I’m rich, I’m rich!

Well, not really. However, I did get my first royalty check for The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language this week, which was exciting. Since this was my first book, I had no idea at all: a) how many books I might sell and b) how much that might mean in royalties. I was just hoping that it might bring in enough to, you know, go to McDonalds for a dinner or two.

I still have no idea if the book is selling “well,” since I have no idea what to compare the numbers to, but the royalties were quite a bit more than I had imagined. (Which may be more of a testament to my pessimistic expectations than to the size of the check.) I mean, it’s not like it’s a huge amount of money and I’m certainly not quitting my day job yet to write full time – I’ll leave that to the Petzolds of the world – but it ain’t nothin’. I still haven’t done the calculation yet, though, to figure out what the current “per hour” rate would have been for writing the book. That might still be a bit depressing…

Now just go out there and buy, buy, buy the book! Buy a second, third, fourth copy! Perish the thought that sales should fall off and I’d have to go back to buying lottery tickets to fuel my dreams of vast wealth…

12 thoughts on “I’m rich, I’m rich!

  1. BigAl

    Excellent book, stopped me from jumping headlong into C#, VB.net posseses lots of utility, especially less clunky in the threading arena.

    Take my advice, start writting your notes now for the "second edition"!

    Good Luck!

    -BigAL Sends…

    Reply
  2. Greg

    "How does it feel to be rich?"

    "Well is doesn’t suck…"

    (I love that quote)

    BTW, your book is on my wish (aka "as soon as I can buy it with out pissing off my wife") list.

    Looking forward to reading it…

    Reply
  3. paulvick

    Thanks for all the nice comments! I am thinking seriously about a second edition to (I hope) coincide with the release of VB 2005… And, sorry, Lan – you still have to buy the book. Although I believe there are some sample chapters available through Amazon or Addison-Wesley, I forget…

    Reply
  4. Billy Hollis

    The book is really excellent, Paul. I like the way it presents topics in very small chunks, very concisely.

    I expect to start using it in my introductory VB classes, since my own Wrox book is now out of print.

    Reply
  5. Karl

    I just noticed this (it must be new), if you type "Paul Vick" in google there’s an "add" at the top for your book offered by print.google.com

    Reply
  6. Simon Geering

    Paul,

    I already own a copy of your book and found that it to be well written and enjoyable to read. For someone like myself who is a long time VB developer it is useful as it manages to both highlight a number of cool insider tips / points as well as serving as a very useful reference to the more obscure language features.

    It would be cool if it was available for purchase electronically, I would buy another copy, as I’ve found that more than ten or so books tend to take up a lot of my desk space! Hence it is a huge win if i can have electronic editions of them available on HDD / CD instead.

    Regards

    Simon Geering

    Reply

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