I am in the final stages after over a year and half. I was in your position not too long ago and researched as much as I could before accepting, so I will skip things you will find in a quick Google search.
Negotiating:
1. Everything is negotiable, remember that
2. Under promise on #pages, they ask you for an estimate but lowball it because thats how they price it and then will ask you to fill it.
3. Get in writing what they will be contributing.
Choosing the topic:
1. Choose a topic you are passionate about
2. Choose a topic you know a lot about
3. Choose a topic you can write a lot about
4. Don't be afraid to tweak the topic half way in.
5. Choose a topic that will sell in a year and half.
Writing the book:
1. Write an outline, write the first chapter, throw it away, and rewrite the outline agin.
2. Its better to lose work than to keep going in a direction that isn't working
3. You'll be busy but be reading other books as much as you are writing.
4. Wake up early or stay up late, 0 distractions is the best for writing
5. Talk out loud, like youre presenting to an audience to get unstuck from writers block.
6. Get feedback as soon as possible.
Marketing the book:
1. If you can, get in writing what marketing they will do for the book.
2. Negotiate on how many free books you can get to give away
3. Sales on Amazon are important, direct sales there, esp on launch day.
4. Start a newsletter (yay more writing!)
Other:
1. This is a second job
2. It does open a lot of doors
3. Consider a co-author for your first book. I added one towards the end and wish I had done it sooner. Its easier to collaborate and bounce ideas off each other and keep each other accountable.
If you forget to negotiate with them, and you go with O'Reilly, they are really good at sending free books for book signings to conferences which can be a really great chance to both get the word out and meet people that care about the tech you wrote about.
When book sales are split between multiple parties I can't imagine it's okay to get a bunch of free ones and sell them yourself, keeping 100% of the proceeds.
One point there really resonantes with me as someone who reads a fair number of tech books.
"5. Choose a topic that will sell in a year and half."
makes it hard (I think) for books to be written about very fast moving technical topics (e.g. Docker/Kubernetes/CoreOS). By the time you've written the book, it will inevitably be out of date.
The approach that publishers like Manning and O'Reilly take of publishing beta books helps a bit but still these topics are not a recipe for long-term saleability.
I've co-authored some Spark books and while the first one is hella out of date - the second one which was written against the 1.X APIs is only somewhat out of date and still selling really well.
I am in the final stages after over a year and half. I was in your position not too long ago and researched as much as I could before accepting, so I will skip things you will find in a quick Google search.
Negotiating:
1. Everything is negotiable, remember that
2. Under promise on #pages, they ask you for an estimate but lowball it because thats how they price it and then will ask you to fill it.
3. Get in writing what they will be contributing.
Choosing the topic:
1. Choose a topic you are passionate about
2. Choose a topic you know a lot about
3. Choose a topic you can write a lot about
4. Don't be afraid to tweak the topic half way in.
5. Choose a topic that will sell in a year and half.
Writing the book:
1. Write an outline, write the first chapter, throw it away, and rewrite the outline agin.
2. Its better to lose work than to keep going in a direction that isn't working
3. You'll be busy but be reading other books as much as you are writing.
4. Wake up early or stay up late, 0 distractions is the best for writing
5. Talk out loud, like youre presenting to an audience to get unstuck from writers block.
6. Get feedback as soon as possible.
Marketing the book:
1. If you can, get in writing what marketing they will do for the book.
2. Negotiate on how many free books you can get to give away
3. Sales on Amazon are important, direct sales there, esp on launch day.
4. Start a newsletter (yay more writing!)
Other:
1. This is a second job
2. It does open a lot of doors
3. Consider a co-author for your first book. I added one towards the end and wish I had done it sooner. Its easier to collaborate and bounce ideas off each other and keep each other accountable.