This article is based on a post originally published by Jeff Geerling at jeffgeerling.com. All figures, commit counts, and revenue numbers are Geerling’s own reported data.
Five Years in the Making: Ansible for DevOps, 2nd Edition
After five years of continuous development, 834 commits, and 24 major revisions, Jeff Geerling published the 2nd edition of Ansible for DevOps. The book has sold over 60,000 copies and served as the foundation for a free Ansible 101 video series on YouTube. The 2nd edition marks the start of the 2.x revision series.
The book covers a broad range of infrastructure automation topics:
- Managing Linux servers with Ansible basics
- Continuous integration pipelines
- Application deployments
- Container image management
- Kubernetes cluster management with Ansible
The Problem with Traditional Edition-Based Publishing
Geerling’s original commitment was simple: ebook updates would be free, forever. He has published at least one new revision per quarter since the first release (version 0.42 on LeanPub in 2014). However, selling through Amazon introduced friction: Amazon follows the traditional publishing convention of “editions,” where any substantive update beyond minor corrections requires a new edition — complete with a new ISBN and a new product listing.
This model made sense in the era of print, but it creates a poor experience for readers of digital technical books. Anyone who has owned outdated print books on Python 2, PHP 5, or legacy Linux distributions understands the problem. Technology moves faster than print publishing cycles, and readers who buy digital copies deserve to benefit from an author’s ongoing improvements.
What an Evergreen Technical Book Looks Like in Practice
Keeping a technical book genuinely current requires more than occasional edits. Geerling’s approach to maintaining Ansible for DevOps as an evergreen resource included:
- Quarterly revisions to reflect new Ansible releases, deprecation cycles, and evolving best practices.
- Chapter rewrites when underlying architecture shifted significantly enough to make older guidance misleading.
- A companion GitHub repository containing all code examples from the book, with CI tests that run on a weekly schedule to catch bit rot — examples that silently break as dependencies, APIs, or Ansible modules change.
- An open issue tracker where readers can report broken or confusing examples, and submit patches directly.
The CI testing approach is particularly notable for a book project. Rather than relying solely on manual review, automated weekly test runs surface problems proactively, before readers encounter them.
The Financial Case for Self-Publishing Technical Books
Geerling is candid about the economics. Over five years, Ansible for DevOps earned him nearly $200,000 in royalties — after platform fees of 30–70% from Amazon, Apple Books, and LeanPub (LeanPub being the most author-generous of the three).
For context, a comparable deal with a traditional publisher might have yielded:
- A few thousand dollars as an advance
- Roughly a 5% royalty rate on net sales
- No royalties until the advance was earned out
- An estimated total return of under $50,000 for the same sales volume
Self-publishing platforms like LeanPub typically return 70–80% of the sale price to the author. Amazon’s cut varies by price tier and format. The gap in author earnings between self-publishing and traditional publishing is substantial, and for a successful title it can represent a difference of four times or more in total income.
“Self-publish, don’t write for a publisher.” — Jeff Geerling
Honest Advice: Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Despite Ansible for DevOps being a genuinely successful technical book — one of the more successful self-published DevOps titles available — Geerling is direct: $200,000 over five years averages $40,000 per year. That is meaningful supplemental income, but it does not replace the salary a skilled DevOps engineer or software architect can command.
His conclusion for anyone considering writing a technical book:
- If you have deep, practical expertise in a cloud or infrastructure topic, your salary as a practitioner will likely exceed your maximum book revenue by a factor of five or more.
- Write the book as a practitioner, not as a full-time author. The best technical books come from people solving real problems in production environments, not from authors who write to fill a publisher’s catalog.
- “Fluff” tech books — written by light users of a tool or by serial authors without hands-on depth — are immediately apparent to experienced readers and rarely offer the small, high-value tips that justify the purchase price.
LeanPub and the Lean Publishing Model
One of the practical enablers of Geerling’s approach is LeanPub, a publishing platform designed for iterative, in-progress book writing. Key properties that make it well-suited for technical authors:
- You can publish and sell a partial, in-progress manuscript immediately.
- Readers who buy early can engage with the content and provide feedback while the book is still being written.
- Updates to buyers are automatic and free — no new purchase required.
- Author royalty rates are significantly higher than traditional publishers or even most major retail platforms.
This model validates demand early, reduces the risk of spending months writing a book nobody wants, and aligns author incentives with reader experience over the long term.
What This Means for DevOps Engineers Considering Writing
If you are a DevOps or platform engineering practitioner with genuine depth on a specific tool or workflow, self-publishing a technical book is a viable way to build credibility, contribute to the community, and earn supplemental income. The key takeaways from Geerling’s experience:
- Start lean. Publish early on a platform like LeanPub and iterate publicly.
- Automate quality assurance. Treat code examples like production code — use CI to test them on a regular schedule.
- Commit to maintenance. A technical book that goes stale within a year damages your reputation more than not writing one at all.
- Self-publish first. Traditional publishing deals rarely make financial sense for technical authors with the motivation to self-publish.
- Keep your day job. Even a successful technical book is unlikely to match your engineering salary.
About the Books
Ansible for DevOps, 2nd Edition is available on Amazon, LeanPub, and Apple Books. Jeff Geerling is also writing Ansible for Kubernetes, a deeper dive into Kubernetes and container automation with Ansible, available in progress on LeanPub with the same free-updates-forever commitment.
For more from Jeff Geerling, see jeffgeerling.com.