Career.fork() - How To Thrive As A Freelance Developer (opens in new tab)

Hi. Good question. Why did I write this book?

I think bdunn and robbiea's suggestions are valid.

(And, man, I wish pyre's suggestion that I don't need money was true :o) though I'm lucky enough to consider myself pretty successful at what I do, so I wasn't writing to make up for missing revenue.)

But, in addition to the residual income and, to a lesser extent, publicity angles, the initial spark behind writing it was the fact that I found myself being asked time and again about what life is like as a contractor/freelancer. Which meant that a) there was definitely a knowledge gap/problem to be solved and b) the repeated nature of similar requests meant it made sense to optimise how I shared what I'd learned over the years.

I'm well aware that no one gets rich from writing a book - so I deliberately didn't sacrifice any client time; I was able to (just) fit it into what spare time I had.

Along with all that, there's the fact that I knew I could write this book and wasn't intimidated by the task (I had the knowledge and the skills -- I used to be a national-level journo) and the fact that writing is still fun, so it was a pleasure to make.

Yep, that pretty much covers it.

Consulting: Will always require more of your time to make money.

Products: Long term, residual income and the ability to build up an email list that you can market to with other offerings.

Sure, because the only reason to do anything is money. <sarcasm/>

Maybe he's done well enough that he doesn't need to be making $300/hr and has a desire to create a book? There's also the publicity angle too.

No, but this does allow the author to get more publicity and thus allow him to survive even easier as a freelancer.

This is same as asking a teacher why he is teaching if he's so good at the subject.

Thank you for this highly relevant contribution to the present discussion.

Groan. You mean like, any language with class methods in which "Process" is a class? Like, say, Ruby?

Yes: an environment called life, where you have a career object and you fork it.

Smalltalk. You can fork any block IIRC.

Edit: sorry, I posted reflexively before reading other comments. Turns out I'm not the only one who values Smalltalk to the extent that I actually want to remember something about it :)

Uh yes, Smalltalk.

Hi moystard

The Leanpub page contains a run-down of the main sections and (now that the book is published) also auto-includes the real table of contents - not sure if you've scrolled down the page all that way (it's quite a scroll to get there).

For what it's worth, of the experienced freelancers I beta-tested the book on, the key peice of (pleasing) feedback that I got was a bunch of them all saying "I wish I'd had this book X years ago, when I started out".

I bought it, although I still have to read it. A quick glance tells me it contains the aspects it should have as a freelance book.

Speaking of pricing, even your initial rate is too high for my blood. Are you going to be offering it up in different formats? I'm only personally interested in a Kindle Fire edition, but the only site reference is to "book", which I'd believe to be paperback but I could be wrong.

Thanks, man. Happy to chat - email is in my profile.

Hi - I wrote the book and its focus is on client work as an individual, rather than starting a company. In future releases, my list includes adding a section on sharing work with others, which might be more relevant. If you ping an email to feedback@freelancedeveloperbook.com with stuff you'll like covered, I'll add it to my Trello board

Hi wodow - thanks for your interest.

Someone over on the Leanpub page has asked about how UK-centric it is, so I thought I'd post pretty much my answer to that question here, because I think it's relevant:

"The majority of the book is relevant to going freelance wherever in the world you are. There are some sections, though (basically the money and legal ones) where, because I have first-hand experience of operating in the UK, I've framed it in UK terms. However, the principles/topics covered are still pretty relevant wherever you are in the world and will set you on a decent path to finding out about the local equivalents. 

While it's impossible to write a book that covers legal/financial stuff relevant to the whole world in one go, I do want to add in more territory-specific detail where people ask for it. So, in a future release of the book (which you'll get for free, remember) the plan is currently to refactor the UK-specific stuff to be generalised and then 'add support' for versions of that info applicable to additional territories (most likely in an appendix, but I'll see how realistic that is when I've had more feedback about the territories people want the book to cover).

But, like I said, the advice in most the book is location-independent."

Running a successful freelancing business, recruiting and working for clients, balancing your work/life relationship are all things that have nothing to do with location. And that's the difficult part of this business.

Taxes, accounting, legalities, etc. can all be localized by doing a little Googling.

The introduction would be nice, especially since it contains a "note for non UK readers", a group I'm part of.

Still, I'm thinking about going freelance, the book is reasonably priced and the table of contents looks interesting.

Sample now added - hope you like it.

Thanks jiffyjeff. It was tricky deciding how much detail to go into on the legal/financial details, because it's hard to write things that are globally applicable and also useful. However, the plan has always been to add support for other geographical areas in 1.0 (as well as a bunch more general topics), so thanks for the US-specific book tip -- should come in handy.