ASP.NET MVC book proposal

I'm not sure if it's the fact that I'm not working or what, but I'm very seriously thinking about writing another book. Not only that, but if I do it, it will be an ASP.NET MVC book. Some have suggested to me that the space is already too crowded.

In any case, my motivation is largely the same as it was for my first book, in that I'm dissatisfied with the way things are being presented today. I don't believe most books teach new things the way that developers want to learn. My approach is that there should be some basic understanding of concepts and intent when it comes to frameworks. It's hard to really distill that philosophy into a few sentences, but a part of it is that most developers seem to be always transitioning to something new, and they want to know how to apply the use cases they encounter every day to the new thing. That's the book I want to write.

As for the publication, I'm thining strongly about self-publishing. Here's the thing, no one ever gets rich from writing a programming book, and I certainly know that from experience. They open doors, but they don't make you rich. There are many ways to look at self-publishing. On one hand, you can sell one tenth of the number of books and make the same money (assuming on-demand printing and getting listed on Amazon), but the width of your audience may not be as large. Publishers also do things like layout and copy editing, although the overhead required is why authors make so little. As is the case for a lot of people in our field, I double majored in journalism and radio/TV, and the editing for my first book was relatively minor. I think I can wing it.

So aside from wondering what people think about yet another book, I intend to post a lot of it up front for feedback, if I choose to follow through. It's the kind of adventure I really would love right now, as I miss writing. Stay tuned!