made to me in which a certain company either wants to do a service for me or simply as who says in this case a collaboration and that is what one would understand and from there I began to hone a little bit but it was one of the first they made to me since it was like a year or two years ago, a year and a half more or less at the time in which I am recording this video, they contacted me. So they told me that they were interested in the book and that they wanted to publish it a little more really clear here as I tell you for me the important point is that when someone sees a value in your product as in this case it is the book, the book that I am mentioning.
It's different for them to contact me than for me to contact them.
It is very different for me which one I go to look for the publisher directly in this case another example that I also want to tie a little to the marketing thing, which I title as offers or scams talking a little about my experience with people well simply the emails from Blue hackers and also another person who wrote to me there that was not even a company that as I tell you from there from here I was sharpening a little for me there is a fundamental difference to which I am looking for a service suppose for example that I want to hire r phone to do a service of s or something like that or the company comes directly for me it has a greater added value obviously when they are not going to hire it because one is looking for who but as much as it is also there is an edge which I would say that above all this type of company since everything depends for me it has a great weight as I tell you for me it is one as you want a serious company, a serious publisher and obviously since you are contacting from the leut it is assumed that you have already read the book and therefore saw a strong potential that is what one can understand because nobody in your in their right mind they will look for you to, as they say, hire something that is not going to sell or that is not going to be useful, it does not make sense. If again, if they are looking to hire a book, making an agreement with you is because they see value in the resource they want to collaborate with, which in this case is the book. Therefore, when they wrote to me I felt quite happy because I also always wanted to measure a little what the level of my books is, which as you can see I have a lot of, I am always working on one, either a new one or giving content to an existing book, for example, in the year 2024 I did not create any book, all I spent was correcting errors, giving more content.
The process was review and punctual corrections
More than anything correcting, giving more content because I didn't find many errors, by the way, the one about books is around here more than anything I dedicated myself to that, therefore, that an editorial comes to interest you in one of those books for me as the one who gave it is a great privilege, that was more or less the communication from there. Obviously I said yes because here you are seeing that it is on the screen and from there more than anything there were somewhat technical processes. I don't want to comment on that yet so much because it's not that much of a mess, I mean it's more than anything normal. Find a person who also made the book who was one of the collaborators or I don't know what they call it who maintains the plugin of the flame package that we remember is a package available for flurer with which we can create 2D video games, it's that simple, that process was very normal, simply before that they also told me that I had to make some small corrections and more than anything it was to add the images a legend and from there I got a little used to trying to add it in the current books every time I correct one or add more material. That is to say, I'm giving it, as they say, the past, I'm also there making those corrections because I liked that methodology that I had, so I was doing that then they hired, as I told you, one of the collaborators or developers of the Flame AG so that he would obviously check the book and whatever they were going to hire because this was going to be in physical form was corrected. Or at least as they say reviewed by another person, that's what is called testing here. So that's all that happened.
I lose the creative rights to the book
Okay, so in that sense, as I told you, I have nothing to say other than everything I want to talk about is the final essence, if it made sense for me to hire this book this way, since here the main advantage I have is that I lose the rights, you could say about the book, obviously all the writings are mine, but I have the mania that I am always updating the books, for example, in the case that it is the last book that I am working on to date, the one on Laravel, I started it with version 9 and right now we are on version 11, in a few months version 12 will come out and I will be updating everything, something that I can no longer do here, therefore if something changes, for example, a new version of Flurer comes out and also Infame, which is always evolving little by little, although it has remained stable in terms of implementations, up to the moment that I am giving these words, I can no longer do it because I no longer have, as they say, that authority, therefore there I am losing a little because also in the end I feel that it is simply a writing, I leave it there, as it says. I finished my work and it is very difficult now to update it, of course, this depends on them, at some point they tell me to do, so to speak, a review of the book for the latest changes, but it is no longer something that I can do. I basically do it because again all the sales rights are held by this publisher, therefore there I am already losing those rights also in the part that I cannot set the price and also in the part that now I have to share, not to say almost keep all the profits from the book since they have, so to speak, absolute control. You could say that the only thing I have a part in there is that it is the writing that is obviously me and that my name appears here and everything else, but they have absolute control, which also makes a little sense to me because well, for some reason you are hiring an editor, right? But that is what, going back a little to point one that they looked for me and therefore I understood that they saw potential in the book and with potential obviously what one says is well it is going to have many sales, it is a book that you see or that they saw a lot of potential and therefore it is going to be a good book. There will be many sales and here is a bit like I tell you that I have been sharpening myself since I had to see from the beginning that that was not going to be
Very specific book = few sales
So because it is the pyramid that I am always telling you about, mobile developers, developers in Flurer, developers in Flurer who are interested in implementing video games, well, everything I was telling you before and who want to implement their applications in Flame, therefore, every time you go, as they say, being more specific, you have a smaller audience that you are going to reach and therefore it is a book that by definition is not going to sell much, for me, as I told you, I loved what it is to make a book, learn the technology and everything else, and from there is that I am developing my first real video game to date, that is, precisely because I really liked what video game development is, I had already practiced a little before with Unity, also with Blender in a certain way, which is not an engine for video games, but certain things are always shared, and therefore this, as I can tell you, was the trigger for me to start developing, as they say, or trying to develop, because I am in it, a real video game that I can then sell in different stores, but unfortunately the book does not have many sales, a little because of what was mentioned before, so that is where one begins to feel a little cheated. I mean, I really didn't want to use that word, but it's the only one that, so to speak, comes to mind because again, when a publisher or any company is looking for you, whatever, for some material that you want to teach, it's supposed to be a win-win, in this case, they're going to take care of everything, and that's why they're charging, which I don't think I've mentioned yet.
They take 90% of the sale
they take 90% of the income for each sale, that is to say, suppose it's $ well right here 50 is 50, I'm left with $5, they take it, so they're quite high taxes, if I complain about udem, imagine this, obviously I knew what I was signing and I did it a little too because, as I told you, I also wanted to have a book because for me that's how they give you a kind of title that you say, look, this person in the professional environment has a book who in apres, that is to say, is no longer a crazy person who is writing here and he himself is being published and doing everything, if not, there is already a serious publisher behind it, a little, I also did it. That's why I did it more than anything else, but I also thought that I was obviously not going to have many sales, as always commented, I know that it is a slightly smaller book, but at least I did have some more or less interesting sales, but in the end it was not like that, it is selling more or less the same as what I sold on Amazon, what I sold for myself, as who says, for my part, and to the end what it says was losing control and obviously the price well all control over the book as I told you before then one even if it is always from a certain point feels cheated mind you I do not regret what was commented for me too it is important to have this book here since in a professional environment as I told you suppose you want to develop in Flutter or some company that is interested in developing some games with flame obviously I already have a book so now it is something else now as who says you already have another vision even if you do not have many sales but still And from there on.
Conclusions
To conclude a little, I do not regret it as I told you, but I would have liked it a little at least to be a little more honest and they had been a little more honest with me from that point, although I did not ask, I gave it by default and that was my first mistake and from there it is because I am seeing even the commas of any person who wants to consult me about something or wants to sell me something, wants to hire or wants me to hire him for something. You already see it living up to the commas, it is precisely because of that experience so as not to go through, as they say, that disappointment, since in the end that is above all a disappointment. Because if one is making a material, one expects, as they say, that well at some point you obviously won't buy a house simply by selling books. But at least if you have some more or less interesting sales, then in summary it is a bit like that. I really liked the experience of, as they say, that they also reviewed my book, which was also one of the very important points for which I wanted to hire a publisher to give me the level of my work. I really think that from there everything went quite well, also to have, like Who says a kind of title or a material that anyone can validate that says Look this person eh knows how to work in this technology because obviously he has a book and obviously there is a publisher behind it that is not going to be crazy to upload any recording that you have out there but well for the rest as I tell you I do not feel and I will never feel very comfortable that a company has complete control of a material that you are creating and it is forever so well Not everything is win win sometimes one has to settle for half measures as they say colloquially and any questions you have you can write to me and I will gladly answer them so without further ado see you in another video
- Andrés Cruz
Develop with Laravel, Django, Flask, CodeIgniter, HTML5, CSS3, MySQL, JavaScript, Vue, Android, iOS, Flutter