Tips for Writing a Technical Book
Even if you’re a subject matter expert with an outline in hand, there are a lot of unknowns: the time it takes to do research; the time it takes to come up with good examples; the time it takes to derive reference implementations; the number of times you delete and re-write sections to get them right; the overhead of coordinating contributors, and so on. While O’Reilly provided good technical editors, I had to seek out subject matter experts myself and convince them to look at my manuscript. Of course, that’s a giant ask that comes with a significant time commitment and little pay-off (O’Reilly can front technical editors a few hundred bucks as a thank you, which can feel inadequate for the 10+ hours an editor might spend editing your manuscript).
Source: performancejs.com