My Second Check Point Book Not Doing So Well

As you may or may not know, I wrote a couple of books on Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1, which is a software firewall package. The vast majority of phoneboy.com is dedicated to this product, though my life lately has been anything but this product.

In any case, I recently got a royalty statement from my publisher on the two books I had written plus a Chinese translation of the first book. I was expecting similar results to my last book, which did quite well. Unfortunately, what I saw on the statements disappointed me. It disappointed me enough that I was visibly shaken when I came in from the car after having seen it. My wife was like “why are you looking at me like that?” When I explained it to her, she understood.

When my first book came out, I didn’t have any real competition. As a result, my first book did really well. The second book had a bit more competition. That might be part of the reason I sold a few less books, though the numbers went far beyond just having some competition. There must be something fundamentally wrong with my second book. I can’t say that I’m surprised if that’s the case, though it still just takes the wind out of your sails to see strong proof of that.

Even if I don’t make out monetarily (which I can assure you I won’t), I learned some valuable lessons during the process of doing both books that I know that I will apply in other areas of my life. At least I’m getting something for the experience.